active information – Page 3

Active Information: Streaming through Computational World, Changing change via experimentation platforms

January 4, 2012 by Brenda Michelson

My latest posts on the HPIO Active Information blog:

Streaming through a Computational World — (most popular post to date)

To take advantage of the computational world, or the nearer term internet of things, we need to infuse smarts throughout our data collection networks. We need to employ up-front and intermediate filters, traffic cops, aggregators, pattern detectors, and intelligent agents. We need to get over being data hoarders, and have the astuteness to leave data behind.

Busting cultural resistance via experimentation platforms — (changing change)

Culture, mistrust of the data, lack of interest. These very human factors are adoption barriers for 46% of the respondents. Yet, these barriers aren’t new. Nor, confined to big data and advanced analytics. To change a culture, you need to bring proof to the table. And proof requires hands-on experimentation and real-world data. We need data to prove that we need data. How will we get that?

Active Information: Big Data from left field; Big Data Rx

December 14, 2011 by Brenda Michelson

My latest posts on the HPIO Active Information blog:

Ready or not, here comes Big Data

Sometimes though, a trend is so compelling (e-commerce, mobility), in-your-face (social media) or simple to comprehend (cloud), that it leaps into mainstream media and takes on a life of its own. Instead of playing the role of serial advocate, corporate IT leaders and architects are suddenly in a game of catch-up.

Rx for AstraZeneca: Real-world evidence

Rethinking their prelaunch process, and data needs, AstraZeneca proposed a data collaboration with customers.

And one of my favorites:

Reclaim the “I” in CIO

Why do we still have titled CIOs, yet no clear candidate C-level executive to manage the organization’s information agenda?

Active Information: Reclaim the “I” in CIO, Big Data & Collective Intelligence

November 17, 2011 by Brenda Michelson

My latest posts on the HPIO Active Information blog:

Reclaim the “I” in CIO

Why do we still have titled CIOs, yet no clear candidate C-level executive to manage the organization’s information agenda? [A rant of sorts]

Big Data meets Collective Intelligence

The typical connection between social technologies and collective intelligence is the reams of data shared by individuals via venues such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Wikipedia. Collective intelligence as source of big data. More recently, emerging companies are applying collective intelligence to solve (your) big data problems. [Lots of link easter eggs]

Active Information: Data Scientists, Moneyball, Competitive Analytics & Big Data Definition

October 19, 2011 by Brenda Michelson

I’ve been remiss in sharing my active information posts. The latest:

Data Scientists: Heavy Lifting Required

“Good data scientists understand, in a deep way, that the heavy lifting of cleanup and preparation isn’t something that gets in the way of solving the problem: it is the problem.” – DJ Patil

On Davenport on Moneyball: Swing or ride the pine

Companies looking to compete on analytics, or for that matter, just stay competitive, need leaders who realize that having tunnel vision on singular, staid metrics, will lead to singular, staid businesses.

Taking the right path to Competitive Analytics

The evolution from experienced to transformed analytics takes one of two paths, which depends on the nature and goals of the organization.

Big Data definitions will be Big Data problem

It seems that the definitions and opinions on what is, and isn’t, big data, could fill a terabyte or two on their own.

Roundtable: Enterprise Architects & Complex Event Processing

September 19, 2011 by Brenda Michelson

I recently moderated a roundtable to discuss the Enterprise Architect / Complexity Event Processing (CEP) survey that I worked on with StreamBase.
The roundtable featured Nigel Green of 5Di Limited and Jennifer Kennedy of Linden Lab, along with Richard…

Idea Collecting: Game Theory

September 8, 2011 by Brenda Michelson

Readers here at Elemental Links know that I’m an idea collector. I’m constantly on the look out for interesting articles in business, news and trade journals that either relate to my current work, or more likely, provide fodder for future work.

Lately, I’ve been highlighting these discoveries over on Active Information. This week, I discuss an intriguing piece in the Economist’s Technology Quarterly on Game Theory in Practice. Check out the Active Information post.

Outliers shine truth on IT Failure

September 1, 2011 by Brenda Michelson

This week on Active Information I highlight an article on IT Failure from the September Issue of Harvard Business Review that is focused on Managing Complexity.

The authors describe what they learned by taking a radically different approach to the study of IT Failures. Ignoring averages and general trends, they worked from the Black Swan principle that “rare events can be more significant than average ones — and may occur more often than we think”.

Their findings were quite enlightening. Standish, et al, take notice. Even better, they offer new investment guidelines that every CxO should be aware of.

Read my Active Information post.

Data Thought for Tomorrow

August 17, 2011 by Brenda Michelson

Over on Active Information, I wrote a post inspired by a recent consult. As I was thinking about the post, and the consult, I scribbled and then preview tweeted the following:

“Data isn’t just a mechanism to manage the business you have, it’s a tool to learn what business you could be in.”

Read the post. Implement the message.

Recent Active Information Writing: Crash-proof code, data lessons & infographics

August 4, 2011 by Brenda Michelson

For the last few months, I’ve been hunkered down applying my SOA, active-information and execution skills on a [redacted] project for an organization in the [redacted] industry. It’s a cool project. But, it seriously stymies my writing. First, I can’t write about it. Second, I don’t have time to write, or hardly think, of anything else.

So, for me — a so-called low metabolism writer — it’s a good thing I was previously contracted to write for Esther Schindler at the HP Input Output site. Over the last few weeks, I’ve published the following Active Information posts:

Crash Proof Code:

“As digital emitters and sensors pervade the physical world — cars, bridges, medical devices — the opportunity to exploit active information patterns for business and societal innovation increases exponentially.

However, with technology-driven innovation comes risks. The most cited risk associated with digital pervasiveness is lack, or even absence, of privacy. But those of us with development and engineering backgrounds realize there is another, potentially more significant risk. Bugs…” [Read the post.]

Lessons from US CIO Vivek Kundra: Data-driven innovation:

“Buried between tech bubble talk in the most recent Fortune Magazine is a good interview of Vivek Kundra, US CIO. The interview is a retrospective on Kundra’s term as the first CIO of the US…

…The interview covers a lot of ground, including Kundra’s Cloud First technology plan [pdf], being stymied by bureaucracy, the power of data for transparency and publishing data to spur innovation…” [Read the post]

Big Data as Story Teller — Story of Big Data:

“…Too often, we geek types think about visibility in terms of business analytics and intelligence tools. However, an interesting, and very powerful technique is data visualization.” [Read the post.]

Absence of Event = Event

July 14, 2011 by Brenda Michelson

In this week’s Active Information post, I riff off a quote by Jud Valeski the CEO of Gnip, on the dearth of event-driven talent:

“Beyond infrastructure issues, as engineers, the web app programming we’ve been doing over the past 15 years has taught us to build applications in a highly synchronous transactional manner…”

“…You would be shocked at the ratio of engineers who can’t build event-driven, asynchronous data processing applications, to those who can, yet this is a big part of this space.”

If you are a frequent reader here, you’ve seen the event constructs I published over there.

One that I didn’t include is the fact that the absence of an event can be an event. Chris Martins brought that up on Twitter.

In my initial event writing, I wrote of a system heartbeat example:

“…a business-to-business order gateway is supposed to be emitting System Heartbeat events every 15 minutes. The System Heartbeat events inform IT operations the gateway is up and running. The absence of a heartbeat event indicates a failure. If the order gateway is down, business customers are likely to place an order with a competitor.”

On Twitter yesterday, I mentioned an event-driven billing subsystem I’m currently working on. In that system, we’ll be generating a (standard) projected monthly invoice. The invoice generation starts when the party is approved for billing.

Invoice regeneration is triggered by a set of events, including a change in plan, the receipt of a payment, or the absence of the receipt of payment. In this subsystem, the absence of a receipt is a non-payment event.

So, yes. The absence of an event is absolutely an event.

Active Information: Data, rather than brute force and sheer will, wins races

July 6, 2011 by Brenda Michelson

The inspiration for my active information post this week is an article in the Economist that highlights the use of data, sensors, aggregators and analytics in competitive racing — motor sports and sailing. Telematics for the win.

Check out my post.

Active Information: Balancing Speed, Accuracy, Attention & Context

June 29, 2011 by Brenda Michelson

I’ve been on a bit of a speed, accuracy and decisioning theme over at my Active Information blog on HP Input Output.

In last week’s post, I called out an MIT Sloan Review interview that advocated data delivery speed (fast data) over data accuracy in the context of better decision-making. I agree, on the surface it appears counterintuitive.

This week, I called out a related MIT Sloan Review article that added the dimensions of attention span and context to the speed versus accuracy equation.

A one-line snippet in this second article inspired a little late night, design as you type, session for me. [Life on the road]

Anyway, check out both posts, including my “works on a whiteboard” design-stream-of-consciousness. Then, consider how you might add “a time-table for each piece of information.”