Is it just me, or are we making some big mistakes in how we talk about big data? This crossed my mind (yet again) as I read Straight Talk About Big Data. The article starts with a suggestion for the CEO to get 5 questions answered from the executive team: Do we have a value-driven analytics strategy? Do we have the right ‘domain data’ to support our strategy? Where are we in our journey? Are we modelling the change personally?…
The weather isn’t just a topic for chatting around the water cooler. Thanks to Big Data, it is becoming big business. That’s why IBM recently bought the Weather Channel for reported $2 billion. And it is also another manifestation of big data creating opportunities for companies to capitalize on. IBM has made Big Data and analytics the next mountain it wishes to climb They understand that a company of any size will need vital sets of information in order to…
As mentioned in the previous post, last week I attended the Data Leadership Summit – http://www.datasummit.ca in Vancouver. It brought together a diverse audience to see speakers from different industries with different perspectives and experiences. In my opinion, there were two presentations which were particularly compelling. One was from real estate brokerage Redfin, the other from the online dating service Plentyoffish. I found it interesting that both shared many common themes. For instance, the level of exaggeration when one describing…
Welcome to this week’s Technology Updates, a vibrant mix of hot topics and future trends. The future is here…. Big Data or Hype? The Globe and Mail reported that the Maple Leafs are betting big on Big Data. It is surprising that it has taken them this long. Other sport organizations, notably the MLB with its sabermetrics (http://g3t.ca/q1hK49), have been doing it for quite some time. The Maple Leafs started pouring resources into gathering data, analysis, visualization and predictive analytics.…
Predicting the future isn’t quite a mug’s game anymore. It was once the province of futurists who talked like evangelists and fortune-tellers who paradoxically could never seem to leverage their predictive abilities with a lottery ticket at their local convenience store. Today, lots of folks are into the prediction racket these days – “predictive analysis”, anyway, with an eerie degree of accuracy. It’s all thanks to Big Data – that ambiguous little term every vendor is using to sell their…
