Posts tagged Conference
Beef Up B2B Publications With Rockstar Industry Conference Coverage
Feb 29th
Sharing. It’s a fundamental principle of social interactions that harkens back to Kindergarten 101. And yet… companies can lose sight of this essential concept when it comes to creating, syndicating, or rebroadcasting content in the social stratosphere. It’s one thing to showcase news,…
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Strata Conference 2012: The End of Big Data Hype?
Feb 29th
Last year, I was slated to attend the first O’Reilly Strata Conference, but the 2011 Snowpocalypse intervened and said “no flights for you, St. Louis.” Not only did I miss the inaugural Strata Conference, but it seems like I missed out on all the hype and irrational exuberance for big data as well.
The first day of the 2012 conference was dedicated to half-day tutorials and the all-day Strata Jumpstart. The Jumpstart sessions were geared for business leaders looking to see “how information can transform the enterprise.”
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The over-arching theme for the Jumpstart sessions? As Rob May said on Twitter “be wary of the religion of data.” That’s not quite the message one might have been expecting in attending Strata, but it’s a good one.
To be clear, nobody was saying “big data is over” or that it’s useless. But the message from most of the speakers was that it’s deeply important to know what data can do for you, and what it can’t before you decide you’ve got to get you some Hadoop.
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Avinash Kaushik, co-founder of Market Motive, says that we have enormous data, but very little insight.
Kaushik says that if you have a budget for data, spend 90% of it on people who can work with the tools and derive insight from the data, rather than spending the bulk of the budget on technology to gather data.
He also questions the need for real-time data. If you don’t have the ability to act on real-time data, then don’t try to gather real-time data. Instead, Kaushik argued for “right-time” that is available when decisions need to be made.
The exception? When “you can get rid of humans” in the decision-making process. If you can make decisions algorithmically based on real-time data, then it might be worth it. But, Kaushik says, “if humans are involved, you’re screwed.”
Ammo for the CFO
Continuing the theme of cautiously adopting big data, J.C. Herz spoke on “Ammunition for the CFO: How to be a Hard-Nosed Business Customer for Analytics.” Herz, in particular, played devil’s advocate to the question of whether companies need big data and analytics.
Herz is CEO of analytics company Batchtags. At the last Strata, says Herz, everyone came out saying “we’ve gotta get us some Hadoop” after being pumped up by the sessions extolling the virtues of big data without really understanding what they wanted. “Hold on cowboy,” she says, “let’s figure out what you want to accomplish before we ‘get us some Hadoop.’”
One step companies need to undertake is a data audit. Companies may think they have “big data” but “sometimes it’s not as big as you think it is.” One company Herz worked with had bought into infrastructure to support “massive flows of data” but after spending millions of dollars “they had something like 2TB of data.”
Companies need to know how much data they’re working with, how fast it’s being generated, and how many places the data is coming from.
Next question? Who owns the data? Who’s taking responsibility for cleaning the data and making sure it’s accurate? Who’s in the position of saying ‘no, you can’t have it?” Herz described a few horror stories about companies that thought they had rich data sources, but when they really dug in they found that human laziness meant that the data was missing or inaccurate.
By the same token, companies need to ask who’s going to do analysis on data. When you’re deciding on a big data strategy, Herz says that companies need to decide exactly who is going to be doing the analysis, by name, and who they’ll be reporting to.
Another question, are you using the data to make a decision – or avoid one? Herz says that analytics are good when management wants to make a decision, but it’s a waste of money when companies are gathering data so that decisions can be put off.
Time is a resource, says Herz. One of the worst scenarios is when management gets the “big data religion” and throws “obscene” amounts of money at it, wants results yesterday. It doesn’t work like that.
Companies also need to realize that data decisions “have consequences” says Herz. If you’re embarking on a data strategy, Herz warns that companies need to understand that it might piss off a few people when the results come in, and you need to be OK with that. As Kaushik says, when humans are involved…
That doesn’t mean that Herz is against companies embracing analytics, just that they need to be thoughtful when doing it.
When working with vendors about big data and analytics platforms, Herz says that companies should ask for three cost scenarios that factor in the “data iron triangle.” The triangle is storage, cycles, and performance. Ask vendors to come up with three cost scenarios that minimize one corner of the triangle each. Most of the time you can make sacrifices in one area and get the results you want.
It’s interesting to see just how fast big data is moving out of the hype cycle. If you’re following along with Gartner’s technology life cycle, we should be hitting the “trough of disillusionment” shortly. However, I think that’s likely we’re going to be skipping that or seeing a very abbreviated trough. It seems that a lot of companies are hitting “enlightenment” already and moving towards productivity very quickly.
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Four (4) Must-Attend Sessions at Conversion Conference West 2012 for Search Engine Optimizers
Feb 28th
As search engine optimizers, we’re always looking for new ways to attract visitors or getting that coveted spot on search engine rankings. In our book, increasing traffic means increasing revenue, and most of us have never really questioned this assumption – at least not until we notice the discrepancy between our traffic volume vs. the [...]
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What Security, Where? Keys to the RSA Conference
Feb 24th
The cloud is huge. Client access devices are small, and they’re everywhere. Personal computers are virtual. Access to all of these resources is continual. Control over the world’s single most precious information resource – identity – has become a jump ball.
Next week, ReadWriteWeb will be covering the annual RSA security conference in San Francisco. I never attend a conference without an agenda, and no, I’m not talking about the pamphlet and the floor plan. There’s an agenda all my own, and it’s based on the subject matter that I’ve discovered you want to know more about.
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There are six flashpoint topics that are relevant to this year more than any other. We’ll be touching on each of these flashpoints throughout the week on RWW, and at the end, we’ll revisit each one and review what we’ve learned… or whether we ended up with more questions than we started out with.
1. Who or what defines identity for cloud access? With Windows 8 – which may come sooner than you might think – you’ll be logging on using something called a Microsoft Account. Apple iPad and iPhone users are already becoming accustomed to the iCloud account, which we can expect will be integrated into the iTunes account scheme. Before long, for you to use any functionality from any device, you will need access, and the thing that you access must either have or discover some way of recognizing you.
Are you prepared for that something to discover you through Facebook? Is that level of trust something you can accept? This will likely be a huge topic of discussion during the colossal four-hour Cloud Security Alliance Summit session on Monday. Business users expect single sign-on. That means, the credentials they use to log onto their computers or portable devices, must be translatable into credentials recognized by the services they use once they’re logged on. Imagine trusting the credential level you use today to log onto your Desktop, applied to your bank account or your company’s private network. (And you thought Facebook was dangerous?)
2. The rise of risk management. Because both cloud service providers and their customers have more specific expectations for their service level requirements than ever before, they’ve been able to state those expectations in service contracts with greater ease. And because businesspeople protect their interests when they’re specified in contracts, the insurance industry plays a greater role now.
It is insurance that is compelling enterprises everywhere (including insurance itself) to institute risk management procedures. Every year when you see the ads for a security conference, you expect to see blurbs about the latest vendors for remedial technologies like backup and recovery, disaster management, loss mitigation. Now you’re seeing the antithesis: Risk management, when done right, minimizes the need for loss mitigation, and replaces disaster management with disaster avoidance.
3. The decline of endpoint security? “Hardening the endpoints” was a metaphor intended to convey a picture of an armored fortress, a “Helm’s Deep,” impenetrable from the outside. With transaction models now incorporating cloud services at a rapid rate, suddenly the imperfections in modern endpoint security become clearer. New and more clever security services are demonstrating that it’s not only feasible, but preferable, to secure the fortress by stopping malicious activity from ever reaching the endpoint in the first place. And it may be more practical to achieve this through the cloud than anywhere else.
At RSA next week, we expect to see some live demonstrations of cloud-based security in action; though we’ll also certainly hear from the endpoint security pioneers, with the latest antivirus, firewalls, and spam blockers, defending the fortress the only way they know how.
4. Can privacy be delivered by technology? It’s a question our Joe Brockmeier explored on Thursday, casting a ray of hope for technological methods – especially when compared to the legislative alternative. On the other hand, my interview with the co-creator of P3P revealed that privacy could be more of a psychological concept that technology may only serve to exacerbate – the way the presence of armed guards at an airport makes people feel less secure.
Some still debate whether privacy actually belongs as a subtopic of security in the first place. From the end user’s perspective, no one feels truly secure unless she’s certain she’s not being spied on. The sad fact is that, while technology may have a better chance at delivering privacy than any laws passed by Congress, it has not done so yet, and it’s had plenty of chances.
5. Is infrastructure security a joke? With nearly all of computing moving to a service model, and with centralized and virtualized data center resources relying more upon the security of power centers and the integrity of energy infrastructure, is the notion of a “smart grid” really an illusion? As easy as it appeared for someone to don the name of “Anonymous” and shut down the Justice Dept. Web site, could it be just as easy to shut down electric power to the Great Plains?
We don’t talk a lot about the macrocosmic elements of technology around here, usually because we’re playing with our smartphones. It’s the little things that hold our attention, like cute kittens. The nation’s energy infrastructure, by comparison, is an unexplored wilderness. We hope to change that fact a bit next week.
6. Could government really lead the way in security architecture? No, seriously? Government?
I’m not talking about Congress, though. The Dept. of Homeland Security is implementing some very clever new policies for rethinking government resources’ approach to managing security. Risk management plays a role here as well, but also resilience – employing NASA-like procedures to keep the mission running smoothly even when failures do happen. And the National Security Agency is also implementing some bold initiatives in the field of mobile device security, that pick up at the point Research In Motion stopped moving.
Stay tuned to ReadWriteWeb all next week as we put on our thinking caps, our tinfoil helmets, and our stovepipe hats (hopefully not all at once) and talk to all the world’s leading security authorities in the public and private sectors, in the enterprise and in academia.
Stock photos by Shutterstock.com
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Search Engine Land’s SMX West Conference Comes to San Jose, CA in Less Than Two Weeks – Register Today!
Feb 16th
February 28 thru March 1 San Jose, CA 60 Tactical Sessions. 130+ Expert Speakers. Two Provocative Keynotes. Less than two weeks until Search Marketing Expo SMX West returns to San Jose February 28 March 1. Here is what’s in store: Multi-track program including search marketing topics…
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Search Engine Land’s SMX West Conference in Two Weeks!
Feb 13th
Only two weeks until Search Marketing Expo – SMX West returns to San Jose, February 28 – March 1. Here is what’s in store: Exceptional Content: Sixty sessions for marketers of every skill level. The multi-track agenda covers paid search advertising (PPC), search engine optimization (SEO),…
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SEO Services Firm 180Fusion Attending SES Accelerator Conference & Search … – PR Web (press release)
Feb 9th
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SEO Services Firm 180Fusion Attending SES Accelerator Conference & Search …
PR Web (press release) 180Fusion, a leading SEO services firm devoted to growing their clients' businesses through SEO Services, Search Engine and Social Media Marketing among many other services, has experienced record year over year growth – despite the current state of … |
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Anonymous Shows How Easy it is to Intercept FBI Conference Calls
Feb 3rd
“I’m not sure if we’re the only two on right now or not,” says a voice with an American accent. The voice belongs to a man who identifies himself as Bruce, likely an FBI agent, who had just joined a conference call with other law enforcement officials based in the UK.
The irony of hearing Bruce utter those words at the beginning of the call is that, no, they were not the only people listening in. Somehow, members of Anonymous managed to tap into the call, record it and then post it online for all to hear. The subject of the conversation? Tracking and arresting online activists and hackers, such as those who secretly associate with Anonymous.
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After some casual small talk, the call’s participants share details about progress they’ve made tracking various known hackers, some of whose real names are bleeped out of the audio. Members of so-called hacktivist groups like LulzSec and Anonymous are discussed and updates are given about who’s been arrested.
It appears that whoever gained unauthorized access to the call was able to do so because they were privy to an email invitation containing the call-in details. Whether somebody forwarded it to the infiltrator or, more likely, they directly intercepted it themselves, that message was all they needed to join the call and quietly listen to the FBI and UK law enforcement discuss sensitive matters.
Nothing too groundbreaking is revealed in the call, but the mere existence of such a breach suggests that more sensitive information could be exposed, if it hasn’t already been.
Not only this is embarrassing for law enforcement, but it ought to send a wake-up call to any other organizations that conduct business via conference call. With many services, all a competitor or other third party would need to get access to the call is a copy of the original email invite.
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Justifying Conference Attendance For In-House Search Marketers
Feb 1st
While search engine marketing conference attendance for agency staff is almost a given of the job, in-house search engine marketers may find themselves more challenged to justify the expense, both in time and money of conference attendance. Conferences like Search Marketing Expo (SMX) provide a…
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Search Engine Land’s SMX West Conference Rates Increase Saturday – Register Now!
Jan 26th
Early Bird rates for Search Engine Land’s SMX West conference end this Saturday, January 28th. Register now and save $250 on your All Access ticket! Join us February 28-March 1 in San Jose for: Timely programing: 85% of the sessions are new, exploring new developments in personalized search,…
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