Creating an Environment for Big Data-Or Not

A few notes that didn’t make it into my Fast Company post:

Why Big Data Won’t Make You Smart, Rich, Or Pretty

Technicians will be able to provide much more insight into the physical side of Big Data, from server configurations to cooling systems. As various databases are brought together inside an enterprise or across the Internet, Big Data has becoming the reigning moniker that represents data collections in the Exabyte, Zettabyte or Yottabyte range. Here are a few thoughts on what organizations need to consider before jumping into a Big Data project.

Defining the Data any database architect will tell you that the most important element in any database-oriented transaction or process is understanding the data. Although algorithms may be used to extract data, infer relationships and discover correlations, the very nature of Big Data and its diversity of sources will result in complexity that may reach beyond the human ability to audit those relationships in a meaningful way. It may not be until something appears to fail or point to a positive insight that the underlying data and models get examined. Many useful insights may be lost because of this, and many false positives chased. Organizations must make sure that they understand the quality, relationships, sources, completeness etc. of their data before they enter into Big Data experiments. (How many times has the Amazon recommendation engine changed over the course of your relationship with Amazon. This is a key strategic feature for them and they invest in it as an ongoing learning opportunity. If you aren’t willing to make that kind of commitment, you might want to think hard about how deep you go).

Understanding the Problem If the problems get too big, solutions sets may only make sense to a select few. Weather is a Big Data problem. Outside of that community, we know if the sun is up or not, but how our local weather person "predicts" our drive-time weather is a complete mystery. Even if the black boxes aren’t black boxes they are to those who didn’t construct the box. Those seeking solutions using Big Data need to understand the problems they are trying to solve, ensure that an adequate theory exists to model it (or if they have "a" theory that theory is well documented so everyone understands its assumptions and biases) and that the recipients of the analysis understand what they are getting, what it means and how it might be wrong.

The Skills Gap As with any fad, the Chicken Littles are raising their heads to shout about competitive incongruence. If you don’t do Big Data, Big Data will run over you. Companies are now out looking for Data Scientists or Quants to build teams to help them understand their data and offer sophisticated queries that provide insight, or models that anticipate future behavior, leading to a competitive advantage. There is current a big gap between the need for data scientists, and their availability. There is an even bigger gap between curriculum and the risks suggested by my Fast Company article Why Big Data Won’t Make You Smart, Rich, Or Pretty . Even if the world was able to fill the perceived need for data scientists, would they be humble enough, and ethical enough to recognize the potential failings of their chosen profession.

Keep in mind that if you tackle Big Data as a competitive reaction, you might not know enough to do it well, and therefore might create multiple risks: wasted investment in technology and analysis as well as the risk of making decisions based on information you don’t really understand.

(Note: as I post this, there is active chatter at twitter about how elitist the idea of a "Data Scientist" appears via my friend and colleague Merv Adrian using hashtag #Gartnerchat)

Why Big Data Won’t Make You Smart, Rich, Or Pretty

If 2012 is the year of Big Data, it will likely be the year vendors and consultants start to over-promise, under-deliver, and put processes in motion that will generate insights and potential risks for years to come.

BY FC EXPERT BLOGGER DANIEL W. RASMUS

Read the entire post at Fast Company.

Apple’s iPad Textbook Initiative Doesn’t Go Far Enough

Learning is an act of assembly. The new iPad textbook initiative goes some way toward the assembly of content, but it remains artifact-centric. In other words, the world moves from revolving around a next book, to revolving around an e-textbook.

Here are the advantages I see to the current approach:

• Easier to carry
• Easier to update (in fact, the book may never become obsolete. Will be interesting to watch the licensing issues here. Is a "new edition" just an update, or do you, as happens with traditional publishing, need to shell out for the update.
• More interactive and engaging, filled with video, sound, animations and models
• Easy to access, no bookstore lines
• Integrated highlighting and note taking
• Study card generation (traditional, but not always the best way to study)
• Self-publishing
• iTunes University integration

These advantages are a step forward from textbooks on paper, or even on an Amazon Kindle, but there is still work to be done.

Here’s what’s missing:

Lecture notes integration: if the educator self-publishes, which is certainly possible given the platform, then he or she can easily integrate lecture notes into the text. If, however, they use a third-party book, then those notes will live outside of the text in the same way that student-taken notes recording during a lecture will remain outside of the text.

Student notes integration: The format does not lend itself to note taking during a lecture. Suppose I mindmap, or I use a Livescribe Smartpen to capture notes. Those artifacts remain separate, which means that during reading, I have to refer to material outside of the text. It also means that if I don’t take notes inside of the text using the method available through the book, that those notes remain separate and have no means for creating a context back to the book, in either direction. I can’t just rip out a page, or it appears, copy the text (though I could screen capture it) in order to create a reference to an image, model or paragraph in some other app (this implies, at minimum, the need for contextual links that can be copied into other apps, like say, iThoughts HD or Circuis Poinies NoteBook – click the link and it will take you to the iBook reference point).

Open content: I still own CDs from Apple’s last venture into into interactive books, built on a proprietary platform called HyperCard. Voyager’s books were wonderful. I hold on to Marvin Minsky’s Society of Mind first person CD because the tiny QuickTime videos still give me access to Minsky’s wit and wisdom manifested as walking, talking sidebars. Unfortunately, I can’t read the HyperCard stacks anymore, and need to get out my paper copy of the book to give the video context. One of the biggest issues going forward for eBooks will be the format. It is pretty clear that the battle between Amazon and Apple will last for a significant period of time, creating confusion rather than clarity for students and for educators. We may eventually see a standard develop, but proprietary interests will dominate for now.

Assembly: As hinted at above, Apple needs a way for learners to assemble their materials. They could use Evernote or Microsoft’s OneNote to bring everything together, but, as noted, the text of textbooks remains outside of the reach of those apps. Apple needs to address the ability to assemble learning materials and transform them into collections that are meaningful to learning. The book remains a top-down approach, and it doesn’t really lend itself to emergent learning as a holistic experience.

I would recommend that Apple’s next investment be in assembly technology that empowers learners to construct their own learning environment from components.

Apple also needs to offer a vision for the future of personal learning. I love iTunes University and the textbooks I’ve seen look slick. I’m not sure that Apple has an all-up idea for what the future learning experience will look like (with accompanying learning theory to support it). They need to create a vision, not from the point-of-view of the educator (as the Knowledge Navigator video did in its day) but from the perspective of the learner.  Unfortunately Apple seems to be coming to learning through the digitization of physical things, like books or lectures, rather than reinventing the entire experience.

Apple has the same issue with adult learners who piece together material from multiple places. We (I do include myself) can do this with scanners and Smartpens and webpage captures and downloaded video with a PC or a Mac. The iPad, however, creates silos that don’t integrate. I have to send myself e-mail from the iPad so that I can find the article to put it into OneNote to the synchronize it back to the iPad.  It works, but it is too complicated for an Apple experience. Apple needs to figure out how to facilitate the personal assembly of learning and reference material on the iPad. If they do that, it will be an even bigger statement as to why general purpose devices will win the day as opposed to specialty devices – and it will go a long way to creating an innovative platform that will transform personal learning into a truly 21st-Century experience.

I won’t go dark on SOPA or PIPA

A sit-in is a protest that uses physical space to assert, in a passive way, the right of a person, or persons, to be where they are and to interact, hopefully in a positive, constructive way, with the people they don’t agree with—usually a political body of a sort, be it the government of South Africa, the government of the US or Egypt, or sometimes, large businesses and other interests as the Occupy movement has been doing in their better moments.

I don’t see the current activities of OpenCongress or Wikipedia to be the equivalent of a non-violent protest, though they are certainly non-violent (I doubt any bottle throwing will occur through Firefox or Internet Explorer today, though individuals searching for the text of alternative legislation like the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade" (OPEN) Act (S. 2029) will moan as they go to research the legislation to find their potential allies passively opposing SOPA and PIPA by blocking access to information.

So I won’t go dark. I encourage you to write to your Congressional and Senatorial representatives on this and any other issue you feel passionate about. I have. This legislation is not a slam dunk, so don’t be surprised if some members of Congress or the Senate actually agree with you in their response.

As a marketing note, of course, I wouldn’t have written this had the online protest not occurred. So good on you websites that are blocking themselves today: attention has been drawn. The question is, is it the right kind of attention. Feigning a lack of access is not the same as the real repercussions of rights being eliminated and positive experiences curtailed. A sit-in is a physical act that forces the parties, to at minimum, react to each other. I’m not sure these kind of passive movements will work through a medium where activity is the measure of achievement.

Perhaps it would  be better to offer people badges if they write to their representatives, to make the protest an exercise in gamification. Oh, that probably wouldn’t be the right approach either. IT might send a message that we have multiple world views that are increasingly incompatible with antique notions of property and propriety.

Maybe we should be more engaged as citizens of the world so that we don’t always have to wait until the last minute to have our democratic procrastinations registered. I think that may be the answer. Don’t wait. Become actively involved so that your thoughts on what business elected representatives conduct is part of an ongoing dialog with those representatives. Remember that they work for you and it is your job to manage and evaluate their performance. Today we are acting like bad managers caught not looking at an employee’s performance until it is too late for either of them to be graceful about their exit strategy.

If this is the impetus, then take it. Write your notes, blog your blogs and tweet your tweets, but not just today, and not just about SOPA or PIPA or OPEN, but about anything and everything you feel passionate about. We can’t complain about dysfunctional government if we, the electors of that government, aren’t willing to actively manage what we are charged to manage.

Now I hope WordPress is working and this post will make its way to the Net.

Brenthaven Hardshell Folio for iPad

The roughly $40 Brenthaven Hardshell Folio for iPad is a very different kind of case for the iPad. First, it isn’t one of those fancy magnetic cases, so if you want your iPad to flip on at the opening of the case, this is not the case for you. That said, the Apple iPad 2 Smart Covers and complementary cases create a puzzle-like solution to iPad protection. The Hardshell Folio is a single unit solution that protects the iPad well without adding much weight (.4 lbs) or complexity.

What is most unique about this unit is it material, which isn’t leather or faux-leather like so many other cases: it is fabric. The fabric cover feel great in the hand and the all-over microfiber lining products both the screen and the back plate of the iPad 2 from nicks or scratches.

I have been using this case for several days and plan on using it for the foreseeable future. The port cutouts provide ample room for cables and inputs and plenty of room for sound to escape – and the hardcover back (cov ered seamlessly by the same fabric) feels secure even though it is easy to insert and remove the iPad 2 from the case. The case even includes a little window on the cover so you can slip in your name or company logo for quick identification in rooms crowded with iPads.

And for those who find sustainability important, Brenthaven goes out of their way to discuss it, not on the corporate citizenship page, but as a tab on the product page. All hang tags and product inserts, for instance, are printed on recycled paper using soy-based inks. They invest in environmental non-profits and carbon offsets to compensate for any impact on the environment created during manufacturing or logistics.

Again, I’m enjoying the Hardshell Folio for iPad 2 and recommend it to those looking for a well-constructed, durable and attractive home for their iPad 2.

Ladies’ Home Journal Century-Old Predictions Came True

Interesting story on John Elfreth Watkins prediction made in The Ladie’s Home Journal back in December 1900. Interestingly accurate in some cases, but like Nostradamus or Biblical interpretation, we often see the past through the lens of the present and forgive the details. Some of the concepts are pretty close, but the details aren’t. And in some cases, he was just flat wrong.

Extrapolation and speculation will lead to some ideas that may well come true. Scenario planners can tell you that if you just have one list, then you will miss the mark more often than not. With scenarios you force yourself to look at the same data from many different perspectives and therefore generate more possibilities than your biases will allow.

Listen to, or read, the NPR interview here:

Magazine’s Century-Old Predictions Came True

Retro Thinking During A Difficult Kodak Moment

Way back in 2005, Bloomberg Businessweek ran a piece called "A Tense Kodak Moment." "Low-margin digital sales aren’t picking up the slack of disappearing film profits, and debt is coming due,” the piece proclaimed. This provided some prescient perspective for Eastman Kodak’s (NYSE: EK) current struggles, which it now appears to be betting on printing and legal wrangling rather than film….

I remember fondly walking around Disneyland as a kid and migrating toward the Kodak Photo Spots that dotted the precious maps of the Magic Kingdom. These were great places to take iconic pictures of Sleeping Beauty’s Castle or the Matterhorn. Disney, always the entrepreneur, partnered with uncontested consumer photography leader Kodak to not only print these locations on maps, but to put Kodak branded signs in the park so Disney guests wouldn’t have to wonder where to stand. I’m sure I’m not the only one with warm memories of Disneyland captured by a Kodak Brownie–a camera that dangled heavily from my neck. It was already a twenty-year relic at the time, inherited from my father’s camera collection. But I loved that camera and the black-and-white pictures that captured my memories of Disneyland—my memories, not someone else’s. And all of those memories said Kodak….

Read the entire post at Fast Company: Retro Thinking During A Difficult Kodak Moment

[Image: Flickr user Miikka Skaffari]

Acer Iconia Tab A500 Review

It may seem a little strange to be writing a review of a shipping tablet just as CES 2012 hits the shutdown button. But unlike much of the gear touted in blogs, endless television coverage and various radio shows, the Acer Iconia Tab A500 is shipping, and at a reasonable price.

Many tablet manufacturers have realized that they can’t sell their tablets at the same price at Apple’s iPad unless they offer comparable features or better. And it all starts with footprint and weight. If you are bigger and heavier you simply can’t recover, unless you are also less expensive. Acer has followed that movement by dropping its price, with some retailers, below $350, for its entry level unit.

Read the entire review at pen computing: http://pencomputing.com/reviews/acer_iconia_tab_a500.html

Disconnected Retail Systems: Yet another reason to avoid shopping at Staples

I used to like Staples. I now find them a antiquated and out of touch.

I received a Service Plan Cash Card for a chair the didn’t hold up during the warranty period. Whole other story.

Here’s the deal. I finally received the cash card, and it is for in store use only. It has a long serial number as well as pin code, so you would think that it could be used online, probably even more securely than a credit card because it is proprietary. In other words, this cash is only good at Staples.

Now, to be fair, the card, in the fine print on the back, says for use in stores only. That may mean the company communicates expectations in a way (I did say fine print), but that still means their systems are antiquated.

So as  good customer, I receive coupons for discounts. I cannot use my online/phone coupon in combination with my cash card. I completely understand that the online system may have inventory that isn’t available in the stores, but the Staples experience, when it comes to information about me and transaction information, including gift cards, should be completely seamless and transparent across the operating units.

Bottom line Staples: Cash cards are cash. In the case of Gift Cards, of which the Service Plan card is a special case (same system) you have already collected cash form someone, either an individual or an third-party insurer. Operations between online and the store should be seamless, at least in terms of information and transactions.

There is a 20th Century Solution, it appears. I am told that if I go to a store, enter the online order and pay for the order at the store. And I SHOULD be able to use both the coupon and the cash card. This involves me getting into my car to drive to a Staples to enter an order into a computer that is connected to the same system I have at home. It is probably worth the $25 discount, but then the $25 discount won’t be $25 once I factor in gas and wear-and-tear.

I do want to acknowledge all of the very nice, very helpful, vey unempowered employees that talked to me about this and were very apologetic about the company’s inability to integrate their systems.

Keynote Performance Key to iPad 2 Upgrade

I was going to wait, but I use my iPad for presentations. Keynote worked well on the original iPad, but heavy graphics often challenges performance, forcing me to flip back to the lagging image rendering after flipping past it when patience ran out the first time. Not a good thing for fluid presentations.

So I broke down yesterday and bought an iPad 2 after applying a few American Express points to bring down the price to something that may be more aligned with the iPad 2 price after Apple announces whatever its going to announce whenever its going to announce it.

So if you are a heavy Keynote user upgrading is a good thing. The general snappiness of the iPad 2 is good too, but I’m sure that perception will die down after I see the iPad 3. But today, after two graphics intensive presentation, the iPad 2 proved two things. Business can be done on a tablet, and I won’t have to carry a laptop to most events in the future.