Well before this all pours outa my head and is never seen again, lets rehash the big take aways from
Defrag 2011 Conference I attended last week in Broomfield, Colorado.
Now I took an assortment of notes. But generally here's the gist:
Big Data- for one, define it. For the longest time I've been thinking I know what big data is right, social media data, collective intel of the planet data, but its more than that- its everything, every object going online, sharing its story, its meta everything with the big frickin box in the sky. There is a shit ton of data out there and its just growing, not stopping. Making sense and managing that data is where the innovation is currently, as its also the biggest challenge. Getting the data was the first game, and thats pretty complete. Just getting the data is no longer the big innovation space, turning data into insights, not just research orientated like what I do at lextant but logistics, sales, capacity, expectations, you name it, theres a 1000 ways to slice this idea of "insight". 90% of it rests on action next, you got it, make sense of it, and then did what with it?
Tim Bray from Google talked mostly about how crazy it is to try and truly understand what the internet is all about or how it really it works. There are subsets we can try and ponder and think about how it works, but is so young, this internet is just barely walking. Probing into the motivations behind the why of wikipedia, why it works, why it was working (maintaining engagement) and why it has stalled in some ways, is kinda fruitless to debate and wonder.
The immensity of the web, the internet, was a theme at Defrag. There is this truth I think, a notion that, you and I will never understand the whole of the web, its kind of out of control, in some ways its out of everyones control. Big Data is just the first real indicator of massive exponential traits of a market/scene that is blowing up what initially felt like slow motion in the early mid/90's is now showing a face of never ending rapid insane ass growth.
Exponential growth. Can we wrap our heads around this notion, should we? What are the opportunities, and more so where are the breakdowns, the problems were not thinking about that are coming.
Another sub microtheme in the conversation of what is the internet is how do we spot what is truly infrastructure foundation building vs fads? What do we see as timeless elements vs the fads that we all know are there, false structures that appear solid now but in 3, 5, 10, 15 years will be reinvented a thousand times over or just poof non-existant.
I liked that Tim Bray ended his conversation on what we he saw the internet as- a means of facilitating communication with and for humans. Something about that idea is appealing and still mysterious to me.
Along with Big Data we talked about "data freshness". Big Data not from just passive huge sets of data, but ongoing data sets, not just social media, but sensor tech and how its quickly creating a sense of freshness in data sphere. How does acting on data freshness change the game?
Another theme of the conference was Experimentation, both from a learning evolving big data set sense and from a scrappy biz learn, experiment, fail when need be, but keep experimenting.
Just about every talk had some aspect of Big Data in it. Another bit theme in the works here is the idea of Data People, the data scientist, the unicorns who know this shit inside and out, finding these unicorns, these people skilled to understand data, make sense of data, help you leverage data is key.
One of my notes reads "Data Unicorns and Renaissance Technologies", I like the idea of renaissance technology- API's come to mind when I think about that. Technology that takes us further, leverages everything, transparent, shared, enabled. Big Kitty Labs's theme for 2011, has been "enabling ideas". I see what I do at BKL as enabling people, leveraging the pool of available renaissance technologies to change the equation, to build faster, to do more, know.
Every conference needs some humor and speaker
James Altucher does not disappoint. His witty cynical play of todays techno existence and where we've fucked up was fresh. He had us laughing and thinking, dispelling the "personal brand" bullshit, you are what you are. His candid tales of killing it and failing miserably were comforting. His book,
I Was Blind, Now I See was a refreshing read on the flight home as well, sweet Defrag swag!
Ad-mist all the talk of Big Data was a talk from
Lili Cheng from Microsoft, talking about how we
inject "beauty" back into design. It was a particularly uplifting presentation, filled with ideas, potential directions and lots of experimentation and studies in what made people tick in terms of adoption use and goals behind different technologies. I've always been a fan of Microsoft's Research division, they do some of the coolest work out there, it stands in a sharp contrast to their brand which in general feels devoid of innovation lately.
The Best Buy CTO told the story of Geek Squad which was awesome, one of the best talks at the conference. He also hinted at what he saw as the emerging product categories for BestBuy were- fitness (measurement products via the Quantified Self trend), home automation (app enabled devices and tech like the nest).
Altlassian told the story of
FedEX days which isn't really new but good to hear in more detail and trended well on the experimentation theme of the conference.
Paul Kedrosky gave an interesting talk on the value of the
blank page, sort of trended on the "all shit of the web is bigger than you think" ie the exponential growth can you deal, here are ways to deal theme.
Samuel Arbesman gave an engaging talk on the Half Life of Facts, which basically proposed the notion that every generation basically re-formulates what we know. Knowledge is redefined, increased with each generation. This again sort of noted or hinted at the exponential growth theme of the conference. Facts are just defined and done, they are defined, done for now, and then they're re-computed, adjusted, or re-written from the next generation and on and on. Not everything mind you, but he made a compelling case that his idea was happening- that plus he blew the crowd away with his knowledge. Killer scrabble player there, essential intel dude thats for sure. I wrote in my notes.. "the guy is fucking smarter than you..." lol.
Brad Feld's talk highlighted the fact that machines are basically pwning man's existence. They're just WAITING for us to expire so they can take over. It was a excellent talk on the realities of where big data, sensor tech, robotics and everything is taking us, we're building skynet folks, sure its in extreme beta, hell alpha but we're building it. Along this talk we sparked many mentions of
Ray Kurzwell singularity concept.
Its interesting that the themes of: experimentation, exponential growth, big data etc seemed to have alot in common with the
singularity idea, tacking on this idea that the machines are waiting and are patient seemed nuff said to me. Anyone who thinks we're gonna innovate to the point where the machines control less really really needs to look at everything around them to see if thats really true.
Another thing I really liked in Brad's talk was his point about how we're realizing and actually manifesting science fiction at this point. We're at that cross roads, or more so passing beyond it where we're actually building out the scifi plots/stories of 60's and 70's scifi books- notably on the computing side of whatever fiction was written, thats becoming fact. This reminded me of an old Ignite 2008 talk I gave on
Backcasting with Japanese Animation, using anime as a means to see into the future.
I too was observing anime, especially older 70s, 80s, late 90s anime shows to see how they depicted computing and technologies today, to see how many envisioned and nailed it, and more so what did they envision that is yet to be or could be. Several shows I watched within the past 10 years have nailed things like the internet and location based systems and augmented reality, 4-5 years before they were realized. Whats cool about anime is that the shows aren't about these techno bits, they're about story, characters, plots, the tech is the sauce, the so what behind the story, but seeing the interactions between what the anime creators saw the tech be like, interact with the story and characters gives us clues to how tech could work, its great mental chewing material.
Lots of other talks from Netflix (building on Amazon tech), Get Satisfaction's CEO obsessed with goldfish, and two White House talks on technology incentives for startups that take up various government challenges- which ya know, seemed like an excellent deal.
Oh and
twilio guys gave an excellent presentation in basically redefining the category of IT, enabling the doers, making them heros, and executing in bad ass fashion.
Some immediate
Big Kitty take aways from the conference was mainly in the form of FUCK YES. Most if not everything we built in the early days to scratch an itch was talked about at Defrag and or confirmed and validated. I knew this going in as I've followed the conference over the years, but seeing it, and seeing respected CTO leaders of big biz nodding to it talking about it and insisting on it, was a good shot in the arm. Its good and troubling, good in that your gut was right, troubling in that you need to get back to those dreams you had, realize them, refine them and take them to market.
My take aways for
Lextant, my day job is some interesting parallels- insight translation is transcending design, its needed everywhere. Big Data is a problem we can weigh in on, actionable insight is the super cookie. Social Media research isn't going away, its getting better.
One last parting theme here was the conversation I had with many folks, mostly from the midwest about "what's it like in your area" in terms of believe and energy and money around startup culture. State to state outside the gravy markets of east and west coast, every question on people's lips was "whats it like in Columbus, or (insert your town)". Funny fact, just about everyone had the same answer, if you were doing biotech, science, energy or anything other than web, you found resources and money, if you're web, its a harder up hill battle. Many noted this was changing, but clearly I think in some ways midwest has challenges, so make it count folks, keep believing and building.
