Strata 2011 Keynote logs - Stardate 64587.1

Key Notes – Feb 2, 2011

8:45 : Opening Welcome – Ed & Alistair : [Slides][Video]

• Ed had an interesting snippet on the origins of strata
• Unprecedented scale
• Data = crude oil

9:00 : What Data Tells Us – Hilary Mason: [Link] [Slides][Video]

• We now have an infrastructure for data
• And finally we have an identity & momentum !
• Challenges:
  • Timeliness of Data – systems that can process data with only one pass & at scale
  • Data Storage – so that data can be queried flexibly, later
  • Education – standardization and path
  • Imagination – we are still solving the same problems we have been solving
• Then she covered three points:
  • Narcissistic – recommend what I need to know, my optimal view, other people’s optimal view (coming from bit.ly)
  • Segmentation of data
  • Global data Analysis – a very interesting observation of Egypt related data views. Who, where and how are  people watching the Egypt related links
    • Watch the trending data stream she just ran an hour ago ?
• Call for action : What would you do with all the data and how would you make it happen ?

9:10 : Privacy – James Powell: [Link][Slides][Video]

• Big behavioral data – privacy challenges

~9:25 : The mythology of big data – Mark Madsen: [Link][Slides][Video]

• Every Technology carries within itself it’s own destruction
• Code is commodity
• Myth of the gold rush
• Data as basis of applications
• Data need not be big (< 5 TB of data in enterprises, that too 7 years worth!). Now way too much emphasis on “big” data
• The focus is not on data but the application of data
  • warns against producing trivial inferences (even I had that thought in my blog few days ago)
• Three decision making layers – Strategic/Tactical/Operational
• He mentioned the paper “The Sensemaking Process and Leverage Points for Analyst Technology as Identified Through Cognitive Task Analysis“
• Ended the talk with the quote by Fredrick Brooks … marvelous
  • “A toolmaker succeeds as, and only as, the users of his tools succeed with his aid. However shining the blade, however jeweled the hilt, however perfect the heft, a sword is tested only by cutting. That swordsmith is successful whose clients die of old age.” – Frederick Brooks

~9:35 : Data Without Limits – Werner Vogels:[Link][Slides][Video]

• Mentioned the book “The Fourth Paradigm” – Jim Gray had foundations of many of the current data ideas
• New Style of Data Analysis
  • Classic style knew what queries and the data collection and models were based on that
  • Now, collect as much data – a bottoms up approach
  • As a result, don’t know how much resources are required for the analytics and so cloud is a good fit
• Stages -. Collect | Store | Organize | Analyze | Share
  • This is very similar to a slide I have on our monitor analytics pipeline for our internal big data project
  • 
• I liked couple of his remarks, which were right on the dot
  • Can’t beat the bandwidth of a FedEx box ! (AWS Export/Import)
  • Businesses shouldn’t be constrained by the hardware they can buy
• He ended the talk saying it is still day 1. Very appropriate !

As Werner was leaving, Alistair made a remark that it was gracious of Werner to show Google’s stock price in one of his slides . And Werner remarked …

~9:55 : Interlude – Alistair :[Slides][blog]

• Alistair talked about three themes of Strata. Very insightful observations. I have included the summary slide from Alistair’s blog

• As I was looking through Alistar’s slides in Slideshare found this set on Lean Analytics for Startup by Alistair – again, very good slides

~10:05 : Data Market Places – Zane Adam :

• Waste of time, a marketing presentation. Don’t know how this one got thru. Most probably because M$ was sponsoring the break

Day 2 [Link]

Links to Strata 2011 speaker slides & videos

[Update Feb 13, 2011] Ted Leung’s Strata summary – good read