- Freeing your IT department from Stackholm Syndrome — Tech News and Analysis
Quote: Many IT departments are enslaved by the very systems they have constructed. The solution doesn’t require starting over, only giving business the freedom to operate outside the stack.
- Reclaiming the role of the CIO
Quote: So, rather than being distracted by constant haranguing in relation to the role of the CIO, it is right and fitting that CIOs proactively embrace the challenges they are invited to address by virtue of their office and related functions.
- The Inexorable Rise Of Nginx And Why CIOs Should Care: It’s About Mobile Engagement | Forrester Blogs
Quote: Nginx is a symbol of a massive pivot in your techology platform from three-tier Web to four-tier engagement. Growth in nginx adoption should signal a radical overhaul of the architecture you will need to thrive in the mobile era. It’s time for us all to get smart about that.
- Will the latest NSA surveillance scandal be a wake-up call about the power of data? — Tech News and Analysis
Quote: We talk a lot about the business benefits of big data and only a bit about the privacy implications. A report alleging that Verizon is sharing phone data at the request of the NSA may make privacy a higher priority.
- What cities, data and Yahoo have in common: Interaction matters — Tech News and Analysis
Quote: A recent study from MIT suggests the likelihood of face-to-face interactions within a city means more productivity. It seems to apply equally to companies and even data, which suggests engineers and architects of all types should take notice.
- Jim’s Notebook: Critical Thinking and Creativity
Quote: It’s particularly problematic in user experience, where the suggestion of presenting the customer with a straightforward and logical process is overwhelmed by knee-jerk reaction, the whim of a silverback, or the sense that reason is inapplicable because "people don’t think," only to be replaced by a sloppy and obviously flawed alternative that is in the long-term best interest of neither the customer nor the firm.
- Don’t Chase Happiness. Recognize It. | Becoming Minimalist
Quote: There is a beautiful life of simplicity calling out to those who will listen. It invites us to live the life we were born to live, not the life our neighbor is seeking to achieve. Simplicity invites us to pursue the things we value most, not the values of billboards and magazines. It invites us to remove the distractions that keep us from living and enjoying life to the fullest.
- Some will always say you’re wrong | Derek Sivers
Quote: But if you expect this criticism in advance, and take pride in your stance, you can bash on with a smile, being who you want to be. Then every time they say you’re wrong, that’s a sign you’re doing it right.
- Unsupervised Machine Learning, Most Promising Ingredient Of Big Data : CloudAve
Quote: Traditionally, BI has been built on pillars of highly structured data that has well-understood semantics. This legacy has made most enterprise people operate on a narrow mindset, which is: I know the exact problem that I want to solve and I know the exact question that I want to ask, and, Big Data is going to make all this possible and even faster. This is the biggest challenge that I see in embracing and realizing the full potential of Big Data. With Big Data there’s an opportunity to ask a question that you never thought or imagined you could ask. Unsupervised machine learning is the most promising ingredient of Big Data.
Links for June 9 2013
Links for Oct 14 2012
- The New Data-Savvy Adaptive Marketing – Highly Competitive – software industry insights
Quote: Marketers now must be dynamically responsive to change and must more quickly decide what to do. So Predictive Analytics are becoming more important to many organizations that want to derive future views that will guide their decisions, particularly those regarding potential customer behaviors and desires. Behavioral models are built based on certain objectives, such as projecting the propensity to buy particular offerings, using different customer attributes (predictors). The results are put to use to do a better a job of finding the right customers and specifically providing what they need.
- HP Blogs – CIO = CBO + CDO + CTO – The HP Blog Hub
Quote: So, yes the role of the CIO may vanish, but the function is evolving and will be needed by the enterprise for a long period of time as information technology becomes core to the business. The current technology wave is all around cloud, the next one, focused on big data is starting. What comes next? Well, I don’t know what name will be given to it, but I would argue it has something to do with pervasive computing. In other words, the barriers between business and IT are disappearing, business is IT and IT is business. One aspect of that is called Pervasive Computing and is already popping its head over the horizon. But that is probably worth another blog entry in its own right, don’t you believe so?
- A Penny for Your Privacy? – Chris Taylor and Ron Webb – Harvard Business Review
Quote: Before deciding to sell our personal information, we need to be clear about what people want to know about us, why they want to know it, how and when they intend to collect that information, and what’s being offered to us in return. That’s a great deal to know from a marketplace that by and large would prefer to keep its intentions and options close to the vest.
- How can open data help rebuild trust in business? | Open Economics
Quote: There is an interesting dynamic in thinking about what open business data could mean. One set of questions would focus around the range of information companies disclose to investors and public scrutiny. In the current climate of tough competition and patent wars, open data might not be regarded favourably. Another question would be the role of auditor – what specialist skills would be the needed to analyse and visualise the data? Could Google be the next big audit firm?
- The Conversation You’re Not Having, But Should Probably Start
Quote: But our silence is ruining us. We have so much to learn from one another in all aspects of life – including money. And it is clear that not having the conversation is negatively affecting us as persons, as families, and as a society. Personal finance is a conversation we need to be having with one another. We need to find the humility and the boldness to start asking the right questions.
- CIO + CMO = CMTO – The CMO Site – Barbara Krafte
Quote: Enter the CMTO. This is a highly specialized role for someone who brings both right and left-brain competencies. It requires granular customer and market understanding, analytic and operational skills, and the ability to drive transformational change that cuts across channels and business units. It also requires the ability to deliver technology and services that can scale up or down and the agility to deliver to new emerging platforms. It takes the ability to access, aggregate, measure, analyze, and leverage lots of data, which may be deployed across the company and geographies. According to Gartner, 72 percent of high-tech providers have someone in that role today, and 87 percent expect to have that role within the next two years. Given those numbers, this doesn’t look like a passing trend.
Eric D. Brown, D.Sc. is a