A recurring theme of the day was the potential for companies to mine data that they have "lying around" to great effect. One example of success is media company Bloomberg, which is analyzing its own user data and recommending related articles to its readers and seeing a jump in web traffic of 10X. Another is TRA (The Right Audience) which analyzes viewers TV consumption and their buying patterns to assist advertisers, media planners and networks in the buying and selling of advertising space, based on deep-dive data analysis of terabytes of data.
Luke Lonergan, Chief Technology Officer, Vice President and Co-Founder, EMC Greenplum, said the big data environment is transitioning because of breakthroughs in storage including flash memory and solid state drives.
Alfred Spector, VP of Initiatives and Special Initiatives, Google, spoke on the Prodigiousness of Data and how data can intersect with community. One example is Google's Fusion Tables project which offers free, easy data visualization tools for anyone.
The human ability to ask all the right questions is limited, according to Jim Baum, CEO of Netezza, an IBM company. He said machine data or devices talking to each other is altering humans with relevant data is where the future is headed. One example is making the power grid smarter, so machines talk to it about their power usage.
A quick coffee or Coke and chat on the expo floor. Some folks (below) were checking messages and emails. While others took the time to look around the expo.
