common denial

This year at Strata Data Conference was great. I really can not complain about the innovation, the knowledge gathering, and the people. I have been to a lot of conferences and this is one of those conferences that I would love to attend without being tied to a vendor. You know, just to attend as an attendee and not having to worry about the booth, the theater presentation, or booth coverage.

These are shots of the top two  “asks out of conference”. These are the top two that I hear as well and certainly something that I strive to understand and push within this market.

The best session by far was ” Ask Me Anything: Data & Society” with Danah Boyd and Madeleine Elish. They are both affiliated with Data & Society and the conversation was everything I wanted and more. I didn’t want it to end! How many times can you say that about a session at a conference? Granted yes, it was an “Ask Me Anything” session and no powerpoint slides were harmed, but the discussion was about how we use data, about manipulating data, about the impact that data has on society both good and bad. You can’t ignore the difference. You can’t live in a world where you think data will only be used for good. People will manipulate it and will destroy lives. I just hope we get ahead of it.

I don’t want to even talk like I am an expert in this but I encourage you to educate yourself. I will too. Oh and one of the keynotes on Wednesday was from Cathy O’Neil and she wrote “Weapons of Math Destruction“. If you are alive and kicking… you need to read this book. A book about how “big data increases inequality and threatens democracy”. Don’t be afraid, just educate.

Oh… I did do some work at the conference too…

Here is the video I did with O’Reilly discussing Dell EMC data analytics.

This is the video that I did at the 2016 Strata+Hadoop Conference, talking about the Dell EMC merger and how we were tackling data analytics.