I love to teach, but it took several years of teaching before I felt comfortable being in front of a class. And having taught for over 20 years, the fear of presenting in the classroom has passed, but what about presenting at professional meetings or in front of my peers?
It's an exciting time for reality! We've been technologically enhancing reality for a long time -- eye glasses, telescopes, binoculars, microscopes, photography, moving pictures, live streaming video over the Internet, etc. But whether it's augmented reality, virtual reality or somewhere in between, a new wave of eye wear technology is
The Internet of Things is going to be driven by innovative business models as much as by innovative technology. In order to ground the following discussion, I found it helpful to create this visual depiction of the IoT that defines and distinguishes the key elements that enter into these business models.
By now, we have all heard about the Internet of Things (IoT), or the Industrial Internet. Across industries, organizations are attempting to instrument and measure all critical business systems and assets in an effort to drive improved production and service delivery. It is estimated that by 2020, companies will spend
This isn't Kansas anymore. Oz has become a sprawling, smart metropolis filled with sensor data. How do we make sense of, clean, govern and glean value from this big data so we can get Dorothy home? The answer is SAS Data Management. With the latest portfolio updates, customers will be
By now you have seen dozens of articles with trends and predictions for what the hospitality industry should expect in 2015. I’m not going to add to those, or rehash them exhaustively here. You’ve all probably read them yourself and gathered the highlights: optimism, more acquisitions, transaction volumes will stay
I published 118 blog posts in 2014. This article presents my most popular posts from 2014 and late 2013. 2014 will always be a special year for me because it was the year that the SAS University Edition was launched. The University Edition means that SAS/IML is available to all
Well, Analytic Hospitality Executives, the year has once again flown by, and here we sit just before the holidays looking back on 2014, and figuring out what it all means for 2015. I traveled even more than usual this year (if that’s even possible), spending a significant amount of time
The impact of mental illness on individuals, families, the health system and even the economy is broad and significant. In this, the latest post in my mental health series, I’d like to talk about what can be done to help. Prevention and early detection are just parts of an integrated
Just yesterday, Santa called my cell phone asking for a favor... Yes, Santa has my direct line, and I owe him (he once did me a solid, back in 1984, for Christmas, scoring me an awesome Optimus Prime Transformer). That's me there in the front - sporting plaid duds and
Getting universal buy in for Hadoop needn’t be an uphill struggle. In many cases, it only takes one pilot project to realize the benefits of low cost storage combined with powerful analytics. The Hadoop topic provoked passionate conversatoin at a recent roundtable discussion attended by over 25 people from a range
For many industries, big data analytics have opened numerous doors for more employees to be groundbreaking and to challenge the corporate status quo. Prior to big data technologies, risk taking behaviors were primarily reserved for provocative souls who stretched organizational boundaries to disrupt industries, such as airline revenue management. There were winners and losers
My Mum could have been a doctor – most can’t read her handwriting. It’s only because I’ve been trained to read it, I can. The analysis of unstructured data is similar. Text analysts can be quickly overwhelmed to learn that you have to manually develop a training corpus. Reading a
There are two ways you can react to a “Hey – that was my idea” situation. The first would be to throw a pity party and lament about how unfair life is – if only the car hadn’t broken down and I didn’t have grass to mow and laundry to
When legendary travelling folk singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie summarized his approach to organizing workers, he said, “Take it easy, but take it.” Wise words to ponder in any case, but certainly whenever we put big data on the back burner to talk statistics instead. In the context of Big Data, I
At a recent MESA - Hollywood IT Society Digital Marketing conference, Claudio Ludovisi, SVP, Operational Strategy NBCU Entertainment for Marketing & Digital took a live poll of about 200 or so media marketing executives in the audience and asked them to “Think about what it takes to achieve true multiplatform
When it’s claimed that the UK government could be wasting money that’s equivalent to the current spending on state pensions – and considerably more than what’s spent by the Department for Education – you know that action is needed. The Policy Exchange recently issued a report – Smaller, Better, Faster,
The Mid-West SAS Users' Group conference in Chicago was a great success, with over 400 attendees and great weather. The conference hotel was in downtown with nice view of the river and a stroll down "Magnificent Mile". The city does a great job with the flower beds down Michigan Ave., along
I recently caught up with Dr. Tom Davenport, analytics thought-leader and author of Big Data @ Work, in Dublin, where we talked about big data, the Internet of Things and Hadoop. I'll be sharing the conversation here with you in two parts. You'll find part one below, and you can check
At most banks, data is stored in separate databases and data warehouses. Customer data is stored in marketing databases, fraud analyses are done on transactional data, and risk data is stored in risk data warehouses. Oftentimes even liquidity, credit, market, and operational risk data is stored separately as well. Bringing
Part 1: The challenge and the opportunity Mental illness continues to profoundly affect the nation’s population and, for the most part, remains greatly under analyzed. This is the first entry in a series about the mental health problem in the US, and how an analytic approach can improve care for
In the first installment of this series on Hadoop, I shared a little of Hadoop's genesis, framing it within four phases of connectivity that we are moving through. I also stated my belief that Hadoop has already arrived in the mainstream, and we are currently moving from phases three of connecting people to phase four
In the world of IT, very few new technologies emerge that are not built on what came before, combined with a new, emerging need or idea. The history of Hadoop is no exception. To understand how Hadoop came to be, we therefore need to understand what went before Hadoop that led to its creation. To understand
It’s my favorite time of the year, draft time! NFL and Fantasy Football fans, I don’t mean THAT draft, but similar. It’s what I will call the #SASGF15 draft! The time of year when the best and the brightest, the most knowledgeable, passionate, and inspirational SAS users submit ideas around
Okay, let's say your data is in Hadoop. The distributed, open source framework is configured as it should be across low-cost servers and your data is sitting in those clusters. It's been a meaningful effort to get to this point but how does it benefit your organization? If it's not doing something
Admit it - you were fascinated by the 3D pipes screensaver! How many CPU cycles did we let our machines burn up, drawing and re-drawing those silly pipes!?! What was your personal favorite CPU-hungry screensaver? (let us know in a comment!) Well, speaking of pipes, the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline
Writing my previous post about digital banks got me thinking about the widespread use of analytics. In his book Digital Bank, Chris Skinner states that data should be seen as the most critical asset for digital banks. Actually, this holds true for almost every company nowadays. If you don’t have data of
Because you are already halfway there and you should want the entire process to be data-driven, not just the historical reporting and analysis. You are making decisions and using data to support those decisions, but you are leaving value on the table if the analytics don't carry through to forecasting. In the
Looking forward, ten of my SAS colleagues and I are heading to New York City this weekend for KDD 2014: Data Science for the Social Good, which runs August 24-27. This event’s full name is the 20th Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining,
This fall, you’ll be swept off your feet in the Windy City: The 2014 Midwest SAS User’s Group (MWSUG) takes place in Chicago from October 5-7. With 135 presentations in 11 different sections, you’ll have the chance to expand your SAS know-how and network with fellow SAS professionals.
