Technology

Cloudera Co-Founder Mike Olson shares his insights on the present landscape and possible future of big data and the data management industry. In conversation with Ping Li of Accel Partners, Olson also discusses the advantages of building a business on top of open source technologies and the many surprising benefits of competition.

Mike Olson, Ping Li - Opportunities Abound in the Big Data Space

Social Science, Small worlds and Big Data

On 11 June 2014 black cab drivers brought Trafalgar Square to a standstill when they protested against Uber, an app which gives an alternative way to find a taxi. But a Londoner's frustration at not finding a cab on a weekend pales in comparison to the challenges faced by their counterparts in South Africa, especially those who live in the suburbs and have to travel to city centres during peak period. 

We speak to Obakeng Matlhoko, a co-founder of Sowertech, who has developed <a href="http://www.aftarobot.com" target="_blank">Afta Robot</a>, a platform that helps South African minibus companies and passengers better plan their schedules.

Bringing big data solutions to a huge public transport problem in South Africa

Not surprisingly, Joseph Sirosh, has big ambitions for his product portfolio at Microsoft which includes Azure ML, HDInsight and other tools. Chief among them is making it easy for mere mortals to consume these data services from the applications they're familiar with. Take Excel for example.

If a financial analyst can, with a few clicks, send data to a forecast service in the cloud, then get the numbers back, visualized on the same spreadsheet, that's a pretty powerful story, said Sirosh who is corporate VP of machine learning for Microsoft.

But as valuable as those applications and services are, more and more of the value to be derived from computation over time will be the data itself, not all those tech underpinnings.  "In the future a huge part of the value generated from computing will come from the data as opposed to storage and operating systems and basic infrastructure," he noted on this week's podcast. WHich is why one topic under discussion at next month's Structure Data show will be who owns all the data flowing betwixt and betweeen various systems, the internet of things etc.

When it comes to getting corporations running these new systems Microsoft may have an ace in the hole because so many of them already use key Microsoft tools -- Active Directory, SQL Server, Excel. That gives them a pretty good on-ramp to Microsoft Azure and its resident services. Sirosh makes a compelling case and we'll talk to him more on stage at Structure Data next month in New York City.

In the first half of the show, Derrick Harris and I talk about the Hadoop world has returned to its feisty and oh so interesting roots. When Pivotal announced its plan to offload support of Hadoop to Hortonworks and work with that company along with IBM, GE on  the Open Data Platform the response from Cloudera CEO Mike Olsen in a blog post with his take. 

Also on the docket, @WalmartLabs massive OpenStack production private cloud implementation.

Microsoft's machine learning guru on why data matters sooooo much

"Machine learning is to big data as human learning is to life experience," says Christopher Nguyen, the co-founder and CEO of big data intelligence company Adatao. Sure, but then, what IS big data? (especially as it's become a buzzword that captures so many things)... 

On this episode of the a16z Podcast, Nguyen puts on his former computer science professor hat to describe 'big data' in relation to 'machine learning' -- as well as what comes next with 'deep learning'. Finally, the former Google exec shares how Hadoop and Spark evolved from the efforts of companies dealing with massive amounts of real-time information; what we need to make machine learning a property of every application (why would we even want to?); and how we can make all this intelligence accessible to everyone.

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a16z Podcast: Making Sense of Big Data, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning

In this special international edition of the a16z Podcast, Nazanin Daneshvar, co-founder and CEO of Takhfifan, the "Groupon of Iran", shares her experiences and broader observations about the startup ecosystem and tech infrastructure in Iran with guest interviewer Christopher Schroeder (former entrepreneur, D.C. investor, and author of Startup Rising).

How did she do it? (Hint: With a bit of subterfuge and clever cloaking.)What are the attitudes toward failure in a time and place where startups aren't really considered a real thing?  

This is the second installment in a special series on tech startups in Iran, part of a larger theme around global tech and how software -- including mobile -- is eating the world … and creating new opportunities within it. 

a16z Podcast: Layering Tech and Culture in Iran

Big Data is evolving. It’s moving from the sole domain of the high priests of data science, to something that practically every organization -- big and small -- and every group within that organization can get its hands on. So what happens now? The implications of the democratization of Big Data are bigger than just big, says Prat Moghe, CEO and Founder of Cazena.

And it’s not just the corporate world that will benefit, he adds, having access to Big Data tools will change how all kinds of organizations, including government agencies and other social services, operate and solve their particular problems

Joining Prat on the pod to describe this changing world of Big Data in the Cloud is a16z’s Peter Levine. If every company, and every organization is becoming a data-driven company, it makes sense to start to put that data to work, Levine says.


a16z Podcast: Big Data Goes Really Big

Listen:or download | …also in Ogg Bitcoin’s 7th birthday is this year, and its promise to change the way the world thinks about money is looking less and less hyperbolic. For one, the block chain technology underlying Bitcoin – the public ledger that makes the exchange transparent and accountable – is now being used to clean up Wall Street. […]
  
 Aug 13, 2015

Radio Berkman 227: How Block Chain Will Change the World

In episode seventeen we talk with Jennifer Listgarten of  Microsoft Research New England about her work using machine learning to answer questions in biology. We take a question from a listener about the development of computational biology and Ryan gives us some great advice on how to get into grad school (Spoiler alert: apply to the lab, not the program.)

Machine Learning in Biology and Getting into Grad School

Guest 1: Kirsten O. Wolberg
Title: CIO, Salesforce.com

Guest 2: Jeff Sutherland
Title: Co-creator of SCRUM, Chairman of Scrum Training Institute, CEO of Scrum Inc.

To realize the full potential of "going Agile," the enterprise must also leverage Agile values, principles, and practices throughout the entire company.  Organization-wide, "Going Agile" requires broad technical, organizational, and process changes. Done properly, adoption provides improved project visibility and offers great benefits: accelerated time-to-market, increased productivity and quality, reduced risk and project costs. However, organizations often underestimate the tremendous amount of effort and change required to adopt Agile processes. What does it take to get Agile successfully adopted throughout the enterprise?

Enterprise-wide Agile Adoption...Art or Science?

Financial services are overdue for an overhaul. With a16z's newest general partner, Alex Rampell (who just officially started), this segment of the podcast explores the world of fintech... How software backed up by data is being brought to bear on lending, insurance, and the science (oftentimes art) of underwriting risk.

We also get a taste of what life was like for Rampell running a successful internet business out of his bedroom -- an experience that would lead him toward the world of monetization/ payments and eventually co-founding numerous startups. 

a16z Podcast: Money, Risk, and Software

Speaker, author, and entrepreneur Eric Ries shares rapid fire wisdom on building nimble, responsive, and efficient online software-based businesses. He also offers his wisdom on streamlining processes and progressing engineering systems, and puts forth front line insight into why some new ideas succeed where others have failed.

Eric Ries - Evangelizing for the Lean Startup

What is the number one cause for failure in early-stage startups? Team issues! In this episode of Stanford Innovation Lab, Tina Seelig interviews executive coach Michael Terrell. Michael is the founder and managing partner of Terrell Leadership Group, and co-author of The Inside Out Effect, which focuses on effective leadership. In this conversation, Michael shares his insights on effective team dynamics, his process for diagnosing team issues, and examples of how he works through team challenges.

Healing Broken Teams from Inside Out - Michael Terrell

How is Big Data — the information generated from Google searches, GPS, online shopping and more — changing our lives? Kara Miller asked a panel of experts about the benefits and downsides of the international information database.

Technology

Mati.R