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Latest read: Learning with Big Data – The Future of Education

Big Data has changed education forever. Learning with Big Data reveals If your school has not fully embraced big data you should consider moving your child’s education elsewhere. In higher education its fully integrated across the institution from the admissions office all the way through the office of alumni relations.
Learning with Big Data – The Future of EducationThis short e-read builds upon the success of Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think released in 2013. This book is not about MOOCs, but does dedicate pages to the background and success of Khan Academy.

Authors Viktor Mayer-Schonberger, Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation from Oxford and Kenneth Cukier from The Economist introduce Learning with Big Data by way of the role of machine learning at Stanford. The course is taught by Andrew Ng, cofounder of Coursera.

Ng has brought to the globe the ability to teach a world class curriculum in machine learning from California to students in Tibet. In many ways this very idea is threatening to close minded administrators sitting in their siloed office.

The focus in this special book is how big data, which reveals to educators what works and what does not is reforming education. The ability today to interactively track the performance of each individual student in real time throughout the semester can make a big difference because the data drives how focused, dedicated administrators can more effectively budget extremely tight dollars in guiding a campus forward.

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Cloud Cyberinfrastructure Design Education Globalization Innovation Milwaukee Network Technology

Microsoft Cybersecurity Briefing

Microsoft cybersecurity
Kudos to Microsoft’s Cybersecurity briefing team for providing a great three day briefing on Greenfield and Red Forest solutions. With 24 pages of hand written notes but no swag from Ignite, Microsoft has provided a solid foundation to continue moving Azure cloud services forward for small or large corporate IT infrastructure.

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Cloud Cyberinfrastructure Education Innovation Network Reading Technology

Latest read: Too Big to Ignore

Phil Simon’s book Too BIG to IGNORE: The Business Case for Big Data is another well written primer for Big Data in business. The focus is NOT the programmer’s dilemma of Hadoop vs. NoSQL vs NewSQL. Simon richly documents how Big Data has forever changed business and society.
Too Big to Ignore The Business Case for Big DataThe core message: for the first time we have a very inexpensive ability to data mine a wealth of information. Organizations that tap into this new capability can execute their business more accurately than ever before. However Simon also acknowledges the obvious fact that companies must understand the format of their data while the leadership understands the benefits of pushing big data solutions throughout the organization.

Too Big to Ignore begins by telling about the success of MoneyBall by noted author Michael Lewis. Too Big to Ignore reveals how sports franchises exploit data to win on the field and for the worse how Las Vegas casinos have been using A/B testing to pinch every penny out of their best customers. Probably the best but sad example. Similar to the approach by other authors addressing Big Data the focus is on the explosion of data from Google, Facebook, Apple and Netflix as the smartphone and wireless technologies began to change society in ways that drive unstructured data well beyond traditional structured environments.

Simon walks through the history of big data from Web2.0 to Predictive Analytics and touches The Internet of Things. Simon address the tool Hadoop lightly enough as to not scare off any non-database programmer to understand how this free tool is used by Yahoo, Google, Facebook and Apple just to name a few successful highly profiled companies. The growth of Hadoop and the emerging role of Cloudera is addressed in greater detail for the non-technical audience.

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Cloud Cyberinfrastructure Education Innovation Network Reading Technology

Latest Read: Actionable Intelligence

Actionable Intelligence: A Guide to Delivering Business Results with Big Data Fast! falls into the must read category for leaders of any organization. Actionable Intelligence is in the Lean model well beyond the vanity metrics that so many leaders have embraced. Lessons on implementing a secure framework comes from lessons including Estee Lauder, Procter & Gamble, Lifetime Brands and the CIA. Yes the CIA.
Actionable Intelligence: A Guide to Delivering Business Results with Big Data Fast!Reading this book I have found tested lessons by Keith B. Carter regarding the lack of Actionable Intelligence in many organizations. The start always seems to be the lack of organized data and determining which is the most pressing to actually use in order to be successful in a fast changing world.

Maybe his most powerful work revolves around how executives at any company (or university) even question the value of actionable intelligence regardless of the tools already in place. Too many silo examples reinventing the wheel while overlooking the need to understand their own data reporting methods.

Sustaining delivery of actionable intelligence by the evolution from Dashboards to Cockpits. IMHO to many university leaders are just beginning to understand the Dashboard and their tools miss the Cockpit opportunities.

Business lessons alone describe how to mine actionable intelligence prove the validity of this book. Lessons from Estee Lauder include how the company was able to leverage secure data reporting in order to adjust following the powerful Japanese earthquake and tsunami that triggered the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. And in some ways Carter points to a crisis in order for executives to embrace actionable intelligence:

People do not trust data, they trust other people and their opinion of the data. So when the data owners, the people who input the data and/or use it, raise their hands and say, “This data is good; I trust it,” that will make it more likely for other people in the organization to believe it. It also means that it’s clear. It’s not just that they trust it from the point that 1 + 1 = 2. It is also clear how the data has to be used, and the definition of the data is clear.

Carter helps breakdown the old data principle “People don’t trust data – they trust other people.” Its true. Estee Lauder’s use of actionable intelligence is such that every organization should be striving towards in order to stay competitive.

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Globalization Innovation Reading Smartphone Tablet

Latest Read: Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution

Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution is a remarkable book about the explosive relationship between Apple and Google as smartphones and tablets came to dominate the PC marketplace. This is a historical view of the final battle of Steve Job’s life and the work by Google to win over the digital battlefield from both Apple and Microsoft.

How Apple and Google went to war and started a revolutionDogfight is a smashing success in revealing how human technology companies really are today and the enormous demands they place upon their employees. They create the tools for our digital lifestyles and the means in which it drives new business models (and society) on a global scale. Its truly magnificent.

Since Dogfight is centered around the last days of Steve Jobs many readers may be intrigued to learn how he was personally making Apple vulnerable to Google’s Android by placing so much trust in Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Schmidt. Interesting lessons for us all.

The most interesting aspect for me was understanding the complex relationship between Google and Apple when Microsoft was in charge of the PC market. Clearly Microsoft missed the smartphone and tablet market and now may be forever a forgone player in that space. Even industry leaders are acknowledging that in the mobile space there are only two OS platforms to consider: iOS and Android. Amazing how Microsoft lost its way.