Re: [projectvrm] SXSW is slowly moving in our direction

[Jon Lebkowsky < >]

It was great to see you at SXSW, Brian. I hardly made any sessions - too many 
meetings, and there was the action in the streets. You make a good point re 
QS hackers/makers vs $-driven projects, but I recall running into 
conversations that were more oriented to the former, and realize we should be 
seeding the Hackerspace crowds with QS thinking.

Jon Lebkowsky
Polycot Associates http://polycotassociates.com
(Sent from my iPhone)

On Mar 13, 2013, at 2:42 AM, Brian Behlendorf 
<
 >
 wrote:

> On Tue, 12 Mar 2013, Doc Searls wrote:
>> On Mar 12, 2013, at 5:06 PM, Brian Behlendorf 
>> <
 >
>>  wrote:
>> 
>>> I went to a quantified self session, and the idea that the person this 
>>> data is all about should be in charge of where that data is and able to 
>>> combine it from different products/vendors was relevatory.
>> 
>> Meaning it was a dawning of realization for people there? If so, wow.
> 
> Almost.  It was this session:
> 
> http://schedule.sxsw.com/2013/events/event_IAP15589
> 
> Two of the three speakers were device makers.  One was a moderator who just 
> did intros. The fourth, Gary Wolf, my dear friend and Hotwired 
> co-conspirator, who is considered a "godfather" in QS as he has written 
> extensively about it for Wired and some other channels, started his short 
> speech by talking about how difficult it is to integrate the "learnings we 
> get from each device ... I have to cut-n-paste from a web page into an 
> excel spreadsheet to integrate data from my Nike Fuel Band with data from 
> something else."
> 
> Upon Gary's prompt, I suggested to the panel that there may be many 
> consumers holding back from engaging in QS due to a perception that each 
> device is creating separate silos of data being held by companies with whom 
> there has never before needed to be a relationship of data trust, and that 
> just gives lots of folks the creeps.  At the other extreme are the device 
> enthusiasts who have more than 1 or 2 devices and want to build dashboards 
> to combine data - "learnings" - in a way more automated than cut-n-paste 
> into excel.  So I asked the panel - who is focused on solving that problem? 
>  What standards are emerging that the device makers are looking at, or that 
> the hobbyists are starting to bootstrap?
> 
> Maybe this was the wrong panel to ask that of, but the device makers went 
> off on a tangent about sharing data with doctors and how complicated that 
> all was due to that pesky HIPAA thing, which was both totally not the 
> question I asked and also ironically a domain that is standardizing rapidly 
> anyways.  Gary simply didn't know of anyone trying to integrate the QS 
> space, but felt strongly it should be done - a "someone aughta" rather than 
> a "here's how".  The rest of the audience Q&A continued to ask questions 
> about data and privacy and terms of use, even if the device makers really 
> would have rather kept telling you about the bra that will tell you if you 
> have breast cancer, or the whole-house 3-D motion sensors that will learn 
> your "behavioral genome".
> 
> It was disheartening because I assumed the QS crowd was stuffed with Maker 
> and Open Hardware types for whom locally aggregating data and controlling 
> devices in a synchronized way would be second nature.  But everyone's got 
> the "big data = $$" addiction now, has been pummelled to "keep it simple 
> for the end user", and look at hardware as the loss leader.
> 
>>> I went to a Big Data meetup where we formed off into tables, and 
>>> naturally I gravitated to the "data sharing platforms" table, and the 
>>> conversation went from HBase and Hadoop to how to help the Microsoft ad 
>>> developer and the Experian executive at the table work together.  :(
>> 
>> Not surprising. When I'm at that kind of thing I feel like I'm in the 
>> antebellum South, listening to the plantation owners talk about how to get 
>> more productivity out of their slaves.
> 
> HA.
> 
>> Well, enjoy the crowd. There is still plenty of fun in the halls, the 
>> streets, the clubs and the restaurants.
> 
> Seeing @amandapalmer play her Ukelele song while standing on a bar at a 
> BMorg staff party was hard to top.  Until the next night, which found us 
> firing a potato gun off the deck of Richard de Cayeux's house.
> 
>>> One hopeful sign - I had a conversation with Amit Kiran, an MBA and 
>>> "Design Strategist" with Maya (the design tools company):
>>> 
>>> http://www.maya.com/about/amit-kiran
>>> 
>>> He said he'd just worked on a book on the relationship between big data 
>>> and user-centered design; as in, how can we help individuals - more 
>>> mortals - understand how to relate to the universe of their personal data 
>>> floating out there, and design our apps in ways that address that. Or 
>>> something - I can't find a link to the book yet, I'll email him and ask 
>>> for it.
>> 
>> Love to see it.
> 
> As Drummond guessed, it indeed has to be "Trillions" he was describing, so 
> maybe I was reading more into his description than I should have, but I'll 
> add it to my queue regardless.  Glad to hear that firm's engaged already in 
> pclouds.
> 
> Brian