A Pictorial Tale of Two Conferences (and more)
Recently I’ve attended two conferences two weeks apart in San Francisco, and the difference in style is shocking. One did not even feel like a conference, rather a Festival – Woodstock, Mardi Gras, SXSW – your pick:-) The other a decidedly more “closed” traditional corporate conference, so much so, that fellow commentators actually compared it [...]
Open Source Dynamics: Shall We Put An End To The Meaningless Arguments?
For sometime now, we are seeing some arguments in the industry about open source which I think is a waste of meaningful dialog space. I thought I will put out a post asking people to focus their valuable energy on a more meaningful discussion. This post might appear like a rant but it is not. [...]
BoxWorks 2012–Predictions and Prognostications
Next week sees me in San Francisco for the annual Box user conference, it’s an interesting time for the company, only a couple of weeks ago Salesforce stole some of their thunder by announcing a file sync and collaboration tool. BoxWorks is an opportunity for the company to fight back, and for CEO Aaron Levie [...]
To a Better Place: When is It Time as CEO/Founder to Move On?
Yesterday it was announced that Shai Agassi, one of the most successful software entrepreneurs/executives of all time, had left Better Place, his latest company and incredibly aggressive plan to make electrification of cars work via replaceable batteries, after 5+ long years. I never met him personally other than a handshake, but he was an electric [...]
On Open Source Cloud Adoption
Last week Lydia Leong from Gartner published an analyst report with some opinions on Open Stack. I’ve been critical in the past about traditional analyst firms and I’ve also gone on record as being positive about open source (and, for full disclosure, the CloudU program I run is sponsored by OpenStack member Rackspace) but notwithstanding [...]
Tesco uses data for more than just loyalty cards
Tesco. Poster-child of the data-driven retail experience, thanks to its loyalty card and early work with DunnHumby. But Tom Hebbert didn’t talk about that. Instead, he focused on their supply chain work. Rough notes from the session follow. Big Data projects deliver huge returns at Tesco; improving promotions to ensure 30% fewer gaps on shelves, [...]
