Tricia Wang, Sudden Compass | IBM Data Science For All
>> Narrator: Live from New York City, it's theCUBE covering IBM Data Science For All brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome back here on theCUBE. We are live in New York continuing our coverage here for Data Science for All where all things happen. Big things are happening. In fact, there's a huge event tonight I'm going to tell you about a little bit later on, but Tricia Wang who is our next guest is a part of that panel discussion that you'll want to tune in for live on ibmgo.com. 6 o'clock, but more on that a little bit later on. Along with Dave Vellante, John Walls here, and Tricia Wang now joins us. A first ever for us. How are you doing? >> Good. >> A global tech ethnographer. >> You said it correctly, yay! >> I learned a long time ago when you're not sure slow down. >> A plus already. >> Slow down and breathe. >> Slow down. >> You did a good job. Want to do it one more time? >> A global tech ethnographer. >> Tricia: Good job. >> Studying ethnography and putting ethnography into practice. How about that? >> Really great. >> That's taking on the challenge stretch. >> Now say it 10 times faster in a row. >> How about when we're done? Also co-founder of Sudden Compass. So first off, let's tell our viewers a little bit about Sudden Compass. Then I want to get into the ethnography and how that relates to tech. So let's go first off about Sudden Compass and the origins there. >> So Sudden Compass, we're a consulting firm based in New York City, and we help our partners embrace and understand the complexity of their customers. So whenever there are, wherever there's data and wherever there's people, we are there to help them make sure that they can understand their customers at the end of the day. And customers are really the most unpredictable, the most unknown, and the most difficult to quantify thing for any business. We see a lot of our partners really investing in big data data science tools and they're hiring the most amazing data scientists, but we saw them still struggling to make the right decisions, they still weren't getting their ROI, and they certainly weren't growing their customer base. And what we are helping them do is to say, "Look, you can't just rely only on data science. "You can't put it all into only the tool. "You have to think about how to operationalize that "and build a culture around it "and get the right skillsets in place, "and incorporate what we call the thick data, "which is the stuff that's very difficult to quantify, "the unknown, "and then you can figure out "how to best mathematically scale your data models "when it's actually based on real human behavior, "which is what the practice of ethnography is there to help "is to help you understand what do humans actually do, "what is unquantifiable. "And then once you find out those unquantifiable bits "you then have the art and science of figuring out "how do you scale it into a data model." >> Yeah, see that's what I find fascinating about this is that you've got hard and fast, right, data, objective, black and white, very clear, and then you've got people, you know? We all react differently. We have different influences, and different biases, and prejudices, and all that stuff, aptitudes. So you are meshing this art and science. >> Tricia: Absolutely. >> And what is that telling you then about how best to your clients and how to use data (mumbles)? >> Well, we tell our clients that because people are, there are biases, and people are not objective and there's emotions, that all ends up in the data set. To think that your data set, your quantitative data set, is free of biases and has some kind of been scrubbed of emotion is a total fallacy and it's something that needs to be corrected, because that means decision makers are making decisions based off of numbers thinking that they're objective when in fact they contain all the biases of the very complexity of the humans that they're serving. So, there is an art and science of making sure that when you capture that complexity ... We're saying, "Don't scrub it away." Traditional marketing wants to say, "Put your customers in boxes. "Put them in segments. "Use demographic variables like education, income. "Then you can just put everyone in a box, "figure out where you want to target, "figure out the right channels, "and you buy against that and you reach them." That's not how it works anymore. Customers now are moving faster than corporations. The new net worth customer of today has multiple identities is better understood when in relationship to other people. And we're not saying get rid of the data science. We're saying absolutely have it. You need to have scale. What is thick data going to offer you? Not scale, but it will offer you depth. So, that's why you need to combine both to be able to make effective decisions. >> So, I presume you work with a lot of big consumer brands. Is that a safe assumption? >> Absolutely. >> Okay. So, we work with a lot of big tech brands, like IBM and others, and they tend to move at the speed of the CIO, which tends to be really slow and really risk averse, and they're afraid to over rotate and get ahead over their skis. What do you tell folks like that? Is that a mistake being so cautious in this digital age? >> Well, I think the new CIO is on the cutting edge. I was just at Constellation Research Annual Conference in Half Moon Bay at-- >> Our friend Ray Wang. >> Yeah, Ray Wang. And I just spoke about this at their Constellation Connected Enterprise where they had the most, I would have to say the most amazing forward thinking collection of CIOs, CTOs, CDOs all in one room. And the conversation there was like, "We cannot afford to be slow anymore. "We have to be on the edge "of helping our companies push the ground." So, investing in tools is not enough. It is no longer enough to be the buyer, and to just have a relationship with your vendor and assume that they will help you deliver all the understanding. So, CIOs and CTOs need to ensure that their teams are diverse, multi-functional, and that they're totally integrated embedded into the business. And I don't mean just involve a business analyst as if that's cutting edge. I'm saying, "No, you need to make sure that every team "has qualitative people, "and that they're embedded and working closely together." The problem is we don't teach these skills. We're not graduating data scientists or ethnographers who even want to talk to each other. In fact, each side thinks the other side is useless. We're saying, "No, "we need to be able to have these skills "being taught within companies." And you don't need to hire a PhD data scientist or a PhD ethnographer. What we're saying is that these skills can be taught. We need to teach people to be data literate. You've hired the right experts, you have bought the right tools, but we now need to make sure that we're creating data literacy among decision makers so that we can turn these data into insights and then into action. >> Let's peel that a little bit. Data literate, you're talking about creativity, visualization, combining different perspectives? Where should the educational focus be? >> The educational focus should be on one storytelling. Right now, you cannot just be assuming that you can have a decision maker make a decision based on a number or some long PowerPoint report. We have to teach people how to tell compelling stories with data. And when I say data I'm talking about it needs the human component and it needs the numbers. And so one of the things that I saw, this is really close to my heart, was when I was at Nokia, and I remember I spent a decade understanding China. I really understood China. And when I finally had the insight where I was like, "Look, after spending 10 years there, "following 100 to 200 families around, "I had the insight back in 2009 that look, "your company is about to go out of business because "people don't want to buy your feature phones anymore. "They're going to want to buy smartphones." But, I only had qualitative data, and I needed to work alongside the business analysts and the data scientists. I needed access to their data sets, but I needed us to play together and to be on a team together so that I could scale my insights into quantitative models. And the problem was that, your question is, "What does that look like?" That looks like sitting on a team, having a mandate to say, "You have to play together, "and be able to tell an effective story "to the management and to leadership." But back then they were saying, "No, "we don't even consider your data set "to be worthwhile to even look at." >> We love our candy bar phone, right? It's a killer. >> Tricia: And we love our numbers. We love our surveys that tell us-- >> Market share was great. >> Market share is great. We've done all of the analysis. >> Forget the razor. >> Exactly. I'm like, "Look, of course your market share was great, "because your surveys were optimized "for your existing business model." So, big data is great if you want to optimize your supply chain or in systems that are very contained and quantifiable that's more or less fine. You can get optimization. You can get that one to two to five percent. But if you really want to grow your company and you want to ensure its longevity, you cannot just rely on your quantitative data to tell you how to do that. You actually need thick data for discovery, because you need to find the unknown. >> One of the things you talk about your passion is to understand how human perspectives shape the technology we build and how we use it. >> Tricia: Yes, you're speaking my language. >> Okay, so when you think about the development of the iPhone, it wasn't a bunch of surveys that led Steve Jobs to develop the iPhone. I guess the question is does technology lead and shape human perspectives or do human perspectives shape technology? >> Well, it's a dialectical relationship. It's like does a hamburger ... Does a bun shape the burger or does the bun shape the burger? You would never think of asking someone who loves a hamburger that question, because they both shape each other. >> Okay. (laughing) >> So, it's symbiote here, totally symbiotic. >> Surprise answer. You weren't expecting that. >> No, but it is kind of ... Okay, so you're saying it's not a chicken and egg, it's both. >> Absolutely. And the best companies are attuned to both. The best companies know that. The most powerful companies of the 21st century are obsessed with their customers and they're going to do a great job at leveraging human models to be scaled into data models, and that gap is going to be very, very narrow. You get big data. We're going to see more AI or ML disasters when their data models are really far from their actual human models. That's how we get disasters like Tesco or Target, or even when Google misidentified black people as gorillas. It's because their model of their data was so far from the understanding of humans. And the best companies of the future are going to know how to close that gap, and that means they will have the thick data and big data closely integrated. >> Who's doing that today? It seems like there are no ethics in AI. People are aggressively AI for profit and not really thinking about the human impacts and the societal impacts. >> Let's look at IBM. They're doing it. I would say that some of the most innovative projects that are happening at IBM with Watson, where people are using AI to solve meaningful social problems. I don't think that has to be-- >> Like IBM For Social Good. >> Exactly, but it's also, it's not just experimental. I think IBM is doing really great stuff using Watson to understand, identify skin cancer, or looking at the ways that people are using AI to understand eye diseases, things that you can do at scale. But also businesses are also figuring out how to use AI for actually doing better things. I think some of the most interesting ... We're going to see more examples of people using AI for solving meaningful social problems and making a profit at the same time. I think one really great example is WorkIt is they're using AI. They're actually working with Watson. Watson is who they hired to create their engine where union workers can ask questions of Watson that they may not want to ask or may be too costly to ask. So you can be like, "If I want to take one day off, "will this affect my contract or my job?" That's a very meaningful social problem that unions are now working with, and I think that's a really great example of how Watson is really pushing the edge to solve meaningful social problems at the same time. >> I worry sometimes that that's like the little device that you put in your car for the insurance company to see how you drive. >> How do you brake? How do you drive? >> Do people trust feeding that data to Watson because they're afraid Big Brother is watching? >> That's why we always have to have human intelligence working with machine intelligence. This idea of AI versus humans is a false binary, and I don't even know why we're engaging in those kinds of questions. We're not clearly, but there are people who are talking about it as if it's one or the other, and I find it to be a total waste of time. It's like clearly the best AI systems will be integrated with human intelligence, and we need the human training the data with machine learning systems. >> Alright, I'll play the yeah but. >> You're going to play the what? >> Yeah but! >> Yeah but! (crosstalk) >> That machines are replacing humans in cognitive functions. You walk into an airport and there are kiosks. People are losing jobs. >> Right, no that's real. >> So okay, so that's real. >> That is real. >> You agree with that. >> Job loss is real and job replacement is real. >> And I presume you agree that education is at least a part the answer, and training people differently than-- >> Tricia: Absolutely. >> Just straight reading, writing, and arithmetic, but thoughts on that. >> Well what I mean is that, yes, AI is replacing jobs, but the fact that we're treating AI as some kind of rogue machine that is operating on its own without human guidance, that's not happening, and that's not happening right now, and that's not happening in application. And what is more meaningful to talk about is how do we make sure that humans are more involved with the machines, that we always have a human in the loop, and that they're always making sure that they're training in a way where it's bringing up these ethical questions that are very important that you just raised. >> Right, well, and of course a lot of AI people would say is about prediction and then automation. So think about some of the brands that you serve, consult with, don't they want the machines to make certain decisions for them so that they can affect an outcome? >> I think that people want machines to surface things that is very difficult for humans to do. So if a machine can efficiently surface here is a pattern that's going on then that is very helpful. I think we have companies that are saying, "We can automate your decisions," but when you actually look at what they can automate it's in very contained, quantifiable systems. It's around systems around their supply chain or logistics. But, you really do not want your machine automating any decision when it really affects people, in particular your customers. >> Okay, so maybe changing the air pressure somewhere on a widget that's fine, but not-- >> Right, but you still need someone checking that, because will that air pressure create some unintended consequences later on? There's always some kind of human oversight. >> So I was looking at your website, and I always look for, I'm intrigued by interesting, curious thoughts. >> Tricia: Okay, I have a crazy website. >> No, it's very good, but back in your favorite quotes, "Rather have a question I can't answer "than an answer I can't question." So, how do you bring that kind of there's no fear of failure to the boardroom, to people who have to make big leaps and big decisions and enter this digital transformative world? >> I think that a lot of companies are so fearful of what's going to happen next, and that fear can oftentimes corner them into asking small questions and acting small where they're just asking how do we optimize something? That's really essentially what they're asking. "How do we optimize X? "How do we optimize this business?" What they're not really asking are the hard questions, the right questions, the discovery level questions that are very difficult to answer that no big data set can answer. And those are questions ... The questions about the unknown are the most difficult, but that's where you're going to get growth, because when something is unknown that means you have not either quantified it yet or you haven't found the relationship yet in your data set, and that's your competitive advantage. And that's where the boardroom really needs to set the mandate to say, "Look, I don't want you guys only answering "downstream, company-centric questions like, "'How do we optimize XYZ?"'" which is still important to answer. We're saying you absolutely need to pay attention to that, but you also need to ask upstream very customer-centric questions. And that's very difficult, because all day you're operating inside a company . You have to then step outside of your shoes and leave the building and see the world from a customer's perspective or from even a non existing customer's perspective, which is even more difficult. >> The whole know your customer meme has taken off in a big way right now, but I do feel like the pendulum is swinging. Well, I'm sanguined toward AI. It seems to me that ... It used to be that brands had all the power. They had all the knowledge, they knew the pricing, and the consumers knew nothing. The Internet changed all that. I feel like digital transformation and all this AI is an attempt to create that asymmetry again back in favor of the brand. I see people getting very aggressive toward, certainly you see this with Amazon, Amazon I think knows more about me than I know about myself. Should we be concerned about that and who protects the consumer, or is just maybe the benefits outweigh the risks there? >> I think that's such an important question you're asking and it's totally important. A really great TED talk just went up by Zeynep Tufekci where she talks about the most brilliant data scientists, the most brilliant minds of our day, are working on ad tech platforms that are now being created to essentially do what Kenyatta Jeez calls advertising terrorism, which is that all of this data is being collected so that advertisers have this information about us that could be used to create the future forms of surveillance. And that's why we need organizations to ask the kind of questions that you did. So two organizations that I think are doing a really great job to look at are Data & Society. Founder is Danah Boyd. Based in New York City. This is where I'm an affiliate. And they have all these programs that really look at digital privacy, identity, ramifications of all these things we're looking at with AI systems. Really great set of researchers. And then Vint Cerf (mumbles) co-founded People-Centered Internet. And I think this is another organization that we really should be looking at, it's based on the West Coast, where they're also asking similar questions of like instead of just looking at the Internet as a one-to-one model, what is the Internet doing for communities, and how do we make sure we leverage the role of communities to protect what the original founders of the Internet created? >> Right, Danah Boyd, CUBE alum. Shout out to Jeff Hammerbacher, founder of Cloudera, the originator of the greatest minds of my generation are trying to get people to click on ads. Quit Cloudera and now is working at Mount Sinai as an MD, amazing, trying to solve cancer. >> John: A lot of CUBE alums out there. >> Yeah. >> And now we have another one. >> Woo-hoo! >> Tricia, thank you for being with us. >> You're welcome. >> Fascinating stuff. >> Thanks for being on. >> It really is. >> Great questions. >> Nice to really just change the lens a little bit, look through it a different way. Tricia, by the way, part of a panel tonight with Michael Li and Nir Kaldero who we had earlier on theCUBE, 6 o'clock to 7:15 live on ibmgo.com. Nate Silver also joining the conversation, so be sure to tune in for that live tonight 6 o'clock. Back with more of theCUBE though right after this. (techno music)
SUMMARY :
brought to you by IBM. I'm going to tell you about a little bit later on, Want to do it one more time? and putting ethnography into practice. the challenge stretch. and how that relates to tech. and the most difficult to quantify thing for any business. and different biases, and prejudices, and all that stuff, and it's something that needs to be corrected, So, I presume you work with a lot of big consumer brands. and they tend to move at the speed of the CIO, I was just at Constellation Research Annual Conference and assume that they will help you deliver Where should the educational focus be? and to be on a team together We love our candy bar phone, right? We love our surveys that tell us-- We've done all of the analysis. You can get that one to two to five percent. One of the things you talk about your passion that led Steve Jobs to develop the iPhone. or does the bun shape the burger? Okay. You weren't expecting that. but it is kind of ... and that gap is going to be very, very narrow. and the societal impacts. I don't think that has to be-- and making a profit at the same time. that you put in your car for the insurance company and I find it to be a total waste of time. You walk into an airport and there are kiosks. but thoughts on that. that are very important that you just raised. So think about some of the brands that you serve, But, you really do not want your machine Right, but you still need someone checking that, and I always look for, to the boardroom, and see the world from a customer's perspective and the consumers knew nothing. that I think are doing a really great job to look at Shout out to Jeff Hammerbacher, Nice to really just change the lens a little bit,
SENTIMENT ANALYSIS :
ENTITIES
Entity | Category | Confidence |
---|---|---|
Diane Greene | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Eric Herzog | PERSON | 0.99+ |
James Kobielus | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Jeff Hammerbacher | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Diane | PERSON | 0.99+ |
IBM | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
Mark Albertson | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Microsoft | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
Amazon | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
Rebecca Knight | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Jennifer | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Colin | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Dave Vellante | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Cisco | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
Rob Hof | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Uber | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
Tricia Wang | PERSON | 0.99+ |
ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ | |
Singapore | LOCATION | 0.99+ |
James Scott | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Scott | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Ray Wang | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Dell | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
Brian Walden | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Andy Jassy | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Verizon | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
Jeff Bezos | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Rachel Tobik | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Alphabet | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
Zeynep Tufekci | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Tricia | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Stu | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Tom Barton | PERSON | 0.99+ |
ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ | |
Sandra Rivera | PERSON | 0.99+ |
John | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Qualcomm | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
Ginni Rometty | PERSON | 0.99+ |
France | LOCATION | 0.99+ |
Jennifer Lin | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Steve Jobs | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Seattle | LOCATION | 0.99+ |
Brian | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Nokia | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
Europe | LOCATION | 0.99+ |
Peter Burris | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Scott Raynovich | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Radisys | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
HP | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
Dave | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Eric | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Amanda Silver | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Jane Hite-Syed, Carol Jones, & Suzanne McGovern | Splunk .conf19
>>live from Las Vegas. It's the Cube covering Splunk dot com. 19. Brought to you by spunk. >>Okay, welcome back. Everyone secures live coverage in Las Vegas response dot com. I'm John Ferrier, host of the Cube. We're here for three days is a spunk. Spunk dot com 10 anniversary of their end user conference way Got some great guests here. They talk about diversity, inclusion breaking the barrier. Women in tech We got some great guests. Jane Heights, I add Si io National government service is Thanks for joining us. Appreciate it. Carol Jones, CEO Sandy and National Labs from Albuquerque Think coming on to CEOs of excited Suzanne McGovern. Diversity and inclusion talent leader for Splunk Thanks for guys joining us. Really appreciate it. I want to get into a panel you guys discuss because this is the area of really important to the workforce. Global workforce is made up of men and women, but most of the software text built by mostly men. But we get that second. I want to get in, find out what you guys are doing in your rolls because you guys, the journey is breaking through the barrier. Start with you. What's your role. What do you do? Their CEO. >>So I am CEO for National Government Service Is we do Medicare claims processing for the federal government. We also have a number of I t contracts with CMS. And, um, I organ. I have an organization of 331 people. Very different organization, Data center, infrastructure security gambit of I t, if you will. A great group of people divers were in Baltimore. Where? In Indianapolis. We're out of the kingdom office. How >>long have you been in 19 >>My career. So yes. Yeah. The waves. Yes. I have seen the waves have Daryl >>Jones and I'm c i o same National Laboratories. It's a federally funded research and development center. So we do research and development from on behalf of the U. S. Government. I have about 500 employees and 400 contractors. So we provide the I T for Sadia, all gametes of it, including some classified environments. >>A lot of security, your role. What's wrong? >>I'm the chief diversity officer. It's Plus I get the pleasure to do that every day. A swell, a cz. It's everyone's job. Not just magically explode. But I'm very honored to do that. How to look after talent. >>I want to compliment you guys on your new branding. Thank not only is a cool and really picking orange, but also that position is very broad and everything is trade message. But the big posters have diversity. Not a bunch of men on the posters. So congratulations, it's anger. Representative is really important. Worth mentioning. Okay, let's start with the journey. The topic you guys just talked about on a panel here in Las Vegas is female leaders smashing the glass ceiling. So when you smash his last ceiling, did you get caught? Was her bleeding? What happened? Take us for your journey. What was big? Take away. What's the learnings? Share your stories. >>Well, a lot of it, as I shared today with Panel, is really learning and be having that Lerner mindset and learning from something that you do, which is part of your life. And I use the example of I'm married to an Indian Muslim, went to India, spent some time with his family, and they told me Let's be ready at 6 30 and I said, Okay, I'm ready. I'm ready. Dressed in 6 30 nobody else was ready. And everyone in the room said, Well, we're gonna have Chai first we're gonna have some tea And I was like, Well, you said 6 30 and I'm ready And, um, everyone said, Well, you know, we need to relax. We need to connect. We need to have some time So I took that back and said, You know what? We all need to make time for tea Way. All need to connect with our people and the individuals that work with us, And I've kind of taken that on through the last 20 years of being married, Tim. But connecting with individuals and your teams and your partner's is what's important and as what Lead Meeks. I've built those allies and that great group of people that >>being people centric, relationship driven, not so much chasing promotions or those kinds. >>That's what's worked for me. Yes, >>Carol, it's been your journey. Stories >>start a little bit of beginnings. I've been in Tech over 30 years. I got a bachelor's and marketing, and then I was looking to get my master's. So I got, um, I s degree, but I didn't know even to go into that field. So my professor said you needed to go into my s, so don't know that's too hard. You can't do that. You know, you could do it. So it's always been challenging myself and continuing learning. I worked at IBM then I was there in the time when they did great layoffs. So no, e he was 93 right to left. Only wonder he's gonna be left by the end of the year. >>You know, for the younger audience out there M I s stands from management information systems. Before that, there was data processing division which actually relevant today. Quite a journey. What a great spirit. What's the one thing that you could share? Folks, this is a lot of young women coming into the workforce, and a lot of people are looking at inspirational figures like yourselves that have been there and done that. There's a lot of mentoring going on is a lot of navigation for young women and understand minorities. And they just you guys, there's no real playbook. You guys have experiences. What's your advice, folks out watching >>my number one advice. And I gave this to people who are wanting to go into leadership. Trust yourself. Trust to you. Are you all got to this place because of the successful person you are and just continue to trust yourself to take advantage of those opportunities. Take a risk. I took a risk when my total focus was in Medicare. I was asked to do another job and I took another, you know, position. And it wasn't in Medicare. So you have to take those opportunities and risk and just trust that you're gonna get yourself. >>Carol. You're >>similar. It's to continue to grow and to be resilient, there'll be times in your career like a layoff where you don't know what you're gonna do. You bounce back and make it into uneven. Better job on. Take risks. I took a risk. I went into cybersecurity. Spent 10 years there, continuing learning and the Brazilian >>learnings key, right? I mean, one of the things about security mentioned 10 years. So much has changed, hasn't it? >>Well, it's bad. Guys still outnumber the good guys. That has changed faster. Exactly. Technologies change. >>Just talk about the diversity inclusion efforts. You guys have a Splunk Splunk cultures very open transparent on the technology solutions very enabling you actually enabling a lot of change on the solution side. Now we're seeing tech for good kind of stories because Texas Tech Tech for business. But also you're seeing speed and times value time to mission value, a new term way kicked around this morning. It's time to mission value. >>Yes. So I'm glad you mentioned data, right? We're data company, and we're very proud that we actually whole star diversity inclusion numbers, right? So way moved the needle 1.8% on gender last year, year on year pride, but not satisfied. We understand that there's much more to diversity inclusion than just gender, But our strategy is threefold for diversity. Inclusion. So it's work force, workplace marketplace farces around just where talk is improving our representation so that these women are no longer the only. These are in the minority that were much more represented, and we're lucky we have three women and our board. We have four women in our C suite, so we're making good good progress. But there's a lot more to do, and as I say, it's not just about gender. We want to do way, nor the innovation is fueled by diversity. So we want to try. You know, folks of different races, different ethnicity, military veterans, people with disability. We need everyone. It's belongs to be, since >>you guys are all three leaders in the industry, Thanks for coming on. Appreciate that. I want to ask you guys because culture seems to be a common thread. I mean, I do so money talks and interviews with leaders for all types, from digital transformation to Dev ops, the security and they always talk speeds in fees. But all the change comes from culture people on what I'm seeing is a pattern of success. Diversity inclusion works well if it's in the culture of the company, so one filter for anyone a woman or anyone is this is a company culturally aligned with it. So that's the question is what do you do when you have a culture that's aligned with it? And what do you do? There's a culture that's not allow, so you want to get out. But how do you unwind and how do you navigate and how do you see the size of signals? Because the date is there >>a way to certainly really harness and failed a culture of inclusion. And that's through employee resource groups in particular. So it's plunks. More than 50% of our spelunkers are actually members. Followers are allies on employee resource. So gives community. It gives that sense of inclusion so that everyone could bring their whole Selves to work. So, to your point, it really does build a different culture, different level of connection. And it's super different. >>Any thoughts on culture and signals look for good, bad, ugly, I mean, because you see a good ways taken right. Why not >>take a chance, right? Right. No, I think, you know, like you look at it and you decide, like some young women we were talking to, You know, Is this the right company for you? And if not, can you find an ally? You know, it's a feeling that the culture isn't there and helped educate him on help to get him to be Jack of what does he and his leaders, I think we have to always ask ourselves, Are we being inclusive for everyone >>and mine? I would spend it a little bit. Is that diversity and thoughts And how? When I joined this organization. Culture is a big factor that needs to change and some of the things that I'm working on, but to bring people to the table and hear those different thoughts and listen to them because they all do think differently. No matter color, race, gender, that sort of thing. So diversity and thought is really something that I try to focus in on >>carry. Palin was just on the Cuban CMO of Splunk and top of the logo's on the branding and, she said, was a great team effort. Love that because she's just really cool about that. And she said we had a lot of diversity and thought, which is a code word for debate. So when you have diversity, I want to get your thoughts on this because this is interesting. We live in a time where speed is a competitive advantage speed, creativity, productivity, relevance, scale. These air kind of the key kind of modern efforts. Diversity could slow things down, too, so but the benefit of diversity is more thought, more access to data. So the question is, what do you guys think about how companies or individuals could not lose the speed keep the game going on the speed and scale and get the benefits of the diversity because you don't want things to grind down. Toe halts way Slugs in the speed game get data more diverse. Data comes in. That's a technical issue. But with diversity, you >>want a challenge that, to be honest, because we're a data company in the details. Irrefutable. Right? So gender diverse Teams up inform homogeneous teams by about 15% if you take that to race and ethnicity was up to 33%. Companies like ourselves, of course, their numbers see an uptick in share price. It's a business imperative, right? We get that. It's the right thing to do. But this notion that it slows things down, you find a way right. You're really high performance. You find a way best time. So it doesn't always come fast, right? Sometimes it's about patients and leadership. So I'm on the side of data and the data is there. If you tickle, di bear seems just perform better, >>so if it is slowing down, your position would be that it's not working >>well. Yes, I know. I think you got to find a way to work together, you know? And that's a beautiful thing about places like spun were hyper cool, right? It's crazy. Tons of work to do different things were just talking about this in the break way have this unwritten rule that we don't hire. I'll see jerks for >>gender neutral data, saris, origin, gender neutral data. >>Yeah, absolutely no hiring folks are really gonna, you know, have a different cultural impact there. No cultural adds the organization way. Need everyone on bats. Beautiful thing. And that's what makes it special. >>I think you know, is you start to work and be more inclusive. You start to build trust. So it goes back to what Jane was talking about relationships. And so you gotta have that foundation and you can move fast and still be reversed. I >>think that's a very key point. Trust is critical because people are taking chances whether they're male or female. If the team works there like you see a Splunk, it shouldn't be an issue becomes an issue when it's issue. All right, so big Walk away and learnings over the years in your journey. What was some moments of greatness? Moments of struggle where you brought your whole self to bear around resolving in persevering what were some challenges in growth moments that really made a difference in your life breaking through that ceiling. >>Wow. Well, um, I'm a breast cancer survivor, and I, uh, used my job and my strength to pull me through that. And I was working during the time, and I had a great leader who took it upon herself to make sure that I could work if I wanted. Thio are not. And it really opened that up for me to be able to say, I can still bring my whole self, whatever that is today that I'm doing. And I look back at that time and that was a strength from inside that gave me that trust myself. You're going to get through it. And that was a challenging personal time, But yet had so many learnings in it, from a career perspective to >>story thanks for sharing Caroline stories and struggles and successes that made him big impact of you. Your >>life. It was my first level one manager job. I got into cybersecurity and I didn't know what I was doing. I came back. My boss of Carol. I don't know what you did this year, and so I really had to learn to communicate. But prior to that, you know that I would never have been on TV. Never would have done public speaking like we did today. So I had to hire a coach and learn hadn't forward on communications. Thanks for sharing stories, I think a >>pivotal moment for me. I was in management, consultants say, for the first half of my career, Dad's first child and I was on the highway with a local Klein seven in the morning. Closet Night started on a Sunday midday, so I didn't see her a week the first night. I know many women who do it just wasn't my personal choice. So I decided to take a roll internal and not find Jason and was told that my career would be over, that I would be on a track, that I wouldn't get partner anymore. And it really wasn't the case. I find my passions in the people agenda did leadership development. I didn't teach our role. I got into diversity, including which I absolutely love. So I think some of those pivotal moments you talked about resilient earlier in the panel is just to dig, dying to know what's important to you personally and for the family and really follow your to north and you know, it works out in the end, >>you guys air inspiration. Thank you for sharing that, I guess on a personal question for me, as a male, there's a lot of men who want to do good. They want to be inclusive as well. Some don't know what to do. Don't even are free to ask for directions, right? So what would you advise men? How could they help in today's culture to move the needle forward, to support beach there from trust and all these critical things that make a difference what you say to that? >>So the research says that women don't suffer from a lack of mentorship. The sucker suffer from a lack of advocacy. So I would say if you want to do something super easy and impactful, go advocate for women, go advocate for women. You know who is amazing I there and go help her forward >>in Korea. And you can do that. Whatever gender you are, you can advocate for others. Yeah, also echo the advocacy. I would agree. >>Trust relationships, yes, across the board >>way, said Thio. Some of the women and our allies today WAAS bring your whole self. And I would just encourage men to do that, to bring your whole self to work, because that's what speeds up the data exchange. That's what it speeds up. Results >>take a chance, >>Take a chance, bring your whole self >>get trust going right. He opened a communicated and look at the date on the photo booth. Datable driver. Thank you guys so much for sharing your stories in The Cube, you think. Uses the stories on the Cube segments. Cube coverage here in Las Vegas for the 10th stop. Compass Accused seventh year John Ferrier with Q. Thanks for watching.
SUMMARY :
19. Brought to you by spunk. I want to get in, find out what you guys are doing in your rolls if you will. I have seen the waves have Daryl So we do research and development from on behalf of the U. A lot of security, your role. It's Plus I get the pleasure to do that I want to compliment you guys on your new branding. and be having that Lerner mindset and learning from something that you do, being people centric, relationship driven, not so much chasing promotions That's what's worked for me. Carol, it's been your journey. So my professor said you needed to go into my s, so don't know that's too hard. What's the one thing that you could share? of the successful person you are and just continue to trust yourself to take advantage of You're and the Brazilian I mean, one of the things about security mentioned 10 years. Guys still outnumber the good guys. very enabling you actually enabling a lot of change on the solution side. These are in the minority that were much more represented, So that's the question is what do you do So, to your point, it really does build a different culture, because you see a good ways taken right. And if not, can you find an ally? Culture is a big factor that needs to change and some of the things that I'm working on, So the question is, what do you guys think about how So I'm on the side of data and the data is there. I think you got to find a way to work together, really gonna, you know, have a different cultural impact there. I think you know, is you start to work and be more inclusive. If the team works there like you see a Splunk, it shouldn't be an issue And I look back at that time and that that made him big impact of you. I don't know what you did this year, and so I really you talked about resilient earlier in the panel is just to dig, dying to know what's important to you So what would you advise men? So I would say if you want to do something super easy And you can do that. to bring your whole self to work, because that's what speeds up the data exchange. Thank you guys so much for sharing your
SENTIMENT ANALYSIS :
ENTITIES
Entity | Category | Confidence |
---|---|---|
Indianapolis | LOCATION | 0.99+ |
Korea | LOCATION | 0.99+ |
Carol Jones | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Suzanne McGovern | PERSON | 0.99+ |
John Ferrier | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Thio | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Baltimore | LOCATION | 0.99+ |
Carol | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Jane | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Jason | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Las Vegas | LOCATION | 0.99+ |
Las Vegas | LOCATION | 0.99+ |
U. S. Government | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
Jane Hite-Syed | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Caroline | PERSON | 0.99+ |
IBM | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
Palin | PERSON | 0.99+ |
10 years | QUANTITY | 0.99+ |
Tim | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Jane Heights | PERSON | 0.99+ |
first child | QUANTITY | 0.99+ |
India | LOCATION | 0.99+ |
400 contractors | QUANTITY | 0.99+ |
National Government Service | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
93 | QUANTITY | 0.99+ |
first half | QUANTITY | 0.99+ |
Jones | PERSON | 0.99+ |
More than 50% | QUANTITY | 0.99+ |
10th stop | QUANTITY | 0.99+ |
331 people | QUANTITY | 0.99+ |
Spunk dot com | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
1.8% | QUANTITY | 0.99+ |
Texas Tech Tech | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
6 30 | DATE | 0.99+ |
three women | QUANTITY | 0.99+ |
about 500 employees | QUANTITY | 0.99+ |
today | DATE | 0.98+ |
last year | DATE | 0.98+ |
three days | QUANTITY | 0.98+ |
Daryl | PERSON | 0.98+ |
seventh year | QUANTITY | 0.98+ |
this year | DATE | 0.98+ |
Indian | OTHER | 0.98+ |
four women | QUANTITY | 0.97+ |
over 30 years | QUANTITY | 0.97+ |
about 15% | QUANTITY | 0.96+ |
first level | QUANTITY | 0.96+ |
second | QUANTITY | 0.96+ |
Cube | COMMERCIAL_ITEM | 0.95+ |
a week | QUANTITY | 0.95+ |
Sandy and | ORGANIZATION | 0.95+ |
three leaders | QUANTITY | 0.94+ |
Splunk | ORGANIZATION | 0.93+ |
up to 33% | QUANTITY | 0.93+ |
National Laboratories | ORGANIZATION | 0.93+ |
Compass | ORGANIZATION | 0.93+ |
first night | QUANTITY | 0.92+ |
Jack | PERSON | 0.92+ |
one | QUANTITY | 0.92+ |
Sadia | ORGANIZATION | 0.91+ |
Albuquerque | LOCATION | 0.91+ |
Splunk .conf19 | OTHER | 0.9+ |
Splunk dot com | ORGANIZATION | 0.9+ |
Lead Meeks | ORGANIZATION | 0.87+ |
Cuban | OTHER | 0.86+ |
one thing | QUANTITY | 0.85+ |
10 anniversary | QUANTITY | 0.85+ |
Sunday midday | DATE | 0.84+ |
National Labs | ORGANIZATION | 0.82+ |
Brazilian | OTHER | 0.82+ |
waves | EVENT | 0.8+ |
Tons of work | QUANTITY | 0.79+ |
Cube | ORGANIZATION | 0.79+ |
first | QUANTITY | 0.76+ |
19 | DATE | 0.69+ |
Klein | ORGANIZATION | 0.67+ |
this morning | DATE | 0.66+ |
seven | QUANTITY | 0.63+ |
Akhtar Saeed, SGWC & Michael Noel, Accenture | AWS Executive Summit 2018
>> Live from Las Vegas It's theCUBE! Covering the AWS Accenture Executive Summit. Brought to you by Accenture. >> Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of the AWS Executive Summit here at the Venetian. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We have two guests for this segment. We have Akhtar Saeed, VP Solution Delivery, Southern Glazers Wine and Spirits, and Michael Noel, Managing Director Applied Intelligence at Accenture. Thank you so much for coming on the show. >> Thank you. >> Thank you for having us. >> I think this is going to be a fun one. We're talking about wine and spirits. >> Absolutely. (laughs) >> Akhtar, tell our viewers a little bit about Southern Glazer. >> Yeah, so Southern Glazer Wine and Spirits is a privately held company. We are in about 44 states, and we are the largest distributor of wine and spirits. >> Okay, in 44 states. What was the business problem you were trying to solve in terms of the partnership that you formed with Accenture? >> Yeah, so we started this initiative before Southern and Glazer merged. >> And that was in? >> It was 2016. So southern was already looking at how to enhance our technology, how to provide better data analytics, and how to create one source of truth. So that's what drove this and we were looking to partner with appropriate system integrator and right technology to be able to help deliver well if the company to be able to do analytics and data analysis. >> So you had two separate companies merging together and I like this idea, one source of truth. What does that mean, what did that mean for you? >> Well what it means to us is that since you have quite a few data marts out there and everybody is looking at the numbers a little differently, we spend a lot of time trying to say, hey is this right or is this right? So we want to bring all the data together saying this is what the data is and this is how we're going to standardize it, that's what we're trying to do. >> Okay, so this one source, now, Michael, in terms of that, is that a common, common issue particularly among companies that are merging would you say? >> No absolutely you have businesses that might be in the same industry but they might have different processes to try to get to the same answer, right, and the answer's never really the same. So having this concept of a clean room that allows you to take your various aspects of a business and combine that from a data point of view, a business metrics point of view and a business process point of view, this one source, helps you consolidate and streamline that so you can see that integrated view across your new business model really. >> So where do you begin? So you bring in Accenture and AWS and where do you start? >> So like you've mentioned, in 2016, Glazer and Southern Wine Spirits came together and merged, it actually accelerated process because we needed what Mike mentioned as a clean room where we could put this data and won't have to merge at data centers on day one and have the reporting, common reporting platform being available for the new SGWS and that's what we started so we said, okay what is the key performance indicators, the key metrics that we need going into day one? and that's what we want to populate the data with to begin with to make sure that information is available when the day one for merger comes through. >> Okay and so what were those indicators? >> There were several indicators, there were several business reports, people needed the supply chain, they needed to understand the data, what the inventory looks like they needed to know how we were doing across the markets. So all those indicators, that's what we put together. >> Okay, okay, and so how do you work with the client in this respect, how do you and AWS sort of help the client look at what the core business challenges are and then say okay, this is how we're going to attack this problem? >> Right, no that's a good question. I think the main thing is understanding, what does the business need? and how is the technology going to support what the business needs, right? that's first and foremost, right, and then getting alignment and understanding that is really what drives a roadmap to say here's what we're going to do, here's the order we're going to do it in and here's the value that we expect to get out of following these steps one by one and I think one thing we learned is you have to be directionally correct, you may not be exact but as long as we're making progress in the right direction, you course correct as you need to, right, based upon as the business learns new things and as the market changes and what not and that's really how we accomplish this. >> And is it a co-creative process or, how closely are you working with Accenture and AWS? >> Oh, very closely with Accenture and AWS, it's very co-creative, I mean we are really working hand-in-hand. I mean, as Mike alluded, you start certain ways a journey and you realize, gee, this may work but I have to change a little bit here and there's several time we had to change team's direction how to get there and how to approach it and to deliver value. >> Well let's talk, let's get into the nitty gritty with the architecture and components. So what did this entail, coming to this clean room, this one source of truth? >> Yeah, AWR architecture is based on AWS' platform or Accenture's AIP, Accenture Insights platform which runs on AWS and we have, what we did right from the beginning we said we're going to have a data link, we're going to have a hadoop environment where we're going to all our data there And then for analytics research we're going to use Redshift, on top of that for reporting we use Tableau, and we have a homegrown tool called Compass for reporting also that we use. So that's how we initially started, initially we were feeding data directly into it, because we needed to stand the system up relatively quickly. The advantage to us, we didn't have to deal with infrastructure, that was all set up at AWS, we just to need to make sure we load our data and make sure we make the reports available. >> Were you going to add something to that? >> Yeah I know that the concept around, because the merger is expediting this clean room which allows you to stand up an analytics as a service model, to start bringing your data, to start building out your reporting analytics quickly right, which should really speak to market to understanding their position, as an integrated company was so important. So building the Accenture Insights platform on the AWS platform, was a huge success in order to allow them to start going down that path.. >> Yeah I want to hear about some of the innovative stuff you're doing around data analytics and really let's bring it back down to earth too and say actually so this is what we could learn and see, in terms of what was selling what was not selling, what were you finding out? >> So at this point we have about 6000 users on the platform approximately. Initially we had some challenges, I'll be very frank upfront, that everything does not go smooth. That's where we then say "Okay what do I do differently?" We started with dense storage, nodes and we soon found it's not meeting our needs. Then we enhanced Tougaloo dense cluster, and they helped us by about by 70%, that it drove the speed, but the queue length was still long, with Redshift we were still not getting the performance we needed. Then we went to second generation of dense computers and clusters and we got some more leverage, but really the breakthrough came when we said "we need to really reevaluate "how we've been doing our workload management." Some of our queries were very short term report queries real quick, others were loading data that took a while. And that's the challenge we had to overcome, with the workload management we were able to create, where we were able to bump queries and send them to different directions and create that capacity. And that's what really had a breakthrough in terms of technology for us, till that time we were struggling, I'll be honest, but once we got that breakthrough, we were able to comfortably deliver what business needed from data perspective and from businesses perspective. Mike would you like to add... >> Yeah, in addition to AWS, using Redshift has really been a really important, I guess decision and solution in place here, because not only are we using it for loading massive amounts of data, but it's also being used for power users, to generate very adhoc and large queries, to be able to support other analytic type needs right? And I think Redshift has allowed us to scale quickly as we needed to based upon certain times of year, certain market conditions or whatever, Redshift has really allowed us to do that. In order to support where the business demands have really grown exponentially since we've been putting this in place. And it all starts with architecting, and we said, and delivering all around the data. And then how do you enable the capabilities, not just data as a foundation but you know real time analytics, and looking at what looking at what could be, you know, forecasting and predicting what's happening in the future, using artificial intelligence, machine learning and that's really where the platform is taking us next. >> I want to talk about that, but I want to ask you quickly about the skills challenge, because introducing a new technology, there's going to be maybe some resistance and maybe simply your workers aren't quite up to speed. So can you talk a little bit about what you experienced, and then also how you overcame it? >> Yeah, I mean we had several challenges, I mean I'll put it in two big buckets, one is just change management. Anytime you're changing technology on this many users, they're comfortable with something they know, a known commodity, here's something new, that's a challenge. And one should not ignore, we need to pay a lot of attention on how to manage change. That's one, second challenge was within the technical group itself, because we were changing technology on them also right, and we had to overcome the skill sets, we were not the company, who were using open source a lot. So we had to overcome that and say how do we train our folks, how do we get knowledge? And in that case Accenture was great partner with us, they helped us tremendously and AWS professional services, they were able to help us and we had a couple of folks from professional services, they had really helped us with our technology to help drive that change. So you have to tackle from both sides, but we're doing pretty well at this point, we have found our own place, where we can drive through this together. >> In terms of what you were talking about earlier, in terms of what is next with predictive analytics and machine learning, can you talk a little bit about the most exciting things that are coming down the pipeline in terms of Southern Glazer? >> I think that's a great question, I think there's multiple way to look at it. From a business point of view right it's, how do they gain further insights by looking at as much different data sets as possible, right, whether it be internal data, external data, how do we combine that to really understand the customers better? And looking at how they approach things from a future point of view, we've been able to predict what's going to happen in the marketplace so I think it's about looking at all the different possible datasets out there and combining that to really understand what they can do from an art of the possible point of view. >> Can you give us some examples of terms of combining data sets so you're looking at, I mean, drinking patterns or what do we have here? >> I mean you have third party data, right, and TD links and those kind of things, you pull that data in and then you have our own data, then we have data from suppliers right, so that where we combine it and say okay what is this telling me, what story is this putting together telling me? I don't think we are there all the way, we have started on the journey, right now we are at what I call the, this one source of truth and we still have some more sub-editors loading to it, but that's the vision that, how do we pull in all that information and create predictive analysis down the road and be able to see what that means and how we'll be driving? >> And so you're really in the infancy of this? >> Yes, I mean it's a journey right, some may say that you're not in infancy, you're in the middle somewhere, somebody said, if they were ahead of us, it's all depending where you want to put this on that chart but we at least have taken first steps and we have one place where the data's available to us now, we're just going to keep adding to it and now it's a matter of how should we start to use it? >> In terms of lessons that you've learned along the way and you've been very candid in talking about some of the challenges that you've had to overcome but what would you say are some of the biggest takeaways that you have from this process? >> Yeah the biggest takeaway for me would be, as I've already mentioned, change management, don't ignore that, pay attention to that because that's what really drives it, second one that I'll say is probably, have a broader vision but when you execute make sure you look at the smaller things that you can measure, you can deliver against because you would have to take some steps to adjust to that so those are the two things, the third have the right partners with you because you can't go alone on this, you need to make sure you understand who you're going to work with and create a relation with them and saying "hey it's okay to have tough conversations", we have plenty of challenging conversations when we were having issues but it's as a team how you overcome those and deliver value, that's what matters. >> High praise for you Michael (laughs) at Accenture here, but what would you say in terms of being a partner with Southern Glazer and having helped and observed this company, what would you say are some of the biggest learnings from your perspective? >> Oddly enough I think the technology's the easier part of all this, right, I think that's fair to say without a doubt but really I think, really focusing on making the business successful, right, if everything you do is tied around making the business successful, then the rest will just kind of, you know, go along the way right because that's really the guiding principles right and then you saw that with technology right and that's really I think what we've learned most and foremost is, bring the business along, right, educating them and understanding what they really need and focusing on listening, alright, and trying to answer those specific questions, right, I think that's really the biggest factor we've learned over the past journey, yeah. >> And finally so we're here at AWS re:Invent, 60,000 people descending here on Sin City, what most excites you about, why do you come first of all and most excites you about the many announcements and innovations that we're seeing here this week? >> Yeah, so I'll be honest, this is the first time I've come to this conference but it's been really exciting, what excites me about these things is the new innovation, you learn new things, you say "hey, how can I go back "and apply this and do something different "and add more value back?" That's what excites me. >> Now, no I think you're absolutely right, I think, AWS is obviously a massive disruptor across any industry and their commitment to new technology, new innovation and the practicality of how we can start using some of that quickly I think is really exciting, right, because we've been working on this journey for a while and now there's some things that they've announced today, I think that we can go back and apply it pretty quickly, right, to really even further accelerate Southern Glazer's, you know, pivot to being a fully digital company. >> So a fully digital company, this is my last question (laughs) sorry, your advice for a company that is like yours, about to embark on this huge transformation, as you said, don't ignore the change management, the technology can sometimes be the easy part but do you have any other words of wisdom for a company that's in your shoes? >> All the words of wisdom I'll have is just I think I've already mentioned, three things they'll probably need to focus on, just take the first step, right, that's the hardest part, I think Anne even said this morning that some companies just never take the first step, take that first step and you have to, this is where the industry is going and data is going to be very important so you have to take the first step saying how do I get better, handle on the data. >> Excellent, great. Well Michael, Akhtar, thank you so much for coming on theCUBE this has been a real pleasure, thinking about Southern Glazer, next time bring some alchohol. >> Absolutely. (laughs) It's Vegas! >> Thank you, appreciate it. >> Great. I'm Rebecca Knight, we'll have more of theCUBE's live coverage of the AWS executive summit coming up in just a few moments, stay with us. (light music)
SUMMARY :
Brought to you by Accenture. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I think this is going to be a fun one. Absolutely. about Southern Glazer. and we are the largest distributor of wine and spirits. in terms of the partnership that you formed with Accenture? Yeah, so we started this initiative and right technology to be able to help deliver well and I like this idea, one source of truth. and this is how we're going to standardize it, and the answer's never really the same. and that's what we want to populate the data with they needed to know how we were doing across the markets. and here's the value that we expect to get and there's several time we had to change team's direction the nitty gritty with the architecture and components. and we have a homegrown tool called Compass because the merger is expediting this clean room And that's the challenge we had to overcome, and delivering all around the data. and then also how you overcame it? and we had to overcome the skill sets, and combining that to really understand have the right partners with you and that's really I think what we've learned is the new innovation, you learn new things, and the practicality of how we can start using and data is going to be very important Well Michael, Akhtar, thank you so much Absolutely. live coverage of the AWS executive summit
SENTIMENT ANALYSIS :
ENTITIES
Entity | Category | Confidence |
---|---|---|
Rebecca Knight | PERSON | 0.99+ |
AWS | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
Mike | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Michael Noel | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Michael | PERSON | 0.99+ |
2016 | DATE | 0.99+ |
Accenture | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
Akhtar | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Glazer | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
Anne | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Southern Glazer | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
Akhtar Saeed | PERSON | 0.99+ |
two guests | QUANTITY | 0.99+ |
Southern Glazers Wine and Spirits | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
first step | QUANTITY | 0.99+ |
Tableau | TITLE | 0.99+ |
AWS' | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
Southern | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
Vegas | LOCATION | 0.99+ |
SGWC | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
Sin City | LOCATION | 0.99+ |
two things | QUANTITY | 0.99+ |
third | QUANTITY | 0.99+ |
Redshift | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
both sides | QUANTITY | 0.99+ |
Las Vegas | LOCATION | 0.99+ |
Venetian | LOCATION | 0.99+ |
44 states | QUANTITY | 0.98+ |
second one | QUANTITY | 0.98+ |
two separate companies | QUANTITY | 0.98+ |
first | QUANTITY | 0.98+ |
one source | QUANTITY | 0.98+ |
one | QUANTITY | 0.98+ |
second challenge | QUANTITY | 0.98+ |
Redshift | TITLE | 0.98+ |
first steps | QUANTITY | 0.98+ |
second generation | QUANTITY | 0.97+ |
Compass | TITLE | 0.97+ |
about 6000 users | QUANTITY | 0.97+ |
this week | DATE | 0.97+ |
AWS Executive Summit | EVENT | 0.97+ |
first time | QUANTITY | 0.97+ |
SGWS | ORGANIZATION | 0.96+ |
Southern Glazer Wine and Spirits | ORGANIZATION | 0.95+ |
two big buckets | QUANTITY | 0.95+ |
Southern Wine Spirits | ORGANIZATION | 0.94+ |
theCUBE | ORGANIZATION | 0.94+ |
today | DATE | 0.93+ |
AIP | TITLE | 0.93+ |
70% | QUANTITY | 0.92+ |
AWS Executive Summit 2018 | EVENT | 0.91+ |
one place | QUANTITY | 0.9+ |
AWS executive summit | EVENT | 0.88+ |
day one | QUANTITY | 0.88+ |
AWS | EVENT | 0.85+ |
this morning | DATE | 0.81+ |
AWR | ORGANIZATION | 0.81+ |
three things | QUANTITY | 0.81+ |
about 44 states | QUANTITY | 0.8+ |
Data Science for All: It's a Whole New Game
>> There's a movement that's sweeping across businesses everywhere here in this country and around the world. And it's all about data. Today businesses are being inundated with data. To the tune of over two and a half million gigabytes that'll be generated in the next 60 seconds alone. What do you do with all that data? To extract insights you typically turn to a data scientist. But not necessarily anymore. At least not exclusively. Today the ability to extract value from data is becoming a shared mission. A team effort that spans the organization extending far more widely than ever before. Today, data science is being democratized. >> Data Sciences for All: It's a Whole New Game. >> Welcome everyone, I'm Katie Linendoll. I'm a technology expert writer and I love reporting on all things tech. My fascination with tech started very young. I began coding when I was 12. Received my networking certs by 18 and a degree in IT and new media from Rochester Institute of Technology. So as you can tell, technology has always been a sure passion of mine. Having grown up in the digital age, I love having a career that keeps me at the forefront of science and technology innovations. I spend equal time in the field being hands on as I do on my laptop conducting in depth research. Whether I'm diving underwater with NASA astronauts, witnessing the new ways which mobile technology can help rebuild the Philippine's economy in the wake of super typhoons, or sharing a first look at the newest iPhones on The Today Show, yesterday, I'm always on the hunt for the latest and greatest tech stories. And that's what brought me here. I'll be your host for the next hour and as we explore the new phenomenon that is taking businesses around the world by storm. And data science continues to become democratized and extends beyond the domain of the data scientist. And why there's also a mandate for all of us to become data literate. Now that data science for all drives our AI culture. And we're going to be able to take to the streets and go behind the scenes as we uncover the factors that are fueling this phenomenon and giving rise to a movement that is reshaping how businesses leverage data. And putting organizations on the road to AI. So coming up, I'll be doing interviews with data scientists. We'll see real world demos and take a look at how IBM is changing the game with an open data science platform. We'll also be joined by legendary statistician Nate Silver, founder and editor-in-chief of FiveThirtyEight. Who will shed light on how a data driven mindset is changing everything from business to our culture. We also have a few people who are joining us in our studio, so thank you guys for joining us. Come on, I can do better than that, right? Live studio audience, the fun stuff. And for all of you during the program, I want to remind you to join that conversation on social media using the hashtag DSforAll, it's data science for all. Share your thoughts on what data science and AI means to you and your business. And, let's dive into a whole new game of data science. Now I'd like to welcome my co-host General Manager IBM Analytics, Rob Thomas. >> Hello, Katie. >> Come on guys. >> Yeah, seriously. >> No one's allowed to be quiet during this show, okay? >> Right. >> Or, I'll start calling people out. So Rob, thank you so much. I think you know this conversation, we're calling it a data explosion happening right now. And it's nothing new. And when you and I chatted about it. You've been talking about this for years. You have to ask, is this old news at this point? >> Yeah, I mean, well first of all, the data explosion is not coming, it's here. And everybody's in the middle of it right now. What is different is the economics have changed. And the scale and complexity of the data that organizations are having to deal with has changed. And to this day, 80% of the data in the world still sits behind corporate firewalls. So, that's becoming a problem. It's becoming unmanageable. IT struggles to manage it. The business can't get everything they need. Consumers can't consume it when they want. So we have a challenge here. >> It's challenging in the world of unmanageable. Crazy complexity. If I'm sitting here as an IT manager of my business, I'm probably thinking to myself, this is incredibly frustrating. How in the world am I going to get control of all this data? And probably not just me thinking it. Many individuals here as well. >> Yeah, indeed. Everybody's thinking about how am I going to put data to work in my organization in a way I haven't done before. Look, you've got to have the right expertise, the right tools. The other thing that's happening in the market right now is clients are dealing with multi cloud environments. So data behind the firewall in private cloud, multiple public clouds. And they have to find a way. How am I going to pull meaning out of this data? And that brings us to data science and AI. That's how you get there. >> I understand the data science part but I think we're all starting to hear more about AI. And it's incredible that this buzz word is happening. How do businesses adopt to this AI growth and boom and trend that's happening in this world right now? >> Well, let me define it this way. Data science is a discipline. And machine learning is one technique. And then AI puts both machine learning into practice and applies it to the business. So this is really about how getting your business where it needs to go. And to get to an AI future, you have to lay a data foundation today. I love the phrase, "there's no AI without IA." That means you're not going to get to AI unless you have the right information architecture to start with. >> Can you elaborate though in terms of how businesses can really adopt AI and get started. >> Look, I think there's four things you have to do if you're serious about AI. One is you need a strategy for data acquisition. Two is you need a modern data architecture. Three is you need pervasive automation. And four is you got to expand job roles in the organization. >> Data acquisition. First pillar in this you just discussed. Can we start there and explain why it's so critical in this process? >> Yeah, so let's think about how data acquisition has evolved through the years. 15 years ago, data acquisition was about how do I get data in and out of my ERP system? And that was pretty much solved. Then the mobile revolution happens. And suddenly you've got structured and non-structured data. More than you've ever dealt with. And now you get to where we are today. You're talking terabytes, petabytes of data. >> [Katie] Yottabytes, I heard that word the other day. >> I heard that too. >> Didn't even know what it meant. >> You know how many zeros that is? >> I thought we were in Star Wars. >> Yeah, I think it's a lot of zeroes. >> Yodabytes, it's new. >> So, it's becoming more and more complex in terms of how you acquire data. So that's the new data landscape that every client is dealing with. And if you don't have a strategy for how you acquire that and manage it, you're not going to get to that AI future. >> So a natural segue, if you are one of these businesses, how do you build for the data landscape? >> Yeah, so the question I always hear from customers is we need to evolve our data architecture to be ready for AI. And the way I think about that is it's really about moving from static data repositories to more of a fluid data layer. >> And we continue with the architecture. New data architecture is an interesting buzz word to hear. But it's also one of the four pillars. So if you could dive in there. >> Yeah, I mean it's a new twist on what I would call some core data science concepts. For example, you have to leverage tools with a modern, centralized data warehouse. But your data warehouse can't be stagnant to just what's right there. So you need a way to federate data across different environments. You need to be able to bring your analytics to the data because it's most efficient that way. And ultimately, it's about building an optimized data platform that is designed for data science and AI. Which means it has to be a lot more flexible than what clients have had in the past. >> All right. So we've laid out what you need for driving automation. But where does the machine learning kick in? >> Machine learning is what gives you the ability to automate tasks. And I think about machine learning. It's about predicting and automating. And this will really change the roles of data professionals and IT professionals. For example, a data scientist cannot possibly know every algorithm or every model that they could use. So we can automate the process of algorithm selection. Another example is things like automated data matching. Or metadata creation. Some of these things may not be exciting but they're hugely practical. And so when you think about the real use cases that are driving return on investment today, it's things like that. It's automating the mundane tasks. >> Let's go ahead and come back to something that you mentioned earlier because it's fascinating to be talking about this AI journey, but also significant is the new job roles. And what are those other participants in the analytics pipeline? >> Yeah I think we're just at the start of this idea of new job roles. We have data scientists. We have data engineers. Now you see machine learning engineers. Application developers. What's really happening is that data scientists are no longer allowed to work in their own silo. And so the new job roles is about how does everybody have data first in their mind? And then they're using tools to automate data science, to automate building machine learning into applications. So roles are going to change dramatically in organizations. >> I think that's confusing though because we have several organizations who saying is that highly specialized roles, just for data science? Or is it applicable to everybody across the board? >> Yeah, and that's the big question, right? Cause everybody's thinking how will this apply? Do I want this to be just a small set of people in the organization that will do this? But, our view is data science has to for everybody. It's about bring data science to everybody as a shared mission across the organization. Everybody in the company has to be data literate. And participate in this journey. >> So overall, group effort, has to be a common goal, and we all need to be data literate across the board. >> Absolutely. >> Done deal. But at the end of the day, it's kind of not an easy task. >> It's not. It's not easy but it's maybe not as big of a shift as you would think. Because you have to put data in the hands of people that can do something with it. So, it's very basic. Give access to data. Data's often locked up in a lot of organizations today. Give people the right tools. Embrace the idea of choice or diversity in terms of those tools. That gets you started on this path. >> It's interesting to hear you say essentially you need to train everyone though across the board when it comes to data literacy. And I think people that are coming into the work force don't necessarily have a background or a degree in data science. So how do you manage? >> Yeah, so in many cases that's true. I will tell you some universities are doing amazing work here. One example, University of California Berkeley. They offer a course for all majors. So no matter what you're majoring in, you have a course on foundations of data science. How do you bring data science to every role? So it's starting to happen. We at IBM provide data science courses through CognitiveClass.ai. It's for everybody. It's free. And look, if you want to get your hands on code and just dive right in, you go to datascience.ibm.com. The key point is this though. It's more about attitude than it is aptitude. I think anybody can figure this out. But it's about the attitude to say we're putting data first and we're going to figure out how to make this real in our organization. >> I also have to give a shout out to my alma mater because I have heard that there is an offering in MS in data analytics. And they are always on the forefront of new technologies and new majors and on trend. And I've heard that the placement behind those jobs, people graduating with the MS is high. >> I'm sure it's very high. >> So go Tigers. All right, tangential. Let me get back to something else you touched on earlier because you mentioned that a number of customers ask you how in the world do I get started with AI? It's an overwhelming question. Where do you even begin? What do you tell them? >> Yeah, well things are moving really fast. But the good thing is most organizations I see, they're already on the path, even if they don't know it. They might have a BI practice in place. They've got data warehouses. They've got data lakes. Let me give you an example. AMC Networks. They produce a lot of the shows that I'm sure you watch Katie. >> [Katie] Yes, Breaking Bad, Walking Dead, any fans? >> [Rob] Yeah, we've got a few. >> [Katie] Well you taught me something I didn't even know. Because it's amazing how we have all these different industries, but yet media in itself is impacted too. And this is a good example. >> Absolutely. So, AMC Networks, think about it. They've got ads to place. They want to track viewer behavior. What do people like? What do they dislike? So they have to optimize every aspect of their business from marketing campaigns to promotions to scheduling to ads. And their goal was transform data into business insights and really take the burden off of their IT team that was heavily burdened by obviously a huge increase in data. So their VP of BI took the approach of using machine learning to process large volumes of data. They used a platform that was designed for AI and data processing. It's the IBM analytics system where it's a data warehouse, data science tools are built in. It has in memory data processing. And just like that, they were ready for AI. And they're already seeing that impact in their business. >> Do you think a movement of that nature kind of presses other media conglomerates and organizations to say we need to be doing this too? >> I think it's inevitable that everybody, you're either going to be playing, you're either going to be leading, or you'll be playing catch up. And so, as we talk to clients we think about how do you start down this path now, even if you have to iterate over time? Because otherwise you're going to wake up and you're going to be behind. >> One thing worth noting is we've talked about analytics to the data. It's analytics first to the data, not the other way around. >> Right. So, look. We as a practice, we say you want to bring data to where the data sits. Because it's a lot more efficient that way. It gets you better outcomes in terms of how you train models and it's more efficient. And we think that leads to better outcomes. Other organization will say, "Hey move the data around." And everything becomes a big data movement exercise. But once an organization has started down this path, they're starting to get predictions, they want to do it where it's really easy. And that means analytics applied right where the data sits. >> And worth talking about the role of the data scientist in all of this. It's been called the hot job of the decade. And a Harvard Business Review even dubbed it the sexiest job of the 21st century. >> Yes. >> I want to see this on the cover of Vogue. Like I want to see the first data scientist. Female preferred, on the cover of Vogue. That would be amazing. >> Perhaps you can. >> People agree. So what changes for them? Is this challenging in terms of we talk data science for all. Where do all the data science, is it data science for everyone? And how does it change everything? >> Well, I think of it this way. AI gives software super powers. It really does. It changes the nature of software. And at the center of that is data scientists. So, a data scientist has a set of powers that they've never had before in any organization. And that's why it's a hot profession. Now, on one hand, this has been around for a while. We've had actuaries. We've had statisticians that have really transformed industries. But there are a few things that are new now. We have new tools. New languages. Broader recognition of this need. And while it's important to recognize this critical skill set, you can't just limit it to a few people. This is about scaling it across the organization. And truly making it accessible to all. >> So then do we need more data scientists? Or is this something you train like you said, across the board? >> Well, I think you want to do a little bit of both. We want more. But, we can also train more and make the ones we have more productive. The way I think about it is there's kind of two markets here. And we call it clickers and coders. >> [Katie] I like that. That's good. >> So, let's talk about what that means. So clickers are basically somebody that wants to use tools. Create models visually. It's drag and drop. Something that's very intuitive. Those are the clickers. Nothing wrong with that. It's been valuable for years. There's a new crop of data scientists. They want to code. They want to build with the latest open source tools. They want to write in Python or R. These are the coders. And both approaches are viable. Both approaches are critical. Organizations have to have a way to meet the needs of both of those types. And there's not a lot of things available today that do that. >> Well let's keep going on that. Because I hear you talking about the data scientists role and how it's critical to success, but with the new tools, data science and analytics skills can extend beyond the domain of just the data scientist. >> That's right. So look, we're unifying coders and clickers into a single platform, which we call IBM Data Science Experience. And as the demand for data science expertise grows, so does the need for these kind of tools. To bring them into the same environment. And my view is if you have the right platform, it enables the organization to collaborate. And suddenly you've changed the nature of data science from an individual sport to a team sport. >> So as somebody that, my background is in IT, the question is really is this an additional piece of what IT needs to do in 2017 and beyond? Or is it just another line item to the budget? >> So I'm afraid that some people might view it that way. As just another line item. But, I would challenge that and say data science is going to reinvent IT. It's going to change the nature of IT. And every organization needs to think about what are the skills that are critical? How do we engage a broader team to do this? Because once they get there, this is the chance to reinvent how they're performing IT. >> [Katie] Challenging or not? >> Look it's all a big challenge. Think about everything IT organizations have been through. Some of them were late to things like mobile, but then they caught up. Some were late to cloud, but then they caught up. I would just urge people, don't be late to data science. Use this as your chance to reinvent IT. Start with this notion of clickers and coders. This is a seminal moment. Much like mobile and cloud was. So don't be late. >> And I think it's critical because it could be so costly to wait. And Rob and I were even chatting earlier how data analytics is just moving into all different kinds of industries. And I can tell you even personally being effected by how important the analysis is in working in pediatric cancer for the last seven years. I personally implement virtual reality headsets to pediatric cancer hospitals across the country. And it's great. And it's working phenomenally. And the kids are amazed. And the staff is amazed. But the phase two of this project is putting in little metrics in the hardware that gather the breathing, the heart rate to show that we have data. Proof that we can hand over to the hospitals to continue making this program a success. So just in-- >> That's a great example. >> An interesting example. >> Saving lives? >> Yes. >> That's also applying a lot of what we talked about. >> Exciting stuff in the world of data science. >> Yes. Look, I just add this is an existential moment for every organization. Because what you do in this area is probably going to define how competitive you are going forward. And think about if you don't do something. What if one of your competitors goes and creates an application that's more engaging with clients? So my recommendation is start small. Experiment. Learn. Iterate on projects. Define the business outcomes. Then scale up. It's very doable. But you've got to take the first step. >> First step always critical. And now we're going to get to the fun hands on part of our story. Because in just a moment we're going to take a closer look at what data science can deliver. And where organizations are trying to get to. All right. Thank you Rob and now we've been joined by Siva Anne who is going to help us navigate this demo. First, welcome Siva. Give him a big round of applause. Yeah. All right, Rob break down what we're going to be looking at. You take over this demo. >> All right. So this is going to be pretty interesting. So Siva is going to take us through. So he's going to play the role of a financial adviser. Who wants to help better serve clients through recommendations. And I'm going to really illustrate three things. One is how do you federate data from multiple data sources? Inside the firewall, outside the firewall. How do you apply machine learning to predict and to automate? And then how do you move analytics closer to your data? So, what you're seeing here is a custom application for an investment firm. So, Siva, our financial adviser, welcome. So you can see at the top, we've got market data. We pulled that from an external source. And then we've got Siva's calendar in the middle. He's got clients on the right side. So page down, what else do you see down there Siva? >> [Siva] I can see the recent market news. And in here I can see that JP Morgan is calling for a US dollar rebound in the second half of the year. And, I have upcoming meeting with Leo Rakes. I can get-- >> [Rob] So let's go in there. Why don't you click on Leo Rakes. So, you're sitting at your desk, you're deciding how you're going to spend the day. You know you have a meeting with Leo. So you click on it. You immediately see, all right, so what do we know about him? We've got data governance implemented. So we know his age, we know his degree. We can see he's not that aggressive of a trader. Only six trades in the last few years. But then where it gets interesting is you go to the bottom. You start to see predicted industry affinity. Where did that come from? How do we have that? >> [Siva] So these green lines and red arrows here indicate the trending affinity of Leo Rakes for particular industry stocks. What we've done here is we've built machine learning models using customer's demographic data, his stock portfolios, and browsing behavior to build a model which can predict his affinity for a particular industry. >> [Rob] Interesting. So, I like to think of this, we call it celebrity experiences. So how do you treat every customer like they're a celebrity? So to some extent, we're reading his mind. Because without asking him, we know that he's going to have an affinity for auto stocks. So we go down. Now we look at his portfolio. You can see okay, he's got some different holdings. He's got Amazon, Google, Apple, and then he's got RACE, which is the ticker for Ferrari. You can see that's done incredibly well. And so, as a financial adviser, you look at this and you say, all right, we know he loves auto stocks. Ferrari's done very well. Let's create a hedge. Like what kind of security would interest him as a hedge against his position for Ferrari? Could we go figure that out? >> [Siva] Yes. Given I know that he's gotten an affinity for auto stocks, and I also see that Ferrari has got some terminus gains, I want to lock in these gains by hedging. And I want to do that by picking a auto stock which has got negative correlation with Ferrari. >> [Rob] So this is where we get to the idea of in database analytics. Cause you start clicking that and immediately we're getting instant answers of what's happening. So what did we find here? We're going to compare Ferrari and Honda. >> [Siva] I'm going to compare Ferrari with Honda. And what I see here instantly is that Honda has got a negative correlation with Ferrari, which makes it a perfect mix for his stock portfolio. Given he has an affinity for auto stocks and it correlates negatively with Ferrari. >> [Rob] These are very powerful tools at the hand of a financial adviser. You think about it. As a financial adviser, you wouldn't think about federating data, machine learning, pretty powerful. >> [Siva] Yes. So what we have seen here is that using the common SQL engine, we've been able to federate queries across multiple data sources. Db2 Warehouse in the cloud, IBM's Integrated Analytic System, and Hortonworks powered Hadoop platform for the new speeds. We've been able to use machine learning to derive innovative insights about his stock affinities. And drive the machine learning into the appliance. Closer to where the data resides to deliver high performance analytics. >> [Rob] At scale? >> [Siva] We're able to run millions of these correlations across stocks, currency, other factors. And even score hundreds of customers for their affinities on a daily basis. >> That's great. Siva, thank you for playing the role of financial adviser. So I just want to recap briefly. Cause this really powerful technology that's really simple. So we federated, we aggregated multiple data sources from all over the web and internal systems. And public cloud systems. Machine learning models were built that predicted Leo's affinity for a certain industry. In this case, automotive. And then you see when you deploy analytics next to your data, even a financial adviser, just with the click of a button is getting instant answers so they can go be more productive in their next meeting. This whole idea of celebrity experiences for your customer, that's available for everybody, if you take advantage of these types of capabilities. Katie, I'll hand it back to you. >> Good stuff. Thank you Rob. Thank you Siva. Powerful demonstration on what we've been talking about all afternoon. And thank you again to Siva for helping us navigate. Should be give him one more round of applause? We're going to be back in just a moment to look at how we operationalize all of this data. But in first, here's a message from me. If you're a part of a line of business, your main fear is disruption. You know data is the new goal that can create huge amounts of value. So does your competition. And they may be beating you to it. You're convinced there are new business models and revenue sources hidden in all the data. You just need to figure out how to leverage it. But with the scarcity of data scientists, you really can't rely solely on them. You may need more people throughout the organization that have the ability to extract value from data. And as a data science leader or data scientist, you have a lot of the same concerns. You spend way too much time looking for, prepping, and interpreting data and waiting for models to train. You know you need to operationalize the work you do to provide business value faster. What you want is an easier way to do data prep. And rapidly build models that can be easily deployed, monitored and automatically updated. So whether you're a data scientist, data science leader, or in a line of business, what's the solution? What'll it take to transform the way you work? That's what we're going to explore next. All right, now it's time to delve deeper into the nuts and bolts. The nitty gritty of operationalizing data science and creating a data driven culture. How do you actually do that? Well that's what these experts are here to share with us. I'm joined by Nir Kaldero, who's head of data science at Galvanize, which is an education and training organization. Tricia Wang, who is co-founder of Sudden Compass, a consultancy that helps companies understand people with data. And last, but certainly not least, Michael Li, founder and CEO of Data Incubator, which is a data science train company. All right guys. Shall we get right to it? >> All right. >> So data explosion happening right now. And we are seeing it across the board. I just shared an example of how it's impacting my philanthropic work in pediatric cancer. But you guys each have so many unique roles in your business life. How are you seeing it just blow up in your fields? Nir, your thing? >> Yeah, for example like in Galvanize we train many Fortune 500 companies. And just by looking at the demand of companies that wants us to help them go through this digital transformation is mind-blowing. Data point by itself. >> Okay. Well what we're seeing what's going on is that data science like as a theme, is that it's actually for everyone now. But what's happening is that it's actually meeting non technical people. But what we're seeing is that when non technical people are implementing these tools or coming at these tools without a base line of data literacy, they're often times using it in ways that distance themselves from the customer. Because they're implementing data science tools without a clear purpose, without a clear problem. And so what we do at Sudden Compass is that we work with companies to help them embrace and understand the complexity of their customers. Because often times they are misusing data science to try and flatten their understanding of the customer. As if you can just do more traditional marketing. Where you're putting people into boxes. And I think the whole ROI of data is that you can now understand people's relationships at a much more complex level at a greater scale before. But we have to do this with basic data literacy. And this has to involve technical and non technical people. >> Well you can have all the data in the world, and I think it speaks to, if you're not doing the proper movement with it, forget it. It means nothing at the same time. >> No absolutely. I mean, I think that when you look at the huge explosion in data, that comes with it a huge explosion in data experts. Right, we call them data scientists, data analysts. And sometimes they're people who are very, very talented, like the people here. But sometimes you have people who are maybe re-branding themselves, right? Trying to move up their title one notch to try to attract that higher salary. And I think that that's one of the things that customers are coming to us for, right? They're saying, hey look, there are a lot of people that call themselves data scientists, but we can't really distinguish. So, we have sort of run a fellowship where you help companies hire from a really talented group of folks, who are also truly data scientists and who know all those kind of really important data science tools. And we also help companies internally. Fortune 500 companies who are looking to grow that data science practice that they have. And we help clients like McKinsey, BCG, Bain, train up their customers, also their clients, also their workers to be more data talented. And to build up that data science capabilities. >> And Nir, this is something you work with a lot. A lot of Fortune 500 companies. And when we were speaking earlier, you were saying many of these companies can be in a panic. >> Yeah. >> Explain that. >> Yeah, so you know, not all Fortune 500 companies are fully data driven. And we know that the winners in this fourth industrial revolution, which I like to call the machine intelligence revolution, will be companies who navigate and transform their organization to unlock the power of data science and machine learning. And the companies that are not like that. Or not utilize data science and predictive power well, will pretty much get shredded. So they are in a panic. >> Tricia, companies have to deal with data behind the firewall and in the new multi cloud world. How do organizations start to become driven right to the core? >> I think the most urgent question to become data driven that companies should be asking is how do I bring the complex reality that our customers are experiencing on the ground in to a corporate office? Into the data models. So that question is critical because that's how you actually prevent any big data disasters. And that's how you leverage big data. Because when your data models are really far from your human models, that's when you're going to do things that are really far off from how, it's going to not feel right. That's when Tesco had their terrible big data disaster that they're still recovering from. And so that's why I think it's really important to understand that when you implement big data, you have to further embrace thick data. The qualitative, the emotional stuff, that is difficult to quantify. But then comes the difficult art and science that I think is the next level of data science. Which is that getting non technical and technical people together to ask how do we find those unknown nuggets of insights that are difficult to quantify? Then, how do we do the next step of figuring out how do you mathematically scale those insights into a data model? So that actually is reflective of human understanding? And then we can start making decisions at scale. But you have to have that first. >> That's absolutely right. And I think that when we think about what it means to be a data scientist, right? I always think about it in these sort of three pillars. You have the math side. You have to have that kind of stats, hardcore machine learning background. You have the programming side. You don't work with small amounts of data. You work with large amounts of data. You've got to be able to type the code to make those computers run. But then the last part is that human element. You have to understand the domain expertise. You have to understand what it is that I'm actually analyzing. What's the business proposition? And how are the clients, how are the users actually interacting with the system? That human element that you were talking about. And I think having somebody who understands all of those and not just in isolation, but is able to marry that understanding across those different topics, that's what makes a data scientist. >> But I find that we don't have people with those skill sets. And right now the way I see teams being set up inside companies is that they're creating these isolated data unicorns. These data scientists that have graduated from your programs, which are great. But, they don't involve the people who are the domain experts. They don't involve the designers, the consumer insight people, the people, the salespeople. The people who spend time with the customers day in and day out. Somehow they're left out of the room. They're consulted, but they're not a stakeholder. >> Can I actually >> Yeah, yeah please. >> Can I actually give a quick example? So for example, we at Galvanize train the executives and the managers. And then the technical people, the data scientists and the analysts. But in order to actually see all of the RY behind the data, you also have to have a creative fluid conversation between non technical and technical people. And this is a major trend now. And there's a major gap. And we need to increase awareness and kind of like create a new, kind of like environment where technical people also talks seamlessly with non technical ones. >> [Tricia] We call-- >> That's one of the things that we see a lot. Is one of the trends in-- >> A major trend. >> data science training is it's not just for the data science technical experts. It's not just for one type of person. So a lot of the training we do is sort of data engineers. People who are more on the software engineering side learning more about the stats of math. And then people who are sort of traditionally on the stat side learning more about the engineering. And then managers and people who are data analysts learning about both. >> Michael, I think you said something that was of interest too because I think we can look at IBM Watson as an example. And working in healthcare. The human component. Because often times we talk about machine learning and AI, and data and you get worried that you still need that human component. Especially in the world of healthcare. And I think that's a very strong point when it comes to the data analysis side. Is there any particular example you can speak to of that? >> So I think that there was this really excellent paper a while ago talking about all the neuro net stuff and trained on textual data. So looking at sort of different corpuses. And they found that these models were highly, highly sexist. They would read these corpuses and it's not because neuro nets themselves are sexist. It's because they're reading the things that we write. And it turns out that we write kind of sexist things. And they would sort of find all these patterns in there that were sort of latent, that had a lot of sort of things that maybe we would cringe at if we sort of saw. And I think that's one of the really important aspects of the human element, right? It's being able to come in and sort of say like, okay, I know what the biases of the system are, I know what the biases of the tools are. I need to figure out how to use that to make the tools, make the world a better place. And like another area where this comes up all the time is lending, right? So the federal government has said, and we have a lot of clients in the financial services space, so they're constantly under these kind of rules that they can't make discriminatory lending practices based on a whole set of protected categories. Race, sex, gender, things like that. But, it's very easy when you train a model on credit scores to pick that up. And then to have a model that's inadvertently sexist or racist. And that's where you need the human element to come back in and say okay, look, you're using the classic example would be zip code, you're using zip code as a variable. But when you look at it, zip codes actually highly correlated with race. And you can't do that. So you may inadvertently by sort of following the math and being a little naive about the problem, inadvertently introduce something really horrible into a model and that's where you need a human element to sort of step in and say, okay hold on. Slow things down. This isn't the right way to go. >> And the people who have -- >> I feel like, I can feel her ready to respond. >> Yes, I'm ready. >> She's like let me have at it. >> And the people here it is. And the people who are really great at providing that human intelligence are social scientists. We are trained to look for bias and to understand bias in data. Whether it's quantitative or qualitative. And I really think that we're going to have less of these kind of problems if we had more integrated teams. If it was a mandate from leadership to say no data science team should be without a social scientist, ethnographer, or qualitative researcher of some kind, to be able to help see these biases. >> The talent piece is actually the most crucial-- >> Yeah. >> one here. If you look about how to enable machine intelligence in organization there are the pillars that I have in my head which is the culture, the talent and the technology infrastructure. And I believe and I saw in working very closely with the Fortune 100 and 200 companies that the talent piece is actually the most important crucial hard to get. >> [Tricia] I totally agree. >> It's absolutely true. Yeah, no I mean I think that's sort of like how we came up with our business model. Companies were basically saying hey, I can't hire data scientists. And so we have a fellowship where we get 2,000 applicants each quarter. We take the top 2% and then we sort of train them up. And we work with hiring companies who then want to hire from that population. And so we're sort of helping them solve that problem. And the other half of it is really around training. Cause with a lot of industries, especially if you're sort of in a more regulated industry, there's a lot of nuances to what you're doing. And the fastest way to develop that data science or AI talent may not necessarily be to hire folks who are coming out of a PhD program. It may be to take folks internally who have a lot of that domain knowledge that you have and get them trained up on those data science techniques. So we've had large insurance companies come to us and say hey look, we hire three or four folks from you a quarter. That doesn't move the needle for us. What we really need is take the thousand actuaries and statisticians that we have and get all of them trained up to become a data scientist and become data literate in this new open source world. >> [Katie] Go ahead. >> All right, ladies first. >> Go ahead. >> Are you sure? >> No please, fight first. >> Go ahead. >> Go ahead Nir. >> So this is actually a trend that we have been seeing in the past year or so that companies kind of like start to look how to upscale and look for talent within the organization. So they can actually move them to become more literate and navigate 'em from analyst to data scientist. And from data scientist to machine learner. So this is actually a trend that is happening already for a year or so. >> Yeah, but I also find that after they've gone through that training in getting people skilled up in data science, the next problem that I get is executives coming to say we've invested in all of this. We're still not moving the needle. We've already invested in the right tools. We've gotten the right skills. We have enough scale of people who have these skills. Why are we not moving the needle? And what I explain to them is look, you're still making decisions in the same way. And you're still not involving enough of the non technical people. Especially from marketing, which is now, the CMO's are much more responsible for driving growth in their companies now. But often times it's so hard to change the old way of marketing, which is still like very segmentation. You know, demographic variable based, and we're trying to move people to say no, you have to understand the complexity of customers and not put them in boxes. >> And I think underlying a lot of this discussion is this question of culture, right? >> Yes. >> Absolutely. >> How do you build a data driven culture? And I think that that culture question, one of the ways that comes up quite often in especially in large, Fortune 500 enterprises, is that they are very, they're not very comfortable with sort of example, open source architecture. Open source tools. And there is some sort of residual bias that that's somehow dangerous. So security vulnerability. And I think that that's part of the cultural challenge that they often have in terms of how do I build a more data driven organization? Well a lot of the talent really wants to use these kind of tools. And I mean, just to give you an example, we are partnering with one of the major cloud providers to sort of help make open source tools more user friendly on their platform. So trying to help them attract the best technologists to use their platform because they want and they understand the value of having that kind of open source technology work seamlessly on their platforms. So I think that just sort of goes to show you how important open source is in this movement. And how much large companies and Fortune 500 companies and a lot of the ones we work with have to embrace that. >> Yeah, and I'm seeing it in our work. Even when we're working with Fortune 500 companies, is that they've already gone through the first phase of data science work. Where I explain it was all about the tools and getting the right tools and architecture in place. And then companies started moving into getting the right skill set in place. Getting the right talent. And what you're talking about with culture is really where I think we're talking about the third phase of data science, which is looking at communication of these technical frameworks so that we can get non technical people really comfortable in the same room with data scientists. That is going to be the phase, that's really where I see the pain point. And that's why at Sudden Compass, we're really dedicated to working with each other to figure out how do we solve this problem now? >> And I think that communication between the technical stakeholders and management and leadership. That's a very critical piece of this. You can't have a successful data science organization without that. >> Absolutely. >> And I think that actually some of the most popular trainings we've had recently are from managers and executives who are looking to say, how do I become more data savvy? How do I figure out what is this data science thing and how do I communicate with my data scientists? >> You guys made this way too easy. I was just going to get some popcorn and watch it play out. >> Nir, last 30 seconds. I want to leave you with an opportunity to, anything you want to add to this conversation? >> I think one thing to conclude is to say that companies that are not data driven is about time to hit refresh and figure how they transition the organization to become data driven. To become agile and nimble so they can actually see what opportunities from this important industrial revolution. Otherwise, unfortunately they will have hard time to survive. >> [Katie] All agreed? >> [Tricia] Absolutely, you're right. >> Michael, Trish, Nir, thank you so much. Fascinating discussion. And thank you guys again for joining us. We will be right back with another great demo. Right after this. >> Thank you Katie. >> Once again, thank you for an excellent discussion. Weren't they great guys? And thank you for everyone who's tuning in on the live webcast. As you can hear, we have an amazing studio audience here. And we're going to keep things moving. I'm now joined by Daniel Hernandez and Siva Anne. And we're going to turn our attention to how you can deliver on what they're talking about using data science experience to do data science faster. >> Thank you Katie. Siva and I are going to spend the next 10 minutes showing you how you can deliver on what they were saying using the IBM Data Science Experience to do data science faster. We'll demonstrate through new features we introduced this week how teams can work together more effectively across the entire analytics life cycle. How you can take advantage of any and all data no matter where it is and what it is. How you could use your favorite tools from open source. And finally how you could build models anywhere and employ them close to where your data is. Remember the financial adviser app Rob showed you? To build an app like that, we needed a team of data scientists, developers, data engineers, and IT staff to collaborate. We do this in the Data Science Experience through a concept we call projects. When I create a new project, I can now use the new Github integration feature. We're doing for data science what we've been doing for developers for years. Distributed teams can work together on analytics projects. And take advantage of Github's version management and change management features. This is a huge deal. Let's explore the project we created for the financial adviser app. As you can see, our data engineer Joane, our developer Rob, and others are collaborating this project. Joane got things started by bringing together the trusted data sources we need to build the app. Taking a closer look at the data, we see that our customer and profile data is stored on our recently announced IBM Integrated Analytics System, which runs safely behind our firewall. We also needed macro economic data, which she was able to find in the Federal Reserve. And she stored it in our Db2 Warehouse on Cloud. And finally, she selected stock news data from NASDAQ.com and landed that in a Hadoop cluster, which happens to be powered by Hortonworks. We added a new feature to the Data Science Experience so that when it's installed with Hortonworks, it automatically uses a need of security and governance controls within the cluster so your data is always secure and safe. Now we want to show you the news data we stored in the Hortonworks cluster. This is the mean administrative console. It's powered by an open source project called Ambari. And here's the news data. It's in parquet files stored in HDFS, which happens to be a distributive file system. To get the data from NASDAQ into our cluster, we used IBM's BigIntegrate and BigQuality to create automatic data pipelines that acquire, cleanse, and ingest that news data. Once the data's available, we use IBM's Big SQL to query that data using SQL statements that are much like the ones we would use for any relation of data, including the data that we have in the Integrated Analytics System and Db2 Warehouse on Cloud. This and the federation capabilities that Big SQL offers dramatically simplifies data acquisition. Now we want to show you how we support a brand new tool that we're excited about. Since we launched last summer, the Data Science Experience has supported Jupyter and R for data analysis and visualization. In this week's update, we deeply integrated another great open source project called Apache Zeppelin. It's known for having great visualization support, advanced collaboration features, and is growing in popularity amongst the data science community. This is an example of Apache Zeppelin and the notebook we created through it to explore some of our data. Notice how wonderful and easy the data visualizations are. Now we want to walk you through the Jupyter notebook we created to explore our customer preference for stocks. We use notebooks to understand and explore data. To identify the features that have some predictive power. Ultimately, we're trying to assess what ultimately is driving customer stock preference. Here we did the analysis to identify the attributes of customers that are likely to purchase auto stocks. We used this understanding to build our machine learning model. For building machine learning models, we've always had tools integrated into the Data Science Experience. But sometimes you need to use tools you already invested in. Like our very own SPSS as well as SAS. Through new import feature, you can easily import those models created with those tools. This helps you avoid vendor lock-in, and simplify the development, training, deployment, and management of all your models. To build the models we used in app, we could have coded, but we prefer a visual experience. We used our customer profile data in the Integrated Analytic System. Used the Auto Data Preparation to cleanse our data. Choose the binary classification algorithms. Let the Data Science Experience evaluate between logistic regression and gradient boosted tree. It's doing the heavy work for us. As you can see here, the Data Science Experience generated performance metrics that show us that the gradient boosted tree is the best performing algorithm for the data we gave it. Once we save this model, it's automatically deployed and available for developers to use. Any application developer can take this endpoint and consume it like they would any other API inside of the apps they built. We've made training and creating machine learning models super simple. But what about the operations? A lot of companies are struggling to ensure their model performance remains high over time. In our financial adviser app, we know that customer data changes constantly, so we need to always monitor model performance and ensure that our models are retrained as is necessary. This is a dashboard that shows the performance of our models and lets our teams monitor and retrain those models so that they're always performing to our standards. So far we've been showing you the Data Science Experience available behind the firewall that we're using to build and train models. Through a new publish feature, you can build models and deploy them anywhere. In another environment, private, public, or anywhere else with just a few clicks. So here we're publishing our model to the Watson machine learning service. It happens to be in the IBM cloud. And also deeply integrated with our Data Science Experience. After publishing and switching to the Watson machine learning service, you can see that our stock affinity and model that we just published is there and ready for use. So this is incredibly important. I just want to say it again. The Data Science Experience allows you to train models behind your own firewall, take advantage of your proprietary and sensitive data, and then deploy those models wherever you want with ease. So summarize what we just showed you. First, IBM's Data Science Experience supports all teams. You saw how our data engineer populated our project with trusted data sets. Our data scientists developed, trained, and tested a machine learning model. Our developers used APIs to integrate machine learning into their apps. And how IT can use our Integrated Model Management dashboard to monitor and manage model performance. Second, we support all data. On premises, in the cloud, structured, unstructured, inside of your firewall, and outside of it. We help you bring analytics and governance to where your data is. Third, we support all tools. The data science tools that you depend on are readily available and deeply integrated. This includes capabilities from great partners like Hortonworks. And powerful tools like our very own IBM SPSS. And fourth, and finally, we support all deployments. You can build your models anywhere, and deploy them right next to where your data is. Whether that's in the public cloud, private cloud, or even on the world's most reliable transaction platform, IBM z. So see for yourself. Go to the Data Science Experience website, take us for a spin. And if you happen to be ready right now, our recently created Data Science Elite Team can help you get started and run experiments alongside you with no charge. Thank you very much. >> Thank you very much Daniel. It seems like a great time to get started. And thanks to Siva for taking us through it. Rob and I will be back in just a moment to add some perspective right after this. All right, once again joined by Rob Thomas. And Rob obviously we got a lot of information here. >> Yes, we've covered a lot of ground. >> This is intense. You got to break it down for me cause I think we zoom out and see the big picture. What better data science can deliver to a business? Why is this so important? I mean we've heard it through and through. >> Yeah, well, I heard it a couple times. But it starts with businesses have to embrace a data driven culture. And it is a change. And we need to make data accessible with the right tools in a collaborative culture because we've got diverse skill sets in every organization. But data driven companies succeed when data science tools are in the hands of everyone. And I think that's a new thought. I think most companies think just get your data scientist some tools, you'll be fine. This is about tools in the hands of everyone. I think the panel did a great job of describing about how we get to data science for all. Building a data culture, making it a part of your everyday operations, and the highlights of what Daniel just showed us, that's some pretty cool features for how organizations can get to this, which is you can see IBM's Data Science Experience, how that supports all teams. You saw data analysts, data scientists, application developer, IT staff, all working together. Second, you saw how we support all tools. And your choice of tools. So the most popular data science libraries integrated into one platform. And we saw some new capabilities that help companies avoid lock-in, where you can import existing models created from specialist tools like SPSS or others. And then deploy them and manage them inside of Data Science Experience. That's pretty interesting. And lastly, you see we continue to build on this best of open tools. Partnering with companies like H2O, Hortonworks, and others. Third, you can see how you use all data no matter where it lives. That's a key challenge every organization's going to face. Private, public, federating all data sources. We announced new integration with the Hortonworks data platform where we deploy machine learning models where your data resides. That's been a key theme. Analytics where the data is. And lastly, supporting all types of deployments. Deploy them in your Hadoop cluster. Deploy them in your Integrated Analytic System. Or deploy them in z, just to name a few. A lot of different options here. But look, don't believe anything I say. Go try it for yourself. Data Science Experience, anybody can use it. Go to datascience.ibm.com and look, if you want to start right now, we just created a team that we call Data Science Elite. These are the best data scientists in the world that will come sit down with you and co-create solutions, models, and prove out a proof of concept. >> Good stuff. Thank you Rob. So you might be asking what does an organization look like that embraces data science for all? And how could it transform your role? I'm going to head back to the office and check it out. Let's start with the perspective of the line of business. What's changed? Well, now you're starting to explore new business models. You've uncovered opportunities for new revenue sources and all that hidden data. And being disrupted is no longer keeping you up at night. As a data science leader, you're beginning to collaborate with a line of business to better understand and translate the objectives into the models that are being built. Your data scientists are also starting to collaborate with the less technical team members and analysts who are working closest to the business problem. And as a data scientist, you stop feeling like you're falling behind. Open source tools are keeping you current. You're also starting to operationalize the work that you do. And you get to do more of what you love. Explore data, build models, put your models into production, and create business impact. All in all, it's not a bad scenario. Thanks. All right. We are back and coming up next, oh this is a special time right now. Cause we got a great guest speaker. New York Magazine called him the spreadsheet psychic and number crunching prodigy who went from correctly forecasting baseball games to correctly forecasting presidential elections. He even invented a proprietary algorithm called PECOTA for predicting future performance by baseball players and teams. And his New York Times bestselling book, The Signal and the Noise was named by Amazon.com as the number one best non-fiction book of 2012. He's currently the Editor in Chief of the award winning website, FiveThirtyEight and appears on ESPN as an on air commentator. Big round of applause. My pleasure to welcome Nate Silver. >> Thank you. We met backstage. >> Yes. >> It feels weird to re-shake your hand, but you know, for the audience. >> I had to give the intense firm grip. >> Definitely. >> The ninja grip. So you and I have crossed paths kind of digitally in the past, which it really interesting, is I started my career at ESPN. And I started as a production assistant, then later back on air for sports technology. And I go to you to talk about sports because-- >> Yeah. >> Wow, has ESPN upped their game in terms of understanding the importance of data and analytics. And what it brings. Not just to MLB, but across the board. >> No, it's really infused into the way they present the broadcast. You'll have win probability on the bottom line. And they'll incorporate FiveThirtyEight metrics into how they cover college football for example. So, ESPN ... Sports is maybe the perfect, if you're a data scientist, like the perfect kind of test case. And the reason being that sports consists of problems that have rules. And have structure. And when problems have rules and structure, then it's a lot easier to work with. So it's a great way to kind of improve your skills as a data scientist. Of course, there are also important real world problems that are more open ended, and those present different types of challenges. But it's such a natural fit. The teams. Think about the teams playing the World Series tonight. The Dodgers and the Astros are both like very data driven, especially Houston. Golden State Warriors, the NBA Champions, extremely data driven. New England Patriots, relative to an NFL team, it's shifted a little bit, the NFL bar is lower. But the Patriots are certainly very analytical in how they make decisions. So, you can't talk about sports without talking about analytics. >> And I was going to save the baseball question for later. Cause we are moments away from game seven. >> Yeah. >> Is everyone else watching game seven? It's been an incredible series. Probably one of the best of all time. >> Yeah, I mean-- >> You have a prediction here? >> You can mention that too. So I don't have a prediction. FiveThirtyEight has the Dodgers with a 60% chance of winning. >> [Katie] LA Fans. >> So you have two teams that are about equal. But the Dodgers pitching staff is in better shape at the moment. The end of a seven game series. And they're at home. >> But the statistics behind the two teams is pretty incredible. >> Yeah. It's like the first World Series in I think 56 years or something where you have two 100 win teams facing one another. There have been a lot of parity in baseball for a lot of years. Not that many offensive overall juggernauts. But this year, and last year with the Cubs and the Indians too really. But this year, you have really spectacular teams in the World Series. It kind of is a showcase of modern baseball. Lots of home runs. Lots of strikeouts. >> [Katie] Lots of extra innings. >> Lots of extra innings. Good defense. Lots of pitching changes. So if you love the modern baseball game, it's been about the best example that you've had. If you like a little bit more contact, and fewer strikeouts, maybe not so much. But it's been a spectacular and very exciting World Series. It's amazing to talk. MLB is huge with analysis. I mean, hands down. But across the board, if you can provide a few examples. Because there's so many teams in front offices putting such an, just a heavy intensity on the analysis side. And where the teams are going. And if you could provide any specific examples of teams that have really blown your mind. Especially over the last year or two. Because every year it gets more exciting if you will. I mean, so a big thing in baseball is defensive shifts. So if you watch tonight, you'll probably see a couple of plays where if you're used to watching baseball, a guy makes really solid contact. And there's a fielder there that you don't think should be there. But that's really very data driven where you analyze where's this guy hit the ball. That part's not so hard. But also there's game theory involved. Because you have to adjust for the fact that he knows where you're positioning the defenders. He's trying therefore to make adjustments to his own swing and so that's been a major innovation in how baseball is played. You know, how bullpens are used too. Where teams have realized that actually having a guy, across all sports pretty much, realizing the importance of rest. And of fatigue. And that you can be the best pitcher in the world, but guess what? After four or five innings, you're probably not as good as a guy who has a fresh arm necessarily. So I mean, it really is like, these are not subtle things anymore. It's not just oh, on base percentage is valuable. It really effects kind of every strategic decision in baseball. The NBA, if you watch an NBA game tonight, see how many three point shots are taken. That's in part because of data. And teams realizing hey, three points is worth more than two, once you're more than about five feet from the basket, the shooting percentage gets really flat. And so it's revolutionary, right? Like teams that will shoot almost half their shots from the three point range nowadays. Larry Bird, who wound up being one of the greatest three point shooters of all time, took only eight three pointers his first year in the NBA. It's quite noticeable if you watch baseball or basketball in particular. >> Not to focus too much on sports. One final question. In terms of Major League Soccer, and now in NFL, we're having the analysis and having wearables where it can now showcase if they wanted to on screen, heart rate and breathing and how much exertion. How much data is too much data? And when does it ruin the sport? >> So, I don't think, I mean, again, it goes sport by sport a little bit. I think in basketball you actually have a more exciting game. I think the game is more open now. You have more three pointers. You have guys getting higher assist totals. But you know, I don't know. I'm not one of those people who thinks look, if you love baseball or basketball, and you go in to work for the Astros, the Yankees or the Knicks, they probably need some help, right? You really have to be passionate about that sport. Because it's all based on what questions am I asking? As I'm a fan or I guess an employee of the team. Or a player watching the game. And there isn't really any substitute I don't think for the insight and intuition that a curious human has to kind of ask the right questions. So we can talk at great length about what tools do you then apply when you have those questions, but that still comes from people. I don't think machine learning could help with what questions do I want to ask of the data. It might help you get the answers. >> If you have a mid-fielder in a soccer game though, not exerting, only 80%, and you're seeing that on a screen as a fan, and you're saying could that person get fired at the end of the day? One day, with the data? >> So we found that actually some in soccer in particular, some of the better players are actually more still. So Leo Messi, maybe the best player in the world, doesn't move as much as other soccer players do. And the reason being that A) he kind of knows how to position himself in the first place. B) he realizes that you make a run, and you're out of position. That's quite fatiguing. And particularly soccer, like basketball, is a sport where it's incredibly fatiguing. And so, sometimes the guys who conserve their energy, that kind of old school mentality, you have to hustle at every moment. That is not helpful to the team if you're hustling on an irrelevant play. And therefore, on a critical play, can't get back on defense, for example. >> Sports, but also data is moving exponentially as we're just speaking about today. Tech, healthcare, every different industry. Is there any particular that's a favorite of yours to cover? And I imagine they're all different as well. >> I mean, I do like sports. We cover a lot of politics too. Which is different. I mean in politics I think people aren't intuitively as data driven as they might be in sports for example. It's impressive to follow the breakthroughs in artificial intelligence. It started out just as kind of playing games and playing chess and poker and Go and things like that. But you really have seen a lot of breakthroughs in the last couple of years. But yeah, it's kind of infused into everything really. >> You're known for your work in politics though. Especially presidential campaigns. >> Yeah. >> This year, in particular. Was it insanely challenging? What was the most notable thing that came out of any of your predictions? >> I mean, in some ways, looking at the polling was the easiest lens to look at it. So I think there's kind of a myth that last year's result was a big shock and it wasn't really. If you did the modeling in the right way, then you realized that number one, polls have a margin of error. And so when a candidate has a three point lead, that's not particularly safe. Number two, the outcome between different states is correlated. Meaning that it's not that much of a surprise that Clinton lost Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania and Ohio. You know I'm from Michigan. Have friends from all those states. Kind of the same types of people in those states. Those outcomes are all correlated. So what people thought was a big upset for the polls I think was an example of how data science done carefully and correctly where you understand probabilities, understand correlations. Our model gave Trump a 30% chance of winning. Others models gave him a 1% chance. And so that was interesting in that it showed that number one, that modeling strategies and skill do matter quite a lot. When you have someone saying 30% versus 1%. I mean, that's a very very big spread. And number two, that these aren't like solved problems necessarily. Although again, the problem with elections is that you only have one election every four years. So I can be very confident that I have a better model. Even one year of data doesn't really prove very much. Even five or 10 years doesn't really prove very much. And so, being aware of the limitations to some extent intrinsically in elections when you only get one kind of new training example every four years, there's not really any way around that. There are ways to be more robust to sparce data environments. But if you're identifying different types of business problems to solve, figuring out what's a solvable problem where I can add value with data science is a really key part of what you're doing. >> You're such a leader in this space. In data and analysis. It would be interesting to kind of peek back the curtain, understand how you operate but also how large is your team? How you're putting together information. How quickly you're putting it out. Cause I think in this right now world where everybody wants things instantly-- >> Yeah. >> There's also, you want to be first too in the world of journalism. But you don't want to be inaccurate because that's your credibility. >> We talked about this before, right? I think on average, speed is a little bit overrated in journalism. >> [Katie] I think it's a big problem in journalism. >> Yeah. >> Especially in the tech world. You have to be first. You have to be first. And it's just pumping out, pumping out. And there's got to be more time spent on stories if I can speak subjectively. >> Yeah, for sure. But at the same time, we are reacting to the news. And so we have people that come in, we hire most of our people actually from journalism. >> [Katie] How many people do you have on your team? >> About 35. But, if you get someone who comes in from an academic track for example, they might be surprised at how fast journalism is. That even though we might be slower than the average website, the fact that there's a tragic event in New York, are there things we have to say about that? A candidate drops out of the presidential race, are things we have to say about that. In periods ranging from minutes to days as opposed to kind of weeks to months to years in the academic world. The corporate world moves faster. What is a little different about journalism is that you are expected to have more precision where people notice when you make a mistake. In corporations, you have maybe less transparency. If you make 10 investments and seven of them turn out well, then you'll get a lot of profit from that, right? In journalism, it's a little different. If you make kind of seven predictions or say seven things, and seven of them are very accurate and three of them aren't, you'll still get criticized a lot for the three. Just because that's kind of the way that journalism is. And so the kind of combination of needing, not having that much tolerance for mistakes, but also needing to be fast. That is tricky. And I criticize other journalists sometimes including for not being data driven enough, but the best excuse any journalist has, this is happening really fast and it's my job to kind of figure out in real time what's going on and provide useful information to the readers. And that's really difficult. Especially in a world where literally, I'll probably get off the stage and check my phone and who knows what President Trump will have tweeted or what things will have happened. But it really is a kind of 24/7. >> Well because it's 24/7 with FiveThirtyEight, one of the most well known sites for data, are you feeling micromanagey on your people? Because you do have to hit this balance. You can't have something come out four or five days later. >> Yeah, I'm not -- >> Are you overseeing everything? >> I'm not by nature a micromanager. And so you try to hire well. You try and let people make mistakes. And the flip side of this is that if a news organization that never had any mistakes, never had any corrections, that's raw, right? You have to have some tolerance for error because you are trying to decide things in real time. And figure things out. I think transparency's a big part of that. Say here's what we think, and here's why we think it. If we have a model to say it's not just the final number, here's a lot of detail about how that's calculated. In some case we release the code and the raw data. Sometimes we don't because there's a proprietary advantage. But quite often we're saying we want you to trust us and it's so important that you trust us, here's the model. Go play around with it yourself. Here's the data. And that's also I think an important value. >> That speaks to open source. And your perspective on that in general. >> Yeah, I mean, look, I'm a big fan of open source. I worry that I think sometimes the trends are a little bit away from open source. But by the way, one thing that happens when you share your data or you share your thinking at least in lieu of the data, and you can definitely do both is that readers will catch embarrassing mistakes that you made. By the way, even having open sourceness within your team, I mean we have editors and copy editors who often save you from really embarrassing mistakes. And by the way, it's not necessarily people who have a training in data science. I would guess that of our 35 people, maybe only five to 10 have a kind of formal background in what you would call data science. >> [Katie] I think that speaks to the theme here. >> Yeah. >> [Katie] That everybody's kind of got to be data literate. >> But yeah, it is like you have a good intuition. You have a good BS detector basically. And you have a good intuition for hey, this looks a little bit out of line to me. And sometimes that can be based on domain knowledge, right? We have one of our copy editors, she's a big college football fan. And we had an algorithm we released that tries to predict what the human being selection committee will do, and she was like, why is LSU rated so high? Cause I know that LSU sucks this year. And we looked at it, and she was right. There was a bug where it had forgotten to account for their last game where they lost to Troy or something and so -- >> That also speaks to the human element as well. >> It does. In general as a rule, if you're designing a kind of regression based model, it's different in machine learning where you have more, when you kind of build in the tolerance for error. But if you're trying to do something more precise, then so much of it is just debugging. It's saying that looks wrong to me. And I'm going to investigate that. And sometimes it's not wrong. Sometimes your model actually has an insight that you didn't have yourself. But fairly often, it is. And I think kind of what you learn is like, hey if there's something that bothers me, I want to go investigate that now and debug that now. Because the last thing you want is where all of a sudden, the answer you're putting out there in the world hinges on a mistake that you made. Cause you never know if you have so to speak, 1,000 lines of code and they all perform something differently. You never know when you get in a weird edge case where this one decision you made winds up being the difference between your having a good forecast and a bad one. In a defensible position and a indefensible one. So we definitely are quite diligent and careful. But it's also kind of knowing like, hey, where is an approximation good enough and where do I need more precision? Cause you could also drive yourself crazy in the other direction where you know, it doesn't matter if the answer is 91.2 versus 90. And so you can kind of go 91.2, three, four and it's like kind of A) false precision and B) not a good use of your time. So that's where I do still spend a lot of time is thinking about which problems are "solvable" or approachable with data and which ones aren't. And when they're not by the way, you're still allowed to report on them. We are a news organization so we do traditional reporting as well. And then kind of figuring out when do you need precision versus when is being pointed in the right direction good enough? >> I would love to get inside your brain and see how you operate on just like an everyday walking to Walgreens movement. It's like oh, if I cross the street in .2-- >> It's not, I mean-- >> Is it like maddening in there? >> No, not really. I mean, I'm like-- >> This is an honest question. >> If I'm looking for airfares, I'm a little more careful. But no, part of it's like you don't want to waste time on unimportant decisions, right? I will sometimes, if I can't decide what to eat at a restaurant, I'll flip a coin. If the chicken and the pasta both sound really good-- >> That's not high tech Nate. We want better. >> But that's the point, right? It's like both the chicken and the pasta are going to be really darn good, right? So I'm not going to waste my time trying to figure it out. I'm just going to have an arbitrary way to decide. >> Serious and business, how organizations in the last three to five years have just evolved with this data boom. How are you seeing it as from a consultant point of view? Do you think it's an exciting time? Do you think it's a you must act now time? >> I mean, we do know that you definitely see a lot of talent among the younger generation now. That so FiveThirtyEight has been at ESPN for four years now. And man, the quality of the interns we get has improved so much in four years. The quality of the kind of young hires that we make straight out of college has improved so much in four years. So you definitely do see a younger generation for which this is just part of their bloodstream and part of their DNA. And also, particular fields that we're interested in. So we're interested in people who have both a data and a journalism background. We're interested in people who have a visualization and a coding background. A lot of what we do is very much interactive graphics and so forth. And so we do see those skill sets coming into play a lot more. And so the kind of shortage of talent that had I think frankly been a problem for a long time, I'm optimistic based on the young people in our office, it's a little anecdotal but you can tell that there are so many more programs that are kind of teaching students the right set of skills that maybe weren't taught as much a few years ago. >> But when you're seeing these big organizations, ESPN as perfect example, moving more towards data and analytics than ever before. >> Yeah. >> You would say that's obviously true. >> Oh for sure. >> If you're not moving that direction, you're going to fall behind quickly. >> Yeah and the thing is, if you read my book or I guess people have a copy of the book. In some ways it's saying hey, there are lot of ways to screw up when you're using data. And we've built bad models. We've had models that were bad and got good results. Good models that got bad results and everything else. But the point is that the reason to be out in front of the problem is so you give yourself more runway to make errors and mistakes. And to learn kind of what works and what doesn't and which people to put on the problem. I sometimes do worry that a company says oh we need data. And everyone kind of agrees on that now. We need data science. Then they have some big test case. And they have a failure. And they maybe have a failure because they didn't know really how to use it well enough. But learning from that and iterating on that. And so by the time that you're on the third generation of kind of a problem that you're trying to solve, and you're watching everyone else make the mistake that you made five years ago, I mean, that's really powerful. But that doesn't mean that getting invested in it now, getting invested both in technology and the human capital side is important. >> Final question for you as we run out of time. 2018 beyond, what is your biggest project in terms of data gathering that you're working on? >> There's a midterm election coming up. That's a big thing for us. We're also doing a lot of work with NBA data. So for four years now, the NBA has been collecting player tracking data. So they have 3D cameras in every arena. So they can actually kind of quantify for example how fast a fast break is, for example. Or literally where a player is and where the ball is. For every NBA game now for the past four or five years. And there hasn't really been an overall metric of player value that's taken advantage of that. The teams do it. But in the NBA, the teams are a little bit ahead of journalists and analysts. So we're trying to have a really truly next generation stat. It's a lot of data. Sometimes I now more oversee things than I once did myself. And so you're parsing through many, many, many lines of code. But yeah, so we hope to have that out at some point in the next few months. >> Anything you've personally been passionate about that you've wanted to work on and kind of solve? >> I mean, the NBA thing, I am a pretty big basketball fan. >> You can do better than that. Come on, I want something real personal that you're like I got to crunch the numbers. >> You know, we tried to figure out where the best burrito in America was a few years ago. >> I'm going to end it there. >> Okay. >> Nate, thank you so much for joining us. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you. >> Cool, thank you. >> I thought we were going to chat World Series, you know. Burritos, important. I want to thank everybody here in our audience. Let's give him a big round of applause. >> [Nate] Thank you everyone. >> Perfect way to end the day. And for a replay of today's program, just head on over to ibm.com/dsforall. I'm Katie Linendoll. And this has been Data Science for All: It's a Whole New Game. Test one, two. One, two, three. Hi guys, I just want to quickly let you know as you're exiting. A few heads up. Downstairs right now there's going to be a meet and greet with Nate. And we're going to be doing that with clients and customers who are interested. So I would recommend before the game starts, and you lose Nate, head on downstairs. And also the gallery is open until eight p.m. with demos and activations. And tomorrow, make sure to come back too. Because we have exciting stuff. I'll be joining you as your host. And we're kicking off at nine a.m. So bye everybody, thank you so much. >> [Announcer] Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for attending this evening's webcast. If you are not attending all cloud and cognitive summit tomorrow, we ask that you recycle your name badge at the registration desk. Thank you. Also, please note there are two exits on the back of the room on either side of the room. Have a good evening. Ladies and gentlemen, the meet and greet will be on stage. Thank you.
SUMMARY :
Today the ability to extract value from data is becoming a shared mission. And for all of you during the program, I want to remind you to join that conversation on And when you and I chatted about it. And the scale and complexity of the data that organizations are having to deal with has It's challenging in the world of unmanageable. And they have to find a way. AI. And it's incredible that this buzz word is happening. And to get to an AI future, you have to lay a data foundation today. And four is you got to expand job roles in the organization. First pillar in this you just discussed. And now you get to where we are today. And if you don't have a strategy for how you acquire that and manage it, you're not going And the way I think about that is it's really about moving from static data repositories And we continue with the architecture. So you need a way to federate data across different environments. So we've laid out what you need for driving automation. And so when you think about the real use cases that are driving return on investment today, Let's go ahead and come back to something that you mentioned earlier because it's fascinating And so the new job roles is about how does everybody have data first in their mind? Everybody in the company has to be data literate. So overall, group effort, has to be a common goal, and we all need to be data literate But at the end of the day, it's kind of not an easy task. It's not easy but it's maybe not as big of a shift as you would think. It's interesting to hear you say essentially you need to train everyone though across the And look, if you want to get your hands on code and just dive right in, you go to datascience.ibm.com. And I've heard that the placement behind those jobs, people graduating with the MS is high. Let me get back to something else you touched on earlier because you mentioned that a number They produce a lot of the shows that I'm sure you watch Katie. And this is a good example. So they have to optimize every aspect of their business from marketing campaigns to promotions And so, as we talk to clients we think about how do you start down this path now, even It's analytics first to the data, not the other way around. We as a practice, we say you want to bring data to where the data sits. And a Harvard Business Review even dubbed it the sexiest job of the 21st century. Female preferred, on the cover of Vogue. And how does it change everything? And while it's important to recognize this critical skill set, you can't just limit it And we call it clickers and coders. [Katie] I like that. And there's not a lot of things available today that do that. Because I hear you talking about the data scientists role and how it's critical to success, And my view is if you have the right platform, it enables the organization to collaborate. And every organization needs to think about what are the skills that are critical? Use this as your chance to reinvent IT. And I can tell you even personally being effected by how important the analysis is in working And think about if you don't do something. And now we're going to get to the fun hands on part of our story. And then how do you move analytics closer to your data? And in here I can see that JP Morgan is calling for a US dollar rebound in the second half But then where it gets interesting is you go to the bottom. data, his stock portfolios, and browsing behavior to build a model which can predict his affinity And so, as a financial adviser, you look at this and you say, all right, we know he loves And I want to do that by picking a auto stock which has got negative correlation with Ferrari. Cause you start clicking that and immediately we're getting instant answers of what's happening. And what I see here instantly is that Honda has got a negative correlation with Ferrari, As a financial adviser, you wouldn't think about federating data, machine learning, pretty And drive the machine learning into the appliance. And even score hundreds of customers for their affinities on a daily basis. And then you see when you deploy analytics next to your data, even a financial adviser, And as a data science leader or data scientist, you have a lot of the same concerns. But you guys each have so many unique roles in your business life. And just by looking at the demand of companies that wants us to help them go through this And I think the whole ROI of data is that you can now understand people's relationships Well you can have all the data in the world, and I think it speaks to, if you're not doing And I think that that's one of the things that customers are coming to us for, right? And Nir, this is something you work with a lot. And the companies that are not like that. Tricia, companies have to deal with data behind the firewall and in the new multi cloud And so that's why I think it's really important to understand that when you implement big And how are the clients, how are the users actually interacting with the system? And right now the way I see teams being set up inside companies is that they're creating But in order to actually see all of the RY behind the data, you also have to have a creative That's one of the things that we see a lot. So a lot of the training we do is sort of data engineers. And I think that's a very strong point when it comes to the data analysis side. And that's where you need the human element to come back in and say okay, look, you're And the people who are really great at providing that human intelligence are social scientists. the talent piece is actually the most important crucial hard to get. It may be to take folks internally who have a lot of that domain knowledge that you have And from data scientist to machine learner. And what I explain to them is look, you're still making decisions in the same way. And I mean, just to give you an example, we are partnering with one of the major cloud And what you're talking about with culture is really where I think we're talking about And I think that communication between the technical stakeholders and management You guys made this way too easy. I want to leave you with an opportunity to, anything you want to add to this conversation? I think one thing to conclude is to say that companies that are not data driven is And thank you guys again for joining us. And we're going to turn our attention to how you can deliver on what they're talking about And finally how you could build models anywhere and employ them close to where your data is. And thanks to Siva for taking us through it. You got to break it down for me cause I think we zoom out and see the big picture. And we saw some new capabilities that help companies avoid lock-in, where you can import And as a data scientist, you stop feeling like you're falling behind. We met backstage. And I go to you to talk about sports because-- And what it brings. And the reason being that sports consists of problems that have rules. And I was going to save the baseball question for later. Probably one of the best of all time. FiveThirtyEight has the Dodgers with a 60% chance of winning. So you have two teams that are about equal. It's like the first World Series in I think 56 years or something where you have two 100 And that you can be the best pitcher in the world, but guess what? And when does it ruin the sport? So we can talk at great length about what tools do you then apply when you have those And the reason being that A) he kind of knows how to position himself in the first place. And I imagine they're all different as well. But you really have seen a lot of breakthroughs in the last couple of years. You're known for your work in politics though. What was the most notable thing that came out of any of your predictions? And so, being aware of the limitations to some extent intrinsically in elections when It would be interesting to kind of peek back the curtain, understand how you operate but But you don't want to be inaccurate because that's your credibility. I think on average, speed is a little bit overrated in journalism. And there's got to be more time spent on stories if I can speak subjectively. And so we have people that come in, we hire most of our people actually from journalism. And so the kind of combination of needing, not having that much tolerance for mistakes, Because you do have to hit this balance. And so you try to hire well. And your perspective on that in general. But by the way, one thing that happens when you share your data or you share your thinking And you have a good intuition for hey, this looks a little bit out of line to me. And I think kind of what you learn is like, hey if there's something that bothers me, It's like oh, if I cross the street in .2-- I mean, I'm like-- But no, part of it's like you don't want to waste time on unimportant decisions, right? We want better. It's like both the chicken and the pasta are going to be really darn good, right? Serious and business, how organizations in the last three to five years have just And man, the quality of the interns we get has improved so much in four years. But when you're seeing these big organizations, ESPN as perfect example, moving more towards But the point is that the reason to be out in front of the problem is so you give yourself Final question for you as we run out of time. And so you're parsing through many, many, many lines of code. You can do better than that. You know, we tried to figure out where the best burrito in America was a few years Nate, thank you so much for joining us. I thought we were going to chat World Series, you know. And also the gallery is open until eight p.m. with demos and activations. If you are not attending all cloud and cognitive summit tomorrow, we ask that you recycle your
SENTIMENT ANALYSIS :
ENTITIES
Entity | Category | Confidence |
---|---|---|
Tricia Wang | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Katie | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Katie Linendoll | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Rob | PERSON | 0.99+ |
ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ | |
Joane | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Daniel | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Michael Li | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Nate Silver | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Apple | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
Hortonworks | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
Trump | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Nate | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Honda | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
Siva | PERSON | 0.99+ |
McKinsey | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
Amazon | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
Larry Bird | PERSON | 0.99+ |
2017 | DATE | 0.99+ |
Rob Thomas | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Michigan | LOCATION | 0.99+ |
Yankees | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
New York | LOCATION | 0.99+ |
Clinton | PERSON | 0.99+ |
IBM | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
Tesco | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
Michael | PERSON | 0.99+ |
America | LOCATION | 0.99+ |
Leo | PERSON | 0.99+ |
four years | QUANTITY | 0.99+ |
five | QUANTITY | 0.99+ |
30% | QUANTITY | 0.99+ |
Astros | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
Trish | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Sudden Compass | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
Leo Messi | PERSON | 0.99+ |
two teams | QUANTITY | 0.99+ |
1,000 lines | QUANTITY | 0.99+ |
one year | QUANTITY | 0.99+ |
10 investments | QUANTITY | 0.99+ |
NASDAQ | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
The Signal and the Noise | TITLE | 0.99+ |
Tricia | PERSON | 0.99+ |
Nir Kaldero | PERSON | 0.99+ |
80% | QUANTITY | 0.99+ |
BCG | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
Daniel Hernandez | PERSON | 0.99+ |
ESPN | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
H2O | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
Ferrari | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
last year | DATE | 0.99+ |
18 | QUANTITY | 0.99+ |
three | QUANTITY | 0.99+ |
Data Incubator | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |
Patriots | ORGANIZATION | 0.99+ |