Google 2010: Speed Becomes a Competitive Advantage
December 12, 2009
In real estate, the keys to success are location, location, and location. In software, the keys to success are speed, speed, and speed. Which vendor is speed crazed, addicted like pro football players to the fawning of the media? The Google. In fact, the facet of Google which few appreciate is the giddiness a Googler experiences when he or she can point out how few milliseconds a process consumes, how quickly a bloated JavaScript function performs, and how rapidly petabytes of dross can be shoved through a hydraulic data mining system.
The dirty little secret of the major vendors is that their systems are piggy. Going fast is not in the code’s DNA. I can identify some examples that will make make vendors squirm. Ready>
How do you make Oracle, IBM DB2 and Microsoft SQL Server go fast? Easy. Throw hardware at the problem. The good news is that this solution is good for the economy, resellers, and the professional babysitters who work as apologists for these aging and ponderous systems. The bad news is that one never finishes throwing hardware at these members of the Kubanochoerus clan.
How do you make a content management system go fast? Easy. Throw hardware at the problem, strip out custom scripts, and reduce the number of users. This works like a champ but it means that already inefficient components remain inefficient. Sigh.
How do you make some enterprise search systems go faster? Easy. Throw hardware at the problem, chop out custom scripts, reduce the number of supported sessions, eliminate certain hog like sub functions, reduce the number of documents processed, and limit the number of queries supported in a time slice.
Bet you don’t hear this type of information from your ever optimistic and cheerful vendors.
The reason I want to call attention to the issue of performance is that Google in 2010 is going to ride the performance pony. It makes little difference if you try to ignore the Google’s pitch, your chief financial officer is going to look at the bills for the status quo. If that guy or gal makes the connection between the traditional approach to IT and the new methods advocated by Google, the Google is going to do a loop-de-doop around the Oracle DBAs, the Microsoft Certified Professionals, and the phalanxes of IBM sales engineers. Google’s marketing allies are CFOs who need relief from IT cost pressure and anyone born before 1994.
You can see some of Google’s method in “Google Updates Web App Toolkit for Speed.” There are other examples which range from the Chrome browser being faster than Internet Explorer 8 to the Google DNS play. Google not only wants to become the Internet.
Google wants to become the love child of the original business drivers of the original odd couple—IBM and Microsoft. Oracle, SAP, and other firms will be orphans in this brave new world unless:
- Established enterprise software vendors find out how to deliver speed at a very competitive cost
- Find a way out of the crazy Sergio Leone code that established vendors distribute as the next big thing
- Can embrace and adapt to the new economic realities, abandoning the sit-around-the-campfire approach of talking about the good old days.
There you have it. Google will attack using performance as the pointy end of its marketing. Once the pointy end sticks an established vendor in a vulnerable spot like the buttocks, the Google will move in with cost and ease of use. You can get lots of detail in my Google trilogy.
Okay, now tell me how wrong I am. Just bring facts. For example, I point out in my monographs specific Google innovations related to performance. Don’t tell me about SharePoint’s or Oracle’s legendary speed. Show me data not created by house pet consultants. I am waiting. Honk, honk.
Stephen Arnold, December 12, 2009
I wish to disclose to the US Department of the Treasury that I was not paid to point out the fool’s gold that is presented as the real McCoy by mainstream vendors. Yep, a freebie.
The Google Gong Rings for ProQuest and Dissertation Content
December 7, 2009
A MOVIE CAMERA BUSINESS TRIES TO ADAPT
In June 1986, I was sold along with the electronic publishing assets of the Courier Journal & Louisville Times Co. to Bell+Howell. B+H owned a new media company, which in the late 1980s did business as University Microfilms with the acronym UMI. At that time, the company’s product line up spanned a number of media. At one end of the spectrum was the original business based on creating microfilm replicas of documents. These microfilms were sold to libraries. Generations of students used technology perfected during World War II for their access to information not in a library’s collection. At the other end were the electronic products from the Courier Journal: ABI/INFORM, Pharmaceutical News Index, and Business Dateline (the first full text local business news database with corrections made when the source updated the story’s facts).
Now this is an efficient research tool for today’s student. Source: http://www.archivalsuppliers.com/images/Picture%20284.jpg
When I was a student, I did research with microfilm. It was okay but it took a long time to get the reels, get them set up, and reviewed. Getting a hard copy of a document was a hassle. Some of the prints turned black and became unreadable quickly. I once dropped a reel and watched in horror as it unspooled, picked up dirt, and was unusable. I had to pay the library for a replacement. I think in the 1960s, a single reel cost me about $45 which was more than I made in my part time job. I loathed the stuff.
At the recent Online Information 2009 event in London, my colleague Ulla de Stricker was the keynoter for the “Publishers Delivering Value” track on December 3., 2009. In her talk – which she mentioned the Google move into dissertations. Her reference inspired me to write this opinion piece. You can get iinformation about her at DeStricker.com. One of her example was the fact that Stanford University students may now submit their dissertations to Google while it is optional to submit them to ProQuest.
So I wandered over to the exhibit hall to visit with ProQuest, all the while reminiscing about my past experience with that company – known as UMI at the time.
MICROFILM: HARD TO USE, EASY TO DAMAGE AND MISFILE
When I was working on my PhD, I remember my fellow students talking about the costs of getting their dissertations “published” and then included in the Dissertation Abstracts index. I never had this problem because I took a job with the nuclear unit of Halliburton, never bothering to submit my dissertation once I got a real job.
A microfilm readers. Source: http://www.ucar.edu/library/collections/archive/media/photographs/481_1976_microfilm_lg.jpg
The whole system was a money making machine. When a library burned down, backfiles could be acquired when physical copies were not available. When a university got a grant for a new field of study, a collection of journals could be purchased from UMI on microfilm. Bang. Instant academic reference material. I don’t recall how much content the “old” UMI moved to microfilm. My recollection is that there were books, journals, newspaper, and, of course, dissertations. With all this film, I understood why B+H had paid tens of millions for the Courier Journal’s electronic publishing expertise. Buying expertise and using it are two different things, in my opinion.
MECHANICAL PRODUCTION WRONG FOR DIGITAL PRODUCTS
The production process for creating a microfilm was quite complicated and involved specialized cameras, film, and chemicals. The image I have of the UMI facility in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the first time I visited was a modern day castle surrounded by a moat. The castle was a large, one-story building surrounded by a settling pond. The chemicals from the film processing were pumped into the moat in order to separate certain high value residue from other chemicals. UMI processed so much film that the residue silver from the photographic process warranted this recycling effort.
Dinosaurs struggle with the concept of an apocalypse. Adapt or get grilled I suppose.
UMI had a silver mine in its monopoly on certain types of content. My recollection of UMI was that its core product was getting universities to require or maybe strongly recommend that doctoral dissertations had to be “published” by UMI. The microfilm copies of the dissertations were sold back to the doctoral students and to libraries interested in having a compact, relatively easy way to store volumes on a mind boggling range of topics. I did a project that required me to use a microfilm copy of something called the Elisaeis by a wild and crazy religious poet named William Alabaster, and several dissertations written about that nearly forgotten literary work. I also did a project for the Vatican and worked through microfilms of sermons from the middle ages in Latin. Now that was fun! Pretty sporty content to. Nothing like a hot omelie.
Some Thoughts About Real Time Content Processing
December 2, 2009
I wanted to provide my two or three readers with a summary of my comments about real time content processing at the Incisive international online information conference. I arrived more addled than than normal due to three mechanical failures on America’s interpretation of a joint venture between Albanian and Galapagos Airlines. That means Delta Airlines I think.
What I wanted to accomplish in my talk was to make one point—real time search is here to stay. Why?
First, real time means lots of noise and modest information payload. To deal with lots of content requires a robust and expensive line up of hardware, software, and network resources. Marketers have been working overtime by slapping “real time” on any software product conceivable in the hopes of making another sale. And big time search vendors essentially ignored the real time information challenge. Plain vanilla search on content updated when the vendor decided was an easier game.
Real time can mean almost any thing. In fact, most search and content processing systems are not even close to real time. The reason is that slow downs can occur in any component of a large, complex content processing system. As long as the user gets some results, for many of the too-busy 30 somethings that is just fine. Any information is better than no information. Based on the performance of some commercial and governmental organizations, the approach is not working particularly well in my opinion.,
Let me give you an example of real time. In the 1920s, America decided that no booze was good news. Rum runners filled the gap. The US Coast Guard learned that it could tune a radio receiver to a frequency used by the liquor smugglers. The intercepts were in real time, and the Coast Guard increased its interdiction rate. The idea was that a bad buy talked and the Coast Guard listened in real time even though there was a slight delay in wireless transmissions. The same idea is operative today when good guys intercept mobile conversations or listen to table talk at a restaurant.
The problem is that communications and content believed to be real time are not. SMS may be delivered quickly, but I have received SMS sent a day or more earlier. The telco takes considerable license in billing for SMS and delivering SMS. No one seems to be the wiser.
A content management system often creates this ty8pe of conversation in an organization. Jack: “I can’t find my document.” Jill: “Did you put it in the system with the ‘index me’ metatag?’” Jack: “Yes.” Jill: “Gee, that happens to me all the time.” The reason is that the CMS indexes when it can or on a specific schedule. Content in some CMSs are not findable. So much for real time in the organization.
An early version of the Google Search Appliance could index so aggressively that the network was choked by the googlebot. System administrators solved the problem by indexing once a day, maybe twice a day. Again, the user perceives one thing and the system is doing another.
This means that real time will have a specific definition depending on the particular circumstances in which the system is installed and configured.
Several business sectors are gung ho for real time information.
Financial services firms will pay $500,000 for a single Exegy high speed content processing server. When that machine is saturated, just buy another Exegy server. Microsoft is working on a petascale real time content processing system for the financial services industry which will compete with such established vendors as Connotate and Relegence. But a delay of a millisecond or two can spoil the fun.
Accountants want to know exactly what money is where. Purchase order systems and accounts receivable have to be fast. Speed does not prevent accidents. The implosion of such corporate giants as Enron and Tyco make it clear that going faster does not make information or management decisions better.
Intelligence agencies want to know immediately when a term on a watch list appears in a content stream. A good example is “Bin Ladin” or “Bin Laden” or a variant. A delay can cost lives. Systems from Exalead and SRA can handle this type of problem and a range of other real time tasks without breaking a sweat.
The problem is that there is not certifying authority for “real time”. Organizations trying to implement real time may be falling for a pig in the poke or buying a horse without checking to see if it has been enhanced at a horse beauty salon.
In closing, real time is here to stay.
First, Google, Microsoft, and other vendors are jumping into indexing content from social networks, RSS feeds, and Web sites that update when new information is written to their databases. Like it or not, real time links or what appear to be real time links will be in these big commercial systems.
Second, enterprise vendors will provide connectors to handle RSS and other real time content. This geyser of information will be creating wet floors in organizations worldwide.
Third, vendors in many different enterprise sectors will be working to make fresh data available. You may not be able to escape real time information even if you work with an inventory control system.
Finally, users—particularly recent college graduate—will get real time information their own way, like it or not.
To wrap up, “what’s happening now, baby?” is going to be an increasingly common question you will have to answer.
Stephen Arnold, December 2, 2009
Oyez, oyez, I disclose to the National Intelligence Center that the Incisive organization paid me to write about real time information. In theory, I will get some money in eight to 12 weeks. Am I for sale to the highest bidder? I guess it depends on how good looking you are.
Cicumvallation: Reed Elsevier and Thomson as Vercingetorix
November 27, 2009
Google Scholar Gets Smart in Legal Information
One turkey received a presidential pardon. Other turkeys may not be so lucky on November 26, 2009, when the US celebrates Thanksgiving. I am befuddled about this holiday. There are not too many farmers in Harrod’s Creek. The fields contain the abandoned foundations of McMansions that the present economic meltdown have left like Shelly’s statue of Ozymandius. The “half buried in the sand” becomes half built homes in the horse farm.
As Kentuckians in my hollow give thanks for a day off from job hunting,, I am sitting by the goose pond trying to remember what I read in my copy of Caesar’s De Bello Gallico. I know Caesar did not write this memoir, but his PR bunnies did a pretty good job. I awoke this morning thinking about the connection between the battle of Alesia and what is now happening to the publishing giants Reed-Elsevier and Thomson Reuters. The trigger for this mental exercise was Google’s announcement that it had added legal content to Google Scholar.
What’s Vercingetorix got to do with Google, Lexis, and Westlaw? Think military strategy. Starvation, death, surrender, and ritual killing. Just what today’s business giants relish.
Google has added the full text of US federal cases and state cases. The coverage of the federal cases, district and appellate, is from 1924 to the present. US state cases cover 1950 to the present. Additional content will be added; for example, I have one source that suggested that the Commonwealth of Virginia Supreme Court will provide Google with CD ROMs of cases back to 1924. Google, according to this source, is talking with other sources of US legal information and may provide access to additional legal information as well. What are these sources? Possibly
Public.Resource.Org and possibly Justia.org, among others.
The present service includes:
- The full text of the legal document
- Footnotes in the legal document
- Page numbers in the legal document
- Page breaks in the legal document
- Hyperlinks in the legal document to cases
- A tab to show how the case was cited in other documents
- Links to non legal documents that cite a case.
You can read various pundits, mavens, and azure=chip consultants’ comments on this Google action at this link.
You may want to listen to a podcast called TWIL and listened to the November 23, 2009, show on which Google Scholar was discussed for about a half hour. You can find that discussion on iTunes. Just search for TWIL and download the program “Social Lubricants and Frictions.”
On the surface, the Google push into legal information is a modest amount of data in terms of Google’s daily petabyte flows. The service is easy to use, but the engineering required to provide access to the content strikes me as non-trivial. Content transformation is an expensive proposition, and the cost of fiddling with legal information is one of the primary reasons commercial online services have had to charges hefty fees to look at what amounts to taxpayer supported, public information.
The good news is that the information is free, easily accessible even from an iPhone or other mobile device. The Google service does the standard Google animal tricks of linking, displaying content with minimal latency, and updating new content in a a minute or so that content becoming available to Google software Dyson vacuum cleaner.
So what?
This service is similar to others I have written about in my three Google monographs. Be aware. My studies are not Sergey-and-Larry-eat-pizza books. I look at the Google open source technical and business information. I ignore most of what Google’s wizards “say” in public. These folks are “running the game plan” and add little useful information for my line of work. Your mileage may differ. If so, stop reading this blog post and hunt down a cheerful non-fiction Google book by a real live journalist. That’s not my game. I am an addled goose.
Now let me answer the “so what”.
First, the Google legal content is an incremental effort for the Google. This means that Google’s existing infrastructure, staff, and software can handle the content transformation, parsing, indexing, and serving. No additional big-buck investment is needed. In fact, I have heard that the legal content project, like Google News, was accomplished in the free time for play that Google makes available to its full time professionals. A bit of thought should make clear to you that commercial outfits who have to invest to handle legal content in a Google manner have a cost problem right out of the starting blocks.
Second, Google is doing content processing that should be the responsibility of the US government. I know. I know. The US government wants to create information and not compete with commercial outfits. But the outfits manipulating legal information have priced it so that most everyday Trents and Whitneys cannot afford to use these commercial services. Even some law firms cannot afford these services. Pro bono attorneys don’t have enough money to buy yellow pads to help their clients. Even kind hearted attorneys have to eat before they pay a couple a hundred bucks to run a query on the commercial online services from publicly traded companies out to make their shareholders have a great big financial payday. Google is operating like a government when it processes legal information and makes it available without direct charge to the user. The monetization takes place but on a different business model foundation. That also spells T-R-O-U-B-L-E for the commercial online services like Lexis and Westlaw.
Microsoft and News Corp.: A Tag Team of Giants Will Challenge Google
November 23, 2009
Government regulators are powerless when it comes to online. The best bet, in my opinion, is for large online companies to act as if litigation and regulator hand holding was a cost of doing business. While the legal eagles flap and the regulators meet bright, chipper people, the business of online moves forward.
The news that News Corp. and Microsoft are, according to “Microsoft Offers To Pay News Corp To “De-List” Itself From Google”, and other “experts”, these two giants want to form a digital World Wrestling Federation tag team. In the “fights” to come, these champions—Steve Ballmer and Rupert Murdoch–will take on the unlikely upstarts, Sergey the Algorithm Guy and Larry the Math Whiz.
Which of these two tag teams will grace the cover of the WWF marketing collateral? What will their personas become? Source: http://www.x-entertainment.com/pics5/wwe11click.jpg
The idea is to “pull” News Corp. content from Google or make it pay through its snout for the right to index News Corp. content. The deal will probably encompass any News Corp. content. Whatever Google deal is in place with News Corp. would be reworked. News Corp., like other traditional media companies is struggling to regain its revenue traction.
For Microsoft a new wrestling partner makes sense. Bing is gaining market share, but at the expense of Yahoo’s search share. Microsoft now faces Google’s 1,001 tiny cuts. The most recent is the browser based operating system. There is the problem of developers with Microsoft’s former employees rallying the Google faithful. There’s the pesky Android phone thing that went from a joke to a coalition of telephone-centric outfits. There’s the annoyance of Google in the US government. On and on. No one Google nick has to kill Microsoft. Nope. Google just needs to let a trickle of revenue slip away from the veins of Microsoft. The company’s rising blood pressure will do the rest. Eventually, the losses from the 1,001 tiny cuts will force the $70 billion Redmond wrestler to take a break. That “rest” may be what gives Google the opportunity to do significant damage with its as-yet-unappreciated play for the TV, cable, and independent motion picture business. Silverlight 4.0 may not be enough to overcome the structural changes in rich media. That’s real money. Almost as much as the telephony play promises to deliver to the somewhat low key team of Sergey the Algorithm Guy and Larry the Math Whiz
Sergey the Algorithm Guy and Larry the Math Whiz take a break from discussing the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test of normality. Training is tough for this duo. Long hours of solitary computation may exhaust the team before it tackles the Ballmer-Murdoch duo, which may be the most dangerous opponent the Math Guys have faced.
I look forward to the fight promoter to pull out all the stops. One of the Buffers will be the announcer. The cut man will be the master, Stitch Duran. The venue will be Las Vegas, followed by other world capitals of money, power, and citizen concern.
Nicholas Carlson reported:
Still, if News Corp were to “de-list” from Google, we’d expect to see all kinds of ads touting Bing as the only place to find the Wall Street Journal and MySpace pages online. Maybe that’d swing search engine share some, but we doubt it.
MarkLogic Tames Big Data
November 20, 2009
I spent several hours on November 18, 2009, at the MarkLogic client conference held in Washington, DC on November 18, 2009. I was expecting another long day of me-too presentations. What a surprise! The conference attracted about 250 people and featured presentations by a number of MarkLogic customers and engineers. There were several points that struck me:
First, unlike the old-fashioned trade show, this program was a combination of briefings, audience interaction, and informal conversations fueled by genuine enthusiasm. Much of that interest came from the people who had used the MarkLogic platform to deliver solutions in very different big data situations. Booz, Allen & Hamilton was particularly enthusiastic. As a former laborer in the BAH knowledge factory, the enthusiasm originates in one place—the client. BAH professionals are upbeat * only * when the firm’s customers are happy. BAH described using the MarkLogic platform as a way to solve a number of different client problems.
MarkLogic’s platform applied to an email use case caught the attention of audiences involved in certain types of investigative and data forensics work.Shown is the default interface which can be customized to the licensee’s requirements.
Second, those in the audience were upfront about their need to find solutions to big data problems—scale, analytics, performance. I assumed that those representing government entities would be looking for ways to respond to President Obama’s mandates. There was an undercurrent of responding to the Administration, but the imperative was the realization that tools like relational databases were not delivering solutions. Some in the audience, based on my observations, were actively looking for new ways to manipulate data. In my view, the MarkLogic system had blipped the radar in some government information technology shops, and the people with problems showed up to learn.
Search Vendor Partner Tie Ups Reconsidered
November 13, 2009
I read a post by Rajan Chandras called “Informatica Scores Big with New Release Yet…”. The article triggered my memory about an October 26, 2009, article called “Endeca, Informatica Partner to View Enterprise Data”. Both of these source documents have wild and crazy urls, so the links may be dead if you are reading this after November 13, 2009.
I am delighted that Endeca, a vendor of high end search solutions, and Informatica, a data integration vendor, have hooked up. Search requires content transformation, which as many licensees of enterprise search systems discover, can be a expensive proposition. I have referenced data that suggests that as much as one third of an information technology department’s budget can be consumed with transformation costs. I won’t go into the importance of having filters, connectors, and transformers that work without stuffing the exception folder full of files that may require manual inspection. I will leave that to the simplicity seeking 20 somethings who often don’t know what they don’t know about enterprise search systems.
I did notice one comment in Mr. Chandras’ article that was particularly interesting to me:
Even with this stellar performance from Informatica, I expect more. Added data quality to data integration? Should have been done a long time ago. B2B data exchange? One (or even a few) verticals does not even dent the business requirement for data exchanges -– how far will Informatica keep trudging down this path into other verticals? Application lifecycle management? Need to know more about how Informatica will exploit the shared boundaries between ALM and ETL. CEP? Same thing. Cloud computing? See my previous post about cloud competitor SnapLogic. Informatica’s steadfast progress is great news, really, but quite frankly I am looking for more leadership from Informatica.
If Mr. Chandras is correct, Informatica may be under considerable competitive pressure. In this context, is the tie up with a search vendor a move that will address these competitive pressures. In my opinion, the tie up could benefit both firms. However, if the competition triggers a price and feature war with a pivot point ease of use, fast deployment, and acceptable performance, the deal might not address Mr. Chandras’ concerns.
Enterprise search and content processing is a volatile sector. The forces against which search and content companies compete range from database administrators who want something familiar based on IBM, Microsoft, or Oracle technology—whether the system works all that well or not. Other companies are on the rebound after having been burned by the hot fires of engineering and support costs. More organizations are taking a hard look at open source systems such as Lemur Consulting’s FLAX or the Lucene system. I prepared a list of almost two dozen European vendors with some really attractive systems on offer; for example, Exalead, an outfit that knocks me out with their implementations and a dinner at a good French restaurant.
Coveo Expresso Breaks New Ground in Information Access
November 9, 2009
Coveo, a leading provider of enterprise search technology and information access solutions, recently unveiled a free, entry-level enterprise search solution, Coveo Expresso™ Beta. Coveo’s new solution places the power of enterprise information access in the hands of employees everywhere, at no cost, for up to 50 users. The free version of the Expresso content processing system can index one million one million desktop files and email items as well as 100,000 Intranet documents. Licenses can be expanded at minimal cost to as many as 250 users, five million desktop files and email items, and one million SharePoint and File share documents, just by typing a new access code. Administrators simply add new email accounts and SharePoint or file share documents within the intuitive administrative interface. Coveo Expresso is available for immediate download at www.coveo.com/expresso.
Laurent Simoneau, President and CEO, told Beyond Search:
Although enterprise search solutions have been available for nearly a decade, most are built on legacy systems that are difficult to implement and have not lived up to the promise of intuitive, secure and comprehensive information access across information silos. We want to re-educate businesses about the ease and simplicity with which enterprise search should work, as our customers can attest. Coveo Expresso does that—and takes enterprise search one step further with ubiquitous access interfaces such as the Coveo Outlook Sidebar or the desktop floating search bar, which provide guided, faceted search where employees ‘live’—in their email interface or on their PC/laptop. We’ve been testing this feature for a number of months with our current customers and have found it to be one of the biggest boosts to productivity for all employees, regardless of their roles.
Features
The free download features a number of Coveo innovations, including:
- Cross-enterprise Email Search, for 50 email accounts, including PST files and attachments, on desktops and in servers for up to 1 million total items.
- The Coveo Outlook Sidebar, the industry’s first true enterprise search Outlook plug-in, which provides sophisticated features such as conversation folding, related conversations, related people, related attachments, and the ability to search any indexed content without leaving Outlook, as well as the ability to launch advanced search with guided navigation through search facets.
- The Coveo Desktop Floating Search bar, enabling guided searches without leaving the program in which the user is working.
- Enterprise Desktop Search, including always-on indexing for 50 PCs/laptops.
- Mobile access via BlackBerries for 50 users.
The Espresso Interface
Search results appear in a clean, well-organized panel display.
Louisville Meet Up Lights Up Ali Center
November 5, 2009
ArnoldIT.com’s TheSeed2020 meet up for women- and minority-owned businesses was a hit. The event, held at the Muhammad Ali Center in downtown Louisville, Kentucky – attracted more than 80 people. The purpose of the event was to explore the effectiveness of social media marketing. The ArnoldIT.com team – Stuart Adams, Esq., Don Anderson, Constance Ard, Shaun Livingston, Keisha Mabry, Rob Redmon, Tony Safina, and Stuart Schram – used Facebook.com, Twitter.com, and email to announce the event. The event’s Web site was produced using the SquareSpace.com service. You can look at the information about the events and peruse each of the presentations at http://www.theseed2020.com. A short video about the event will be made available in the next two weeks and posted on the ArnoldIT.com Web site.
Dr. Emeka Akaezuwa and Tess (ArnoldIT.com’s SharePoint expert) argue about the technical nuances of SQL Server 10.
I noted a number of presentations that were outstanding. I want to highlight Dr. Emeka Akaezuwa’s talk about the principles that have guided him through his operation of the successful Gaviri Technologies software company and his role in the Global Literacy Project. The crowd listened with rapt attention as Dr. Akaezuwa described his journey from Nigeria to his PhD in computer science from Rutgers University to his running a software company, raising a family, and working one month each year in Africa to make it possible for children to learn to read. More information about Dr. Akaezuwa’s company Gaviri is here. Information about the GLP foundation is here. Among many wonderful talks, his set a benchmark at TheSeed2020. I was disappointed that local Louisville business reporters did not avail themselves of the opportunity to speak with Dr. Akaezuwa and other presenters at this event. Their loss in my opinion.
Some of the ArnoldIT.com team. Back row, left to right: Keisha Mabry, MBA and Constance Ard, MLS. Front row, left to right: Don Anderson, Dr. Emeka Akaezuwa, and Stuart Adams, Esq.
Key findings from the event were:
- Social media is as labor intensive as more traditional marketing methods. With carefully tailored social media messages, it is possible to reach a larger number of potential attendees than with more traditional methods.
- The cost of mounting a social media campaign is the time required to prepare the various messages and materials. An organization jumping into social media marketing without the skill and appropriate human resources may find that the new tools may not be an automatic home run. The ArnoldIT.com motto “Nothing worthwhile comes easy” is a message to consider.
- The people tracking social media messages who attend the event are definitely technically aware and computer oriented. The companies represented at the event had individuals in their firm who understood and used social media. One surprise was that a number of the conversations among attendees were about information, search, and online marketing. The program was designed to represent a wide range of businesses, technology was a unifying factor among the audience.
- Sponsors who expect a traditional trade show set up will have to learn new ways of engaging attendees. The emphasis was upon face-to-face conversations and a good social presence. Wall flowers are as forlorn in a meet as they were as at a grade school dance. Attendees were engaging. The two sponsors of the program were out of their element.
- Attendees appreciated the opportunity to learn and network. Unlike traditional trade shows where grousing is the conference sport, the attendees at this event were enthusiastic. One person told me that the evening was “fun”; another said, “Joyful”. I learned that these comments made me happy to have had the opportunity to support the event.
One attendee—a minority, female PhD in point of fact—point out that there was a single male minority giving a speech. There were two guys. I suppose I will have to muster the strength speak to Ms Ard and Ms Mabry about their bias toward smart, high-powered, successful females.
To wrap up, ArnoldIT.com has refined its social media communications methods. If your firm wants to move forward with a well-organized, effective meet up, contact seaky2000 at yahoo dot com. The managers of the ArnoldIT.com meet up service are Keisha Mabry, MBA, and Constance Ard, MLS.
I will post a link to the video for the event when it becomes available.
Stephen Arnold, November 5, 2009
I paid myself to write this article about my own business. I even pay the people whom I thanked for their outstanding work. To whom do I report this crass marketing work? Maybe I can email the White House. In case this is not clear, this post is an advertisement, a pitch, a shameless effort to hype my colleagues, and a boastful message about a job well done. Too bad the Louisville business associations could not make this type of business program part of their agenda. Guess those outfits are too busy with more important activities than highlighting individuals who are thriving in a lousy economy. Ooops. I am supposed to disclose, not criticize the status quo. Wow, I am sorry.
Pingar for Personalized Search
November 2, 2009
A happy quack to the reader who alerted me to Pingar, a SharePoint centric content processing vendor with offices in New Zealand. The company, founded in 2006, announced its enterprise search solution for SharePoint in mid October 2009. According to the company:
“The intelligent enterprise search tool that can be embedded into the upcoming release of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 will take the browsing out of browsing,” says Pingar’s co-founder and Managing Director Peter Wren-Hilton.
I stumbled on the notion of taking “the browsing out of browsing”. I use a browser to browse. If don’t want to browse, I use another method. Nevertheless, the system, according to the company:
[the] solution goes inside data documents, finds the content the user is seeking and then places it into a dynamically generated PDF or XPS document, rather than just presenting a list of links like the traditional search model. Pingar’s solution also sorts the search into categories to minimize reading times.
Pingar.com
In a Pingar report, a hit includes a back link to the original source document.
According to the Tauranga Eastern Link Newsletter:
Pingar has developed dynamic software to create an ‘intelligent’ search engine, which enables users to type in a specific question and get an exact answer. Pingar’s new offices will be in Hong Kong’s prestigious Science & Innovation Park, close to one of its key partners as well as a range of potential customers in China and Asia. Sharon-May McCrostie, New Zealand’s Trade Commissioner to Hong Kong, endorses Pingar’s move into the Chinese market. “Pingar has a revolutionary, clever way of search that will transform so many industry sectors, including publishing and monetizing online content. It has been very exciting for us to see a New Zealand company taking on the world and making real inroads…
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