James Governor's Monkchips

How To Not Define Big Data

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What is Big Data? Great question. In this video i try not to answer it. Something to do with lower cost of memory, open source, cloud, and tooling adopted from the web, maybe? Hadoop is coming, and so is a huge wave of data driven innovation. Dedicated, specialised hardware is going to be a major part of the build out.

IBM sponsored this video.

4 comments

  1. Nice. Now I know what Hadoop means πŸ™‚

  2. That’s a very helpful non-definition! πŸ˜‰

    When a term takes grip such as Social Media or Big Data and leaps from the tech-world to the business press and the mainstream, it seems to mean something significant is happening in lots of different places at the same time.

    The term provides a little campfire for far-flung folk to gather, warm their hands and chat about their experiences – which are normally all wildly different from one another.

    But the term sticks and thereby provides market momentum with strong signals – and, inevitably, a fair deal of noise.

    It’s also interesting that the terms that stick are so so simple. After all Social Media is media that is social and Big Data is data that is, er, big!

  3. Love the vid, but would find it easier to follow if you talked a touch slower πŸ™‚ my head doesn’t process as fast as you methinks.

  4. cogent overview … Big Data is significantly ambiguous to mean something to everyone and I think you’ve nailed it in terms of not defining it.

    I’d be interested (ok, baiting you a bit, as I work for MarkLogic) on your take on the recent BBC Olympics online coverage … eg. this was realtime ‘bigdata’ in terms of scope and scale and part of the system.

    Jem Rayfield from the BBC will be speaking about it at MUGL (MarkLogic User Group) in London http://www.meetup.com/muglondon/events/102910002/
    Feb 26th. It might interest you.

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