The Voice on Social Media speaks Volumes in London 2012

Anyone following London 2012 Olympics???

I am doing a Social Media analysis on the 2012 Olympics with the IBM Cognos Consumer Insights solution and thought I would share some of the things people are talking about. My analysis only included internet conversations from Blogs, Microblogs, Videos and Boards from June 17^th. There was a lot of discussion about what we can expect for the Open Ceremonies in London. When looking at the weeks before the Opening Ceremonies, the conversatoin was dominated by refernces to Danny Boyle as to a theatrical experience that is to occur. Surprisingly, Ralph Lauren was a close second to Danny in conversation around the Olympic garb his company was providing. While Jacques Rogge was in the top 5, I would have thought Jacques Rogge cracked the top three being the IOC president.

I thought it would be an interesting thing to do a post-mortem on Opening Ceremonies as to who had staying power in conversation and who jumped up. It ws Danny Boyle who kept his name in the top three. The theatrical experience was delivered. But not surprisingly, James Bond jumped up from nowhere and he became the “Most Referenced” spot in this analysis with respect to Opening Ceremonies. The Queen's rendez-vous with 007 and the parachute jump resonated well with people world wide. As a Canadian, I had to compare these ceremonies to Vancouver 2010. These ceremonies are comparable, in fact the song “I Believe” is still being used which is good to hear. In retrospect, Canadians should have had an episode on Austin Powers. Perhaps Austin could have joined forces with Governer General David Johnston in a secret mission of some sort to build more theatrics. But I digress. :)

There was a comment on the internet prior to the Olympics that Soccer and Gynanistics dominated conversation for the US. When I was looking at the numbers I saw something different, so perhaps the analysis included different timeframes or sources (or lack thereof). I found that the US conversation was dominated by Swimming, Tennis and Athletics in that order as shown below.

With respect to the Swimming, the internet chatter is primarly referencing the healthy rivalry between Micheael Phelps and Ryan Lochte. Phelps is edging Ryan Lochte out for the “Most Referenced” in swimming. Does this mean he is a favorite? That would require an affinity analysis which I will leave until another time.

Not suprising, that the breakdown for Canadian conversation actually includes “Hockey” in the top five sports. Strange but true. Perhaps some Canadians, don't know Ice Hockey is not a “Summer” sport. Any fellow Canadians out there? Get talking about Canada in the Olympics, we need more cheers. Go Canada Go!

As I created this analytics model on the Olympics, I thought it was worth while to note that this model included German and French in the analysis and I would expect a few of my colleagues to provide unique content from their languages.

Check in a little later as London 2012 plays out.

Cheers

Chris

Here is to short a "Honey Do list" this weekend.

Just getting off a great Victoria day Weekend in Waterloo.  The weather was better than any Victoria day weekend that I can remember.  I do find it somewhat strange to call this particular day a holiday.  If the weather is bad, which is usually the case then it is most of my time is indoor and  we do spring clean-up in the closets. But when the weather is nice or close to being nice, the “Honey Do lists” are longer as most of outdoor work has yet to be started.  So it is not really a holiday.

It may be different for folks in the US with Memorial day due to the weather differences of North and South.  I see people are really gearing up for this Memorial Day.  I was reading a WSJ blog on some work I did recently about how there is an uptick in sentiment on this upcoming holiday weekend in the US.  It is almost like people are finding ways around the gas prices.  I find difference in year on year growth between flying and driving. “The index also shows a 65% rise in people mentioning traveling by air while discussion of driving increased 13%.”  is an excerpt from the Driver's Seat   More people talking about flying likely indicates a better outlook on economics in the states I would expect.

The article summary is also interesting as it identifies how we can learn about why people do what they do from an analysis on Social Media conversation on a given topic.  This observation really makes sense as many people speak to why they make many of their decisions or disclose their opinions which also identifies what is going on in their minds' eye and what they really want.  Pretty powerful stuff!

Back to holidays....Being Canadian, I also enjoy Memorial Day.  When most of my colleagues and bosses are off on a holiday makes my day a little easier too.  :)  Hopefully those enjoying Memorial Day have short “Honey Do lists and get at least one day to do what they really want!

Cheers!

Learning about Powering your Map Mashup

As you may already know, many people resonate with mapping features within a Mashup. This pattern is just part of the enterprise mashup value proposition as there are many ways to visualize data and its value. With that being said, the key part of enterprise mashups using a map is the critical data powering the map. For example, what are you mapping? How do you figure out what to map for your users or customers? How can this be done efficiently with the data you have? Mapping context needs to be driven by YOUR information and not just what Google or other vendors provides. I just came across a couple of posting that may trigger your interest if you are doing any mapping mashups and are looking for more intelligent means to power the map. Follow the links below to find out more about the value of location based data and how you can leverage your database to power your Enterprise Mashups.

Location, Location, Location!
Chat with the Lab

Enjoy!

Chris

When have Hands on Labs been REALLY fun? Check out IOD EMEA.

Recall your college/university days when you lived on coffee, lacked sleep and were wondering why you are in a lab room at 11:59 pm. Then you awake for have a colleague tap you on the shoulder. You are greeted with a chuckle and later you find out “QWERTY” is imprinted on your forehead from your keyboard pillow. Ah the good ole days – or were they?

Despite these type of memories, the hands on labs are very popular at Information on Demand so you want to sign up early. In particular, I have been involved with the Hands on Lab at IOD 2008 which premiered the lab currently titled “Enterprise Mashups - Revolutionize How User Access Information and Maximize your SOA Re-Use”. On several occasions while proctoring the lab, I was pulled aside by students / practitioners and specifically told – “This lab is really fun. Thanks for putting it together”. In the lab you will find how you can accelerate the ROI on your Information on Demand and SOA investments.

If you are attending IOD EMEA, take some time to have fun and learn about Enterprise Mashups.

If you want to see the type of thing you will be doing check out the Customer Insight mashup demo. Hope to see you there!

Day 3 at IOD

Good Day from IOD

IOD is picking up the pace with a great beach party. The fireworks at the show were bigger than most Canadian “Canada Day” fireworks. I was surprised to be so close to the actual fireworks launch area which added interesting dimension to the show.

Yesterday, I was in the “Trusted Business Information and Web2.0 Initiatives” session. I thought I would share a term used in this session: “Situation Awareness”. In this talk Tom Deutsch explained this notion.

“Organizations want to sense changes in the business environment better and respond more quickly. Situation awareness means knowing what is going on so that you can decide what to do.”

The concept is describing the willingness to address individual business challenges with situational applications. The business domain expertise is owned by these individuals who know how they need to consume the information. This challenge can be daunting as the natural thing to do for IT is to “broad brush” the problem which really does not address the real goal. Tom proceeds to suggest the need to provide trusted information in a secure, governable manner with Enterprise Mashups to address these types of applications. This approach leverage resources in line of business while reduce application backlogs. For more information on Enterprise Mashup check out IBM Mashup Center.

I have to now head off to my session on “Maximizing Data Web Services” now. Hope to see you there.

Good News for folks who Missed IOD in Vegas.

Good Morning. I hope you all have managed to survive the Halloween phenomenon and avoided getting “egged” this week. I have some good news for folks that could not get to IBM’s Information On Demand (IOD) in Las Vegas last week to be part of the launch of DB2 Version 9.5 (code name Viper 2). Grant Hutchison and I are planning on taking you through the new features within DB2 Version 9.5 in the “What’s new for Viper 2 for Developers”. In addition to DB2, you will find out about the new direction for Developer Workbench. There are some fresh new features as it relates to ease-of-use for data centric application developers discussed in this webcast. Join Us!

Information On Demand 2007 - Vegas

Sorry for the delay in my blog. I am back from IOD 2007 and I am all Vegas’ed out! Yes - I think "Vegas" should be a verb as this point (after 9 days of being there). As I had closed the Developer Den, I took a step back to snapshot the moment. “Exhausted!” is the best word for it; over 51 great sessions from the speakers. I did however feel a slight remorse that it had to end. There were many positive comments from the sessions within the Developer Den.

I must say "thank you" for the contributions from the speakers – great job. The speakers challenged the audience with new ideas ranging from Mash-ups, Web Services, cool XML and SQL content, and a new Java persistence technology in pureQuery to name a few. The Developer Den had it all which made the pace quicker than last year. We managed to find a way to give away IBM Data Studio, DB2 Viper 2 (DB2 Version 9.5) preview and the IDS Developer Edition all of which were hot off the presses.

I won’t go into new features of Viper 2 (DB2 version 9.5) for Developers as you will find more about that on November 7th Webcast titled “What is new for Viper 2 for Developers”

The Developer Den had a few of sessions on Mash-ups which were well attended. The Info 2.0 (a new Mash-up technology vision) was included in discussion in the Developer Den which complimented Business track at IOD and demos in the Exhibit Hall. From what I can tell customers’ are interested in the value proposition of the Info 2.0 vision which really makes me excited. Mash-ups are definitely on the radar for many companies as they are trying to figure out the landscape of Mash-ups for their environment. The latest edition of DB2 Magazine provides an insightful article on the Info 2.0 vision featuring comments from Anant Jhingran and Arvind Krishna. Additionally, this article provides tips on how to “brush up” on these technologies. The Info 2.0 momentum continues to grow from previous announcements on the IBM Mash-up Starter Toolkit on alphaWorks.

The IBM Data Studio also had a fair bit of content within the Developer Den which is very complimentary to the Info 2.0 vision. IBM Data Studio makes it easier for Application DBAs to produce data-centric Web Services which would be more easily consumable for Info 2.0 and in effect broadens the reach of Information on Demand. Check out the press release on IBM Data Studio. Many were interested in learning how to get started with IBM Data Studio as this session had standing room only. Additionally, IBM Data Studio ties nicely in with Rational products and Rational Data Architect.

Looking forward to next year.