Turbo Video Dispatch #2: How to Grok IOD

Turbo Information on Demand Conference 2009 — Video Dispatch #1: Too Much Frickin’ Information

Sunday, Sunday — Getting Going at IOD

It’s Sunday morning and I’m on the premises.

I went for a quick jog along the Vegas strip early this morning (remember, I’m on Texas time), and in one fell swoop I saw a pyramid, the Empire State Building, and the Eiffel Tower.

Only in Vegas, bay-bay.

Today’s action (and I’m not talking about the lines on the NFL Sunday games, although we can come back to that) is centered around IBM’s Business Partners and learning one’s way around the event.

The Business Development Day Opening Sessions kick off at noon in (Session GSS-3344A), with a focus on “The Evolution of Information Management.”

From 2-4:30,  you can learn how to navigate your way around the conference (GSS-3342A), and the EXPO Solution Center has its grand opening from 6-8PM.

Remember to use your Smart Site to create your own personal schedule, and for you 3Gers (especially those of you with an iPhone or iPod Touch), check out iodsmartsite.com

And for the truly networked, load “Bump” from the Apple Store so we can exchange virtual bidness cards.

Me, I’m about to head off to mi amigo Stacy’s session on Information Management Market Intel.

The Wide Shot: No More Black Swans

So here’s the deal: The world is changing.  Bigtime.

Forget black swans only appearing once upon a blue moon.  Those suckers are out flying in formation just looking to create the next wave of trouble.

Right before I left Austin, I downloaded Andrew Ross Sorkin’s new book on the financial crisis, Too Big to Fail.

I started reading it on the plane ride, and leading into the Information on Demand event, I’ve been thinking a lot about the financial crisis.

Why it happened?  How it happened?  How we can prevent another one from happening again anytime soon?

And I don’t mean by hiding all our collective money in a mattress.  That would have to be one big honkin’ mattress.

Yeah, the financial crisis was definitely a whole buncha bad news.

Now it’s time for some good news: The world is becoming increasingly instrumented, interconnected, and intelligent.   This we know…just look around.

Though there is, as a result of this, an explosion of information, this increased interconnectedness is also creating an opportunity for a new kind of intelligence on an increasingly smarter planet.

But as a result of the tremendous growth in information, organizations are also operating with significant blind spots and are trapped within application-bound silos.  The stovepipe syndrome.

Intelligent organizations, however, are looking to use the wealth of information and analytics for better, faster decisions and actions, optimized processes, and more predictable outcomes.

Let’s call this business optimization.

The opportunity for organizations around the globe, then, is for CEOs and other business leaders, as well as those in public enterprises, to create sustainable competitive advantage by optimizing all parts of their business.

To do so, they need a business analytics and optimization strategy (here comes the new acronym…are you ready yet?  It’s easy: Give me a B….Give me an “A”…Give me an “O”…what does it spell?  “BAO”?!)

That’s right.  Forward thinking organizations are implementing an information-led transformation (ILT) to achieve the next generation of efficiencies by applying analytics to optimize decisions at every contact point.

CIOs, and other IT leaders, also play a key role.

As partners to LOB and public sector execs, they are charged with creating an information agenda that supports the business and operational strategy; builds and maintains a flexible platform for trusted information; and helps the organization apply business analytics to optimize decisions.

Organizations need to pursue an…here’s that fancy new phrase again…information-led transformation…to support the business.

Hey, we’re from IBM headquarters, and we’re here to help.

How?

Well, we won’t be hiring any black swans anytime soon, that much I can tell you.

No, that’s exactly what we’re going to be talking about at the event over the next several days: How IBM can help its clients identify their greatest opportunities, as well as their greatest exposures to risk, and then develop and execute a strategy to optimize all types of decisions, leveraging the ability to capture, organize, process, and contextualize enterprise information.

Our clients can take this on in any variety of ways, from the tactical to the strategic, to get immediate value, including by:

• Focusing on a foundational information need such as single view of the customer, or a full information agenda, addressing information strategy, roadmap, infrastructure and governance
• Applying analytics to optimize a specific business objective such as customer retention, or a broader need such as enterprise risk management; or
• Solving a single information platform need such as a cost-effective archiving strategy, or a broader need such as a flexible enterprise information architecture

Or, you can stay in your stovepipes and watch your information…and probably your business…stagnate.

But what do I know, it’s Saturday night in Vegas and I’m blogging about how you need to start better using your information for insight when I ought to be out trying to get myself arrested somewhere along the Vegas strip!

Who’s On First?

I’m on the plane to Vegas.  It has wi-fi, and that’s the first time ever I’ve been on a plane with wi-fi, unbelievably.

But I don’t log on to it.  I don’t take the bait.  I’m too busy contemplating what awaits me in Vegas.

Let me start with my personal dilemma.

No, it has nothing to do with my blackjack skills or my overall gambling addiction (okay, I don’t really have a gambling addition, but it makes for a better story).

It’s much simpler than all that.

I’ve been so busy of late that I never had time to sit down and figure out what my schedule is for this Information on Demand Conference.

I’m supposed to be everywhere and nowhere at once, I’m sure, and yet despite the best efforts of our support staff, I’m completely clueless.

One schedule has all the key events laid out in a PDF.  The IOD Smart Site is supposed to help me build my own personal schedule.  Our blogging and PR staff gave me another PDF outlining all the key blogger events.

I’m panicking!  It’s like one of those dreams, where the dog ate your homework right before you’re supposed to take your final exams as you fall off the tall building and then…wake up right before you hit the ground.

It’s…well, it’s kind of like many of you out there.  I’ve got plenty of information…too much, really…but I have no way of consolidating it all and making intelligent decisions about how I should spend my next five days in Vegas (well, I can think of a few ways, but most of those would get me fired).

Sound familiar, all this information overload?  Kind of like the state of your business or organization, perhaps?

So, here’s my commitment to you.  I may never quite get a handle on my own schedule for this coming week, but what I will work to do is share my key thoughts and sentiments expressed here on the ground by all the mucho-smarter-than-me people at the conference.

To wit: My next post will be on the state of the information state.