Social Data Kickoff

How about them Cowboys?

I’m sorry, Giants fans, but you’ve won in our house too many times lately not for me to give you a hard time when America’s team sticks it to ya.

The Giants had the most turnovers last night since 1987, and it showed. Every time I looked down at my Facebook wall, I looked back up again only to find Eli Manning wondering how the ball ended up in the hands of another Cowboy.

That’s okay, it’s early yet — it was the first game — but the smell of victory is sweet, especially against the Giants.

I’m apparently not the only one interested in monitoring my Facebook wall during football games, and so Facebook is announcing some new tools to assist news organizations (and marketers) in better understanding the real-time social data around such major events.

For example: According to The New York Times Bits Blog, the N.F.L. season start generated over 20 million likes, comments, and shares on Facebook by over 8 million people.

Knowing that 3 million people suddenly burst into an eruptive cheer of “Go Cowboys!” is, of course, invaluable market insight that media buyers up and down Madison Avenue can leverage to sell Jerry Jones more ad space for his Papa John’s commercials.

But I digress.

This is all really about trying to tamp down the Twitter real-time data stream onslaught which has only, oh let’s say, about a five-year headstart on Zuck and company.

And that is, of course, because the Twitter powers that be have tried to operate at least partially in the spirit of a more open social realm, allowing large proportions of their API to be generously offered up to the world at large.

Whereas Facebook, on the other hand, has held their API very close to the vest, letting piece parts be revealed to the greater world only when the underlying motivation of monetization looms largest.

Though the Facebook silly wabbit may have turned the faucet just enough to let some interesting drips slip out, it’s the lingering but stalwart Twitter turtle that’s best currently positioned to win the social data race.

Countdown To Lotusphere

All righty then.

The Dallas Cowboys won a playoff game for the first time since the 1996 season!  Woo hoo!

Cowboy haters everywhere are uniting as Americas team gets through the first round of the playoffs having beaten the Eagles two weeks in a row.

Even I couldn’t believe the surprise.

Next week, it looks as though I’ll be on a plane heading out to Orlando for Lotusphere during the Cowboys/Vikings game — but good news: I took the lowest fare and am flying JetBlue, which means DirectTV!  Woo Hoo!!

That’s what I get for being such a cost conscious foot soldier.

While I’m watching the game from 35,000 feet, you could be listening to (podcast, 10:14) Scott Laningham and I chat up our anticipation of covering the forthcoming Lotusphere.

In the podcast, we talk about our excitement regarding the now even more stringent security measures, but more importantly, an overview of some of the exciting events and must sees at Lotusphere, and what we hope to hear more about while on the ground in Orlando.

If you’re not attending (or even if you are), you can follow the tidings at the official Lotus Twitter hashtag #lotusknows as well as #ls10 where we expect to see many attendees and Lotus watchers posting as well.

In the meantime, leading into the event I’ll be pointing out some other key Lotus-relevant blogs to keep an eye out for.

Feel free to comment below to let Scott and I know more about what you would like to hear about coming out of Orlando.

Football Brain and Lotusphere

This is the first post of the new year, 2010.

You’ll have to excuse me, as I attempt to string the semblance of a grammatically correct sentence together after the better part of two weeks of mind numbing football and very little exposure to Internet technology.

I did have to work some (see the previous post), but this past five days I definitely allowed my brain to enter full on into football consumption mush mode.

You know, the kind where you’re sitting on the couch with the remote in one hand, a beer in the other, saliva pouring out of the sides of your mouth.

If you’re a married female, you certainly have seen your husband in such a condition at one point or another.

I call it football brain.

I suspect it takes a full week or two to get fully back into game mode, so this blog post is my start.

Speaking of football, I do want to congratulate my Dallas Cowboys for beating up on the Philadelphia Eagles yesterday to take the NFC East (I know you Giants and Redskins’ fans can’t stand that, and well, that makes me smile as well!)

I have to say, it might have helped if Donovan McNabb’s teammates might have shown up to catch a pass once in a while.

His line did their job, but his receivers were MIA.  Which is perfectly fine by me…I hope they don’t show up at the Jerrydome again next Sunday!

Those receivers are probably feeling about as lonely as the kicker for East Carolina University, Ben Hartman, whose four missed field goals against the University of Arkansas in the AutoZone Liberty Bowl Saturday night cost E. Carolina the game, and which set off a cyber frenzy calling for Hartman’s head.

Those fair weather fans forget one small fact: Hartman is the team’s all-time leading scorer.  DOH!  But I suspect that part nobody will remember.  Hang in there, Ben!

Meanwhile, back in Pasadena, your University of Texas Longhorns are on the ground and warming up for their attempt at rolling over the University of Alabama Crimson Tide this Thursday night.

Sports forecasting Website Accuscore has simulated the game over 10,000 times, and currently gives UT only a 35% chance of victory.

To that I say Hook ’em Horns, it’s all about any given Saturday (or in this case, Thursday!)

Okay, that’s enough football brain.  It’s time for me to start crossing my way back into the world of technology.

Did you know that from January 17-21, IBM will be hosting the 17th annual Lotusphere event in sunny Florida?  The 17th!

Out of all the IBM events I’ve frequented over the years, Lotusphere is one that’s never made the list…until this year.

I’ll be joining my IBM colleagues on the ground in Orlando, providing some blogging and Tweeting coverage, and possibly even some Turbo guerrilla video…and I can’t wait.

Considering I’ve been using Lotus products in my everyday existence since about 1993, I’m excited to finally be making the journey to be amongst the Lotus faithful.

You can follow the Lotusphere tidings (no need to wait until the conference…the stream is now conscious!) at hashtags #lotusknows and #ls10 and, of course, here on the Turbo blog.

Welcome back to reality, mi amigos.  You’ll get over it soon.

IBM and NFL

My Dallas Cowboys looked pretty shaky there in Kansas City yesterday. All I can say is God Bless the emergence of Miles Austin!

I had to watch the game on my Time Warner DVR in fast forward mode, because I was too firmly ensconced in my viewing of the President’s Cup to watch the game live (just so you know how my sports priorities ranked yesterday).

When I did finally turn on the Cowboys/Chiefs game, I thought I’d gone into another universe when I saw the Chief’s “Dallas Texans” uniform.

Huh?

I was a very wee lad when the Dallas Texans were sold off and the team moved to Kansas City in 1962 to become the Kansas City Chiefs (and the very same year the Dallas Cowboys franchise was started), something I had to go hunt down and learn via Wikipedia.

You learn something new every day!

On the topic of football, earlier today IBM announced a renewed marketing and services partnership with the NFL.

IBM has been a sponsor since 2003, and with this new agreement, IBM will continue to provide consulting expertise and IT solutions to the NFL to help them more efficiently manage their IT infrastructure and data storage.

The NFL is working to improve upon its current data center, and so IBM will help to reduce costs and energy consumption as it helps the NFL increase their power and cooling capacity.

Specifically, the first phase of this new agreement will include an initiative to shift the NFL’s IT Shared Services environment to a dynamic infrastructure by delivering a number of operational improvements.

IBM will provide design and construction services for an upgraded data center facility located in Mt. Laurel, New Jersey, the services for which will allow the NFL to improve scalability and capacity while reducing their daily operating costs and improving their overall energy efficiency.

“With IBM’s help, our IT infrastructure can become more energy efficient, cost effective and adaptive with how we manage our IT services and data,” said Nancy Galietti, Vice President of Information Technology from the NFL. “IBM understands our needs from a business and IT perspective and we look forward to working together on this journey to deliver a dynamic infrastructure.”

As part of the initiative, the upgraded data center facility will create efficiencies and allow the NFL to take advantage of newer, faster and less expensive technologies. The upgraded facility will:

• Improve resiliency by minimizing single points of failure
• Add the capability to install high density computing and offer more computing power in less space.

IBM Vice President, Client Executive Marketing, Rick Singer said of the agreement, “The NFL is a great partner, and we believe that this initiative will enable their business growth. Our goal is to provide the NFL with opportunities to offer premium services to its business divisions and clients.”

In addition, IBM will deliver a plan to optimize the NFL’s storage environment that can reduce the overall cost of storage hardware through virtualized storage provisioning.

Are you ready for some football?