Press "Enter" to skip to content

Chasing Big Data: My 6,000 Mile Journey to Find It | Patrick Callahan | TEDxWilmingtonSalon


you ever been
eating we’re totally distant you’re out
you’re not listening
– maybe you’re in you’re in a classroom
maybe in an auditorium in 2010 I was up
in New York I was at the world’s largest
pharmaceutical and I was rolling out a
website and I was the leader and I was
dead asleep I was not even paying
attention and the client knew it Patrick
Patrick yes yes we’re good we’re rolling
out the website long night were good
it’s just another website Patrick it’s
not another website somewhere in my
database is the cure for cancer you just
have to help my scientist get closer to
it those words and that statement shook
me and set me off on my life’s next
journey somewhere in my database is a
cure for cancer you just have to help my
scientists get closer to it I’m a firm
believer that a chef has to work at some
point in their life in New York City or
Paris or London and one of the culinary
capitals of the world I felt at that
moment I needed to get out to San
Francisco I need to see where Big Data
was being built the platform’s the
people the minds of thinking the ideas
so we sold the company I packed up the
u-haul and we moved began our trek out
3,000 miles to San Francisco big data
traditional definition volume velocity
variety volume there’s over a trillion
photos that are going to be uploaded to
Facebook this year trillions of data
points from IOT devices are being
collected
that’s volume velocity you’re a Facebook
user you want that data back now damn
you velocity I gotta have it back this
instant and variety try to collect
information from a cat video a cat
picture and text it’s really hard
variety but big data is more than that
right did you know that behind every 144
character –
there are 6,000 characters that you
don’t see which device you took it on
where you were what your interests are
who influences you who do you influence
who you connected with what TV shows do
you like context provides an important
part to Big Data when I landed in San
Francisco I had to figure out a way to
meet some people the platform meetup
allows you to do that you throw out an
idea or a subject that you want to be
interested in and everybody shows up for
it they sign up for it sitting on the
couch I decided I was gonna create a
meet-up called social data social big
data and analytics and that night over
500 data scientists signed up for it
they had the same interest that I did
it’s a big number in San Francisco data
scientists and it got the attention of
Twitter Twitter said hey Patrick we see
what you’re doing here can you also do
this in Washington New York Boston
London Paris Berlin sure if you fly me
there it’s a good deal I would get to
listen to some of the best data
scientists around the world and work
with some of the people the door doing
some amazing things in San Francisco we
had Airbnb come in and talk about how
they change their product
instantaneously
Venga the farmville there were painting
cows different colors based on social
data that was coming in instance
instantly Netflix heard of house of
cards they built an entire show based on
social data big data in New York I got
to listen to The New York Times talk
about how they visualize this stuff and
we had in Washington DC the Obama data
team come in and say in 2012 this is how
we won the election social data
scientists in DC are using social data
to tell whether someone’s about to
commit suicide and they’re stopping it
and it’s working and yes even in London
the equivalent of our FDA is using
social data to predict where a foodborne
virus is going to outbreak down to the
block level using the contexts I spoke
about in Jakarta they’re detecting
floods based on big data in social data
and finally in Boston we had the data
team from MIT the
Research Center detect where people
might be having cancer just based on
what their tweets were doing remember
somewhere in my database is to cure for
cancer I returned back from San
Francisco to start a data company the
data of today is a predicator to some
incredible things that are happening in
artificial intelligence and it’s
building the foundation because
somewhere in our database is the cure
for cancer we just got to get closer to
it thank you
[Applause]
you
Please follow and like us: