Posts filed under ‘General Business’
All Things Must Come to an End—PatternBuilders is Shutting Down
By Terence Craig and Mary Ludloff
There’s a sad, but true, statistic that every entrepreneur knows by heart: 9 out of 10 startups fail. Unfortunately, PatternBuilders is adding its number to this pile. We have been procrastinating writing this post because shutting down a company is hard. When you put your heart and soul into something, you need time to process, reflect, and eventually get to the point where you can move on.
But moving on does not mean that we are disappearing; after all, shutting down the company does not end our passion for big data, privacy, and all things tech-related (especially IoT). To that end, we will be maintaining this blog, as our main place to write and comment about those issues. We are also consulting around all areas involving big data and/or privacy (via our existing consulting organization, Ludloff-Craig Associates) and are working on some other things that we are keeping under wraps for now. But if you follow our blog, @terencecraig, or @mludloff, you will be the first to know. And if you have interesting opportunities, consulting projects, or for the right company – a full-time job – please get in touch.
There are a number of reasons why we are shutting our doors, but suffice to say, we made some decisions we knew might have an adverse effect on the company. And we stand by those decisions. (more…)
Our Favorite Reads of 2012
By Mary Ludloff & Terence Craig
Greetings one and all! 2012 was a breakout year for PatternBuilders and we are very grateful to all of you for helping to make that happen. But we would also like to take a minute to extend our condolences and share the grief of parents across the world that lost young children to violence. Newtown was singularly horrific but similar events play out all too often across the globe. We live in an age of technical wonders—surely we can find ways to protect the world’s children.
This is our last post of 2012 and in the spirit of the season, we decided to do something a little different this year. Recently, the Wall Street Journal asked 20 of its “friends” to tell them what books they enjoyed in 2012 and the responses were equally eclectic and interesting. Not to be outdone, Adam Thierer published his list of cyberlaw and info-tech policy books for 2012. Many of the recommendations culled from both sources ended up on our reading lists for 2013 (folks, 2012 is almost over and between launching AnalyticsPBI for Azure and working on our update for Privacy and Big Data, not a lot of “other” reading is going to happen during the holiday season!) and spurred an interesting discussion about our favorite reads of the year. One caveat: Our lists may include books we read but were not necessarily published this year. So without further ado, I give you our favorite reads of 2012! (more…)
Getting Into a Privacy Identity Innovation (pii2012) Frame of Mind: Will We See You There?
As you all know, privacy is one of my favorite topics. And when you’re talking or blogging about privacy, it almost always comes back to personally identifiable information (pii) which just happens to be the focus of the Privacy Identify Innovation Conference that will be held in downtown Seattle, May 14-16 (otherwise known as pii2012). Natalie Fonseca (@TechPolicy) is the co-founder and executive producer of the conference (now on its “third edition”), and she has assembled a group of speakers and sessions that make privacy-geeks (like myself) giddy with anticipation:
“pii2012 Seattle will explore how to protect sensitive information while enabling new technologies and business models. The focus isn’t just on ensuring regulatory compliance. It’s about developing a forward-looking, strategic approach to avoiding risk while advancing innovation.”
FinancePBI Begins its Shakeout Flight in the Cloud
I have been a little quiet on the blogging front recently as I and the rest of the PatternBuilders team have been focused on getting ready to launch our new financial services application: FinancePBI. It is the first cloud-based analytical platform for the Financial Services market. While this is our first public announcement of our entry into the market, behind the scenes we have been gearing the company up for a big splash for several months:
- Partnered with ActiveFinancial one of the premier real-time stock ticker vendors in the world. Look for more data partnerships shortly.
- We have added Doug Jeffrey to our board of advisors and board of directors. Doug is an executive with deep Wall Street and startup expertise who has already done outstanding things in the short time he has been with us.
- We have also partnered with the University of Sydney to use our technology to examine the influence of primary sources (NY Times, etc.) and secondary social media (Twitter, etc.) content on a company’s stock price over a 12 month period. This project will be done exclusively in the cloud and it’s our hope is that we will be able to convince our commercial partners to allow this PatternBuilders instance to be available to the general public. Of course, this would happen after the research is published. (more…)
Data and Technology Have No Moral Compass: But that does not mean that we get to abdicate all responsibility.
I do not consider myself an idealist and I would not call myself naive. That being said, as Terence and I engaged in research for our book, Privacy and Big Data, there were moments when I threw up my hands and said, “Really?” Certainly, the recent spate of articles on surveillance technologies and how governments around the world are buying and using those technologies to, for want of a better term, spy on its citizens gave me pause.
Don’t get me wrong—I know these technologies exist. I am also very aware that the regulatory environment does not really address what devices or applications built on top of these technologies can do. The reality is that companies like Datong sell “intelligence solutions” to the military, law enforcement, and intelligence agencies around the world. Recently, an article in the Guardian revealed that: (more…)
What did he just say?!
The one weekend that I decide to abjure from all things electronic and hang out with my wife, famous tech blogger Michael Arrington (@arrington) starts a scrap with some incredibly ill-conceived comments while being interviewed for @Soledad_OBrien’s documentery Black In America 4 which explores the black experience in technology. At first, as any intelligent person would, I thought, “I’m just going to stay out of this.” But as an African-American who’s been in the Valley as a programmer, entrepreneur, blogger, published author, and board member for over 23 years and who has lived on the 3rd rail of our collective discomfort with race as a happily married member of an interracial couple for the past 25 years, I thought it was worth giving my perspective.
The first thing that I have to say is that the Valley, by and large, has treated me and my family very well. By the time I was 28, I was making more $$ than my father ever had – even though he was a renowned plant pathologist whose opinion was sought the world over (including Apartheid South Africa who offered to make him an “honorary white person” to gain his expertise – and no, I’m not kidding). (more…)
Roundup: About 4 Tech Giants, All Things Private, Social Media Stats, Maps, and Big Data!
Greetings one and all! It’s been a while since I posted about the more interesting articles, blogs, videos, etc., that I have come across and I thought that now is as good a time as ever to cover some interesting items you may have missed in the past few weeks. The topics are far ranging, thoughtful, illuminating, and at times, contentious, but that’s why they are interesting. So without further ado, let’s get to it!
Four Tech Giants Battle It Out
If you haven’t already, set aside some time to read Fast Company’s take on the (coming soon) great tech war of 2012. The combatants? Apple, Facebook, Google and, Amazon. The prize? Us—I think! This thoughtful piece by Farhad Manjoo looks at how these four goliaths will battle it out on the technology innovation field to, essentially, win the hearts, minds, and wallets of all of us:
“Think of this: You have a family desktop computer, but you probably don’t have a family Kindle. E-books are tied to a single Amazon account and can be read by one person at a time. The same for phones and apps. For the Fab Four, this is a beautiful thing because it means that everything done on your phone, tablet, or e-reader can be associated with you. Your likes, dislikes, and preferences feed new products and creative ways to market them to you. Collectively, the Fab Four have all registered credit-card info on a vast cross-section of Americans. They collect payments (Apple through iTunes, Google with Checkout, Amazon with Amazon Payments, Facebook with in-house credits). Both Google and Amazon recently launched Groupon-like daily-deals services, and Facebook is pursuing deals through its check-in service (after publicly retreating from its own offers product).”
Steve Jobs – The man who bought style to computing
Although I never met the man – I think that I and every programmer or entrepreneur that has worked in the valley felt like we had a personnel relationship with Steve Jobs. He was without a doubt the most polarizing technology figure in the valley – known for his brilliant design sense, ability to excite an audience, uncompromising desire to get it right, and pithy emails.
My first real computer was a Mac. That Mac Plus with an additional acoustic coupler modem – (a blazing fast 300 baud baby!) helped pay my way through college writing other peoples programs for them uh, I mean tutoring other students. The Mac was amazing it showed us that computers could be fun, quirky, and artistic. It introduced stylistic concepts that we are still having trouble bringing into mainstream computing today. In a world of VT220 terminals and ascii art (btw the link is amazingly cool ascii), the Mac with Steve as her father proved that the digital world could be thrilling as well as functional. For that we all, whether in technology or otherwise, owe him a great debt.
Finally, lets all remember that despite his laudable achievements, Mr. Jobs was a human being who had family and friends that are mourning a man that cancer took away from them at an early age. While we can and should honor his many achievements, let’s not forget to take a breath and send good thoughts to them and all the other families who have been stricken by this deadly disease. Or better yet, donate to the Cancer charity of your choice.
RIP – Steve.
Privacy and Big Data: Post-Book Thoughts, Terence’s POV
Over the course of writing our book Mary and I have been asked many times about how it was to collaborate on this grand production of ours. The next question, of course, was whether we changed our minds about the state of privacy in the age of big data. (And the final question was were we still friends? The answer, unequivocally, is yes.) Within the book, we tried to represent all sides of the privacy debate regardless of where we stood (although we are equally sure that you might be able to discern our opinions on some of the topics). Mary has already shared her thoughts on the process and privacy in general. Now, it’s my turn!
Mary and I have been friends and co-workers for a long time. This is our second startup together. It is considered a fait accompli in startup land that a technical founder/CEO (me) and a classically trained VP of Marketing (her), will not get along – but thankfully, in our case it has been a pleasant and fruitful collaboration with both of us learning from each other. So how hard could co-authoring a book be? Pretty damn hard, it turns out. There are the mechanics of the writing process itself, meeting deadlines, matching styles, fighting over different interpretations of grammar rules – Mary is a fan of Strunk & White and I, on the other hand, think e.e. cummings is a god. Then there is the content itself. Privacy, as we mention in the book, is one of “those topics” – as controversial in its way as what my Father called the bar fight trifecta: Religion, Politics and Another Man’s Spouse. (Those three topics when combined with a couple of beers, could be guaranteed to get even the best of friends swinging bar stools at each other with abandon.) (more…)
Tales from Marketing: It’s All About the User
Greetings one and all! I have been on a wee blog hiatus as Terence and I are on the downhill (just one more chapter to go) part of our book and every spare minute that we’ve got has been devoted to getting it finished and preparing our new destination web site that will showcase our technology, streaming analytics, big data mashups, and be a lot of fun to boot. (Those of you at Founders Showcase might be able to guess, but the rest of you will have to wait.).
I must say that the entire experience writing the book has been illuminating—although we write about data privacy (and its cousin, data security) quite often, we tend to focus on one specific issue which invariably has been spurred on by an egregious privacy breach. The book has allowed us to stand back and consider the entire privacy landscape, how differently we (as in country, society, and worldview) define it as well as the state of privacy in the digital age. I have to say that during the course of writing this book, some of my views on “what should be done” have changed but I’ll save that for my post-book blog entry! (more…)
Big Data Big Analytics 