Smarter Commerce, Smarter Analytics

According to the swine flu map that Facebook put online Tuesday night, Texas leads all the states in terms of online postings mentioning the swine flu.

Apparently it hasn't impacted me or the 500-600 other folks who have come together here at the AT&T Conference Center in Austin to talk social commerce these past couple days.

The now apparently annual BazaarVoice Social Commerce Summit provides an opportunity for BazaarVoice customers, digital marketing experts, and people who like to ride mechanical bulls to come together and talk all things crowdsourcing commerce.

If you've ever rated or ranked a product or a story on a Website, then you, too, have participated in the fine art of social commerce.

I've been most pleased with the summit thus far. I've had the opportunity to hang with some local and far away colleagues from IBM, as well as meet some new friends from various vendors and BazaarVoice (Look for increased integration of BazaarVoice capabilities into the IBM WebSphere Commerce product line).

And most importantly, I've done all of this less than three miles away from my domicile here in Austin. (Inside joke: If you've followed this blog recently with any regularity, you know my recent home has been Seat 15F on an American Airlines 757).

And based on the Twitter stream emerging from the conference, there are no "Twitter Quitters" in this audience.

This despite Nielsen Wire posting that "for most of the past 12 months, pre-Oprah, Twitter has languished below 30 percent retention."

I can see the T-shirts now: "Real Twits Never Quit!"

A key meme here in Austin at the Summit has been analytics

How do we measure the impact of all those ratings and rankings? How do I reassure my CEO that those cool stories people are telling about my brand on my web site are turning into a gazillion dollars worth of new sales? etc. ad nauseum ad infinitum.

So I was pleased to see IBM announced yesterday it is opening a global network of advanced analytic centers, including the initial five in Tokyo, London, New York City, Beijing, and Washington, D.C.

These centers will enable IBM to meet growing client demand for advanced analytics capabilities.

One of our first engagements will be with my dad's home state of Arkansas, which IBM will help effective monitor and manage the use of stimulus grants for improving education programs.

IBM CEO Sam Palmisano remarked about the announcement of these new centers:

"Advanced analytics are increasingly essential to help companies and organizations confronted with vast amounts of data and systemic change, and who are looking to build smarter business systems. All organizations today need to sort through myriad choices, make smarter decisions quickly and accurately, and act decisively. IBM is ready to help."

Now, if you'll excuse me. The New York Times' Jeff Graham is about to tell us about "Using Word of Mouth to Build ROI!"

Outdated Web 2.0 Analogies For $500, Alex

I hope you had a good weekend.

I spent mine lamenting my Sony big screen going on the blink, and then acquiring more frustration by chasing around a little white ball.

Oh, and trying to find something else on the news other than the swine flu (Insert appropriate charcterization here A. Pandemic B. Epidemic C. Hysteria

Which brings us to some very exciting news coming out of IBM Research this morning.

But first, a quick IBM flashback.

In 1997, I had the opportunity to participate in and witness the Kasparov v. Deep Blue series of chess matches, and had a number of IBM amigos who worked on the Web site.

It was via the Web site that I followed a number of the matches, but I also had the opportunity to attend one match in person at the Equitable building in midtown Manhattan.

Even it wasn't quite in person, as Garry Kasparov and the Deep Blue team were situated about 50 stories above us, while we pawns and press and mere mortals sat in the audience following the play-by-play as we watched a huge chess board on display above the stage.

I've never seen something quite so exciting.

I know, I know, chess? Exciting?

What made it so was the element of Man v. Machine.

The drama was inherently built in to the challenge.

It was John Henry all over again.

Only this time it was about brains more than brawn -- although judging by the toll the matches seemed to take on Kasparov, there was a little bit of brawn involved as well.

Well, and there's really no other way to say this....They're baaaccccckkk.

Yes, the IBM Research team has been hard at work in their labs, this time working on a highly advanced Question Answering system codenamed "Watson" that soon will be competing with other mere humans on that gameshow of gameshows, Jeopardy.

Specifically, Watson will be attempting to understand via artificial intelligence very complex questions and answer with enough precision and speed to compete in realtime Jeopardy games.

As Dr. David Ferrucci, project lead for Watson, explained, "The challenge is to build a system that, unlike systems before it, can rival the human mind's ability to determine precise answers to natural language questions and to compute accurate confidences in the answers. This confidence processing is key. It greatly distinguishes the IBM approach from conventional search."

Me, personally, I'd like to see Watson take on HAL from "2001," but of course, we all know HAL's just a fictional character in a movie.

Right? Right, HAL? You're not real, are you buddy.

There is a flower within my heart
Daisy, Daisy
Planted one day by a glancing dart
Planted by Daisy Bell

I'll take the Turing Test for $500, Alex?

Alex?!?!

While I get my computer back in working order, please visit that other great bastion of artificial intelligence, YouTube, to see a video outlining the Watson and Jeopardy project.