Impressions from IBM’s Smarter Cities event in NY

Last week I attended IBM’s Smarter Cities event in NY.  This invitation-only event was the second in a series of high-level gatherings that IBM organized to emphasize the importance of data and analytics in addressing big problems such as healthcare, energy and transportation. The first such event was held last June in Berlin.

IBM is focusing on analytics these days.  Selecting “smarter cities” as a topic for these meetings is interesting.  IBM is very good at complex system thinking.  By focusing at the city level, IBM attempts to apply their system thinking and problem-solving prowess at an interesting set of issues where analytics can move the needle.  IBM views cities as settings that are complex yet manageable.  The company is also very good at bringing together individuals who can make an impact.  Attending the NY event were four state governors and lieutenant governors, several city mayors, including the mayor of New York, CEOs of small and large companies, academics, etc.  In all, the event had over 500 attendees from 25 countries and 180 cities.  So, there is a good probability that in the near future IBM will be able to test several of the hypotheses about how to use data and analytics to address problems at the city level that were raised during the 2-day event.

Not only because of the diversity of the event’s attendees but this was one of the first genuine cross industry and cross border demonstrations of appreciation in the importance of data for decision-making.  In speeches and hallway conversations attendees talked about how our existence in an increasingly instrumented, interconnected and intelligent world will require advances in data storage, management and analysis.  Interesting example mentioned in one talk: the new bridge on I35 in Minneapolis (that replaced the one that collapsed in 2007) has over 10K sensors.  The one it replaced had none.

It’s not about collecting data but about effectively using data to create results. NY Mayor Bloomberg gave a couple of examples on new crime analysis systems being used in the city and the contributions they are making as well as his initiatives to make more of the city’s data available over the web.  Dr. Denis Cortese, Mayo Clinic’s CEO, talked about his clinic’s efforts to analyze customer data to identify the best value a patient can get while receiving the best care.  One of his points I particularly liked was “don’t take pride on analysis but work on being rewarded for outcomes.”  Dr. José Armando Ahued Ortega, Mexico’s Secretary of Health talked about data-driven decision-making around the H1N1 virus in Mexico City.

The speeches I listened and the conversations I participated, once again reinforced my conviction that we can’t continue operating under the prevailing paradigm of “store data first and analyze it later,” even if the physical storage costs go to $0.  We are collecting so much data that in most cases we don’t have time to catalog it properly so that we can decide how and where to store it.  As a result, we lose track of the data we collect before we even have the opportunity to analyze it and benefit from it.  But, even if we could convince ourselves that we will analyze the data at a later time, because of the amount of data we collect, the cost of managing the data we store is starting to become prohibitive (energy costs, data administration costs, data maintenance costs).  Since collection is cheap, and becoming cheaper, we need to start making real time decisions on what to keep and what to throw away, where to keep it, and when and how to analyze it.  While I’ll continue looking for investments in companies that deal with data analysis (more on that in another post), I came out of IBM’s event more bullish than ever about companies that address data classification.

Interestingly enough while the Smarter Cities event was going on Columbus Circle, the Hadoop Summit was taking place in another part of NY where some very interesting ideas were presented on how to deal with the data volumes we generate.  IBM presented at that event as well.

Videos of the Smarter Cities presentations can be found here.