On Monday May 21, 2012, the Institute for Business & Information Technology (IBIT) hosted a University-wide symposium on “Big Data” in cooperation with the Office of Research. The purpose of this symposium was to bring together Temple researchers across disciplines to explore inter-disciplinary synergies and collaborations on big data research. Big data refer to extremely large datasets that do not conform to traditional principles of data collection, storage, management, sharing, processing, and statistical analysis, and they impose challenges on data storing, computer processing, existing statistical data analysis approaches, and existing ways to interpret, visualize, and derive knowledge from huge quantities of data. Over 70 faculty and PhD students attended the symposium that included several presentations and panel discussions from faculty in statistics, computer science, MIS, marketing, and the school of medicine.
The purpose of this internal Temple symposium is to identify capabilities on how to deal with big data across campus, identify synergies across researchers, Centers, departments, and schools, and hopefully spawn inter-disciplinary collaborative research on big data that will pursue external funding. Notably, the U.S. government has recently unveiled a $200M effort titled “Big Data Research and Development Initiative” that aims to support new R&D initiatives associated with big data. Moreover, the symposium will explore inter-disciplinary collaborations for potentially developing graduate programs in data analytics.
| 12:00pm | Lunch |
| 12:45pm | Opening Remarks |
| 1:00pm |
Session 1: Practical Applications and Best Practices with Big Data
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| 2:00pm | Session 2: Statistical Solutions for Big Data
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| 2:45pm | Coffee Break |
| 3:15pm |
Session 3: Technical Solutions for Big Data
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| 4:00pm |
Panel: “Emerging Opportunities and Challenges of Big Data”
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| 5:00pm | Networking Reception |
For more information, contact: Paul A. Pavlou, pavlou@temple.edu
The philosophical debates continue, the political positions for and against are now well known. The predictions of early demise or swift success were both wrong. Amid all these debates, an increasing number of new innovative applications are being released as open source and the business case seems much simpler today. Terms such as peer production, innovation, reliable, and high quality are now frequently associated with open source projects. In this symposium we will take a pragmatic perspective on open source concepts and tools. What can your firm do today? Should your next internal project leverage open source toolkits? Should you release your internally developed tool to the open source community? Should you deploy open source technologies? Are there really any cost savings? Is there an appropriate mix of approaches that can leverage the gains of open source without incurring the risk? What are the standout examples of today and tomorrow? What are the keys metrics of success and why do certain projects fail? The symposium will bring together a diverse panel of experts who will ensure that your organization does not miss the boat on this important topic.
To critics, cloud computing is just a fancy name for distributed or net-centric computing. For proponents, it is a concept that will usher in a new era of high value computing innovations at low cost. Cloud computing is typically associated with delivering services through the Internet and is integrated with the concept of software as a service (SaaS). Google Apps and application service providers (ASPs) such as salesforce.com are often quoted as examples. Cloud computing will likely leverage massive data and storage centers, provide services on a subscription basis, apply virtualization, and provide instant access worldwide through the “cloud.” Is cloud computing in general and software as a service specifically, the answer to the economic uncertainties of today? Will firms large and small really be able to reduce their reliance on internal server farms and utilize Amazon’s web services? Will we see new applications that for example leverage the Facebook API to deliver entirely new kinds of capabilities? Can cloud computing overcome security and integration challenges and help firms save money and deliver new capabilities?
April 9, 2008
