The weather is more-or-less perfect in April here in Scottsdale, Arizona -- balmy especially compared to where most folk come from, and it invites open-air impromptu meetings everywhere.
Brad Holtz, the ogranizer, has done this now for fourteen years, and it is obvious he's honed the event to a high degree. The first day is organized around "conversations" -- definitely NOT "pitches"-- both from 'vendors' who are remarkably open and candid, and analysts who offer 'behind-the-scenes' views
Five separate 45 minute 'groupings" are staged, each of them with anywhere from five to eight parallel sessions in first-floor cabana-type rooms at the Scottsdale Plaza hotel. The overall theme this year is Resilient Systems, which puts a nice twist on the classic Design Tools view.
Two Santa Fe Institute folk, Dave Ackley and Chris Wood, held forth on deep questions about brain wiring and the 'end of conventional computing' if you take this resiliency idea very far. Both sessions were stimulating and provocative, certainly not aimed at moving more HP or Siemens or Intel gear.
An ex-HP exec, Chris Smith, at Cloud Pragmatics, outlined in considerable detail what it means to "trust the cloud" along with where and when it is appropriate, but as importantly, when it is not so. Trusting your most valuable data to a cloud data-center is a profound hurdle for most folk; the degree to which vendors have had to offer sweeteners and 'protective terms' was fascinating to hear. For the most part, current data-centers are built for financial traansaction computation, not 3-D rotational graphics (shades of the perpetual 'scientific' vs. commercial apps wars in architecture). A noteworthy point was made about how Intel and AMD missed the "heat, light, and sound" issue of Freshman Physics as I termed it -- Smith pointing out that he always had plenty of building space in HP data-centers, but as more powerful chips came out (6-way instead of 4-way, faster instead of slower), that the heat consumption of the devices and the memory bus throughput disabled his ability to take advantage of it. One hundred forty watts per computer chip multiplied by 1,800 machines is a quarter megawatt. He felt that the Atom chip from ARM "understood" in a way that the bandwidth-intensive leading chip makers missed -- this is the basis behind HP's new "revolutionary" Moonshot program, for example.
The way these 'conversations' work is that Smith, for example, would state a 'finding' from his experience, something that was a bit 'edgy' for the crowd, and then he'd ask "who else has experience in this?" and three or four people would share their perspective. It was very engaging, and quite thought-provoking, not to mention drawing out some new insights for everyone.
Dean Keith and a marketing sidekick, Jim Brown, attended for the first time, from Datura Systems, a nascent start-up in Michigan devoted to a semantic relational vision for unstructured data. Each got a 'conversation time' and they made good use of it. They got two significant nibbles of companies willing to prototype big data sets with them. Make no mistake -- the conference is about finding 'partners' and 'making deals'. As Brown said on the busride to dinner, "My Gawd, you don't have to spend time describing WHY this approach has value; you just have to answer how you do it. How refreshing to find knowledgeable people in decision-making roles!"
Karsten Newbury, Sr VP of Mainstream Eng'g for Siemens in Dallas, affirmed that view at dinner. He's come (again) because he finds the 'networking' with attendees so valuable. He skips most of the 'conversations' although he facilitated one capably -- preferring to 'meet and dive deeply' with fellow attendees.
Jay Vleeschhouwer, of Griffin Securities, used his 'conversation' time to share perspective on the business fortunes of various EDA and AEC companies, as well as ask the attendees for their G-2. My net take-away -- this entire sector is "stuck" in a very low growth mode, just now catching back up to 2007 revenue levels, with eroding profits by and large. He recommended exactly ONE public company stock as a BUY -- AutoDesk -- and the numbers for them were not compelling for me. I did agree with his take on the others.
How did the day affect the workshop we'll do on Sunday? Well, for starters, we're focused on how to "renew" a company via empowering your "entrepreneurs". This is an industry in need of "renewal", at least from the cursory view I garnered yesterday. Get creative, Charlie -- here's an opportunity.
No comments:
Post a Comment