Launching New Sites for Data Driven NYC and Hardwired NYC

Some updates on the event/community front:

1) A little while ago, I changed the name of the data event I’ve been organizing from “NYC Data Business Meetup” to “Data Driven NYC”.   I originally started the event mostly as experiment, and didn’t give much thought to branding (so yeah, that was a terrible name).  The event has now grown quite a bit (over 3.700 members as I write this), so it was time for a better name; also at this stage, it feels more like a community than “just” a meetup, so I wanted a name that reflected this reality.

2) Back in June, I launched a new community called “Hardwired NYC”.  It covers startups, technologies and products at the intersection of the physical and digital worlds, including topics like 3D printing, Internet of Things, wearable computing, etc.  I developed a strong interest in those areas through my involvement in the Big Data world – the Internet of Things, in particular, is deeply intertwined with Big Data (the proliferation of sensors has been contributing to the Big Data “problem”; equally  the Internet of Things will be highly dependent on Big Data technologies if it is to deliver on its promise).

3) As Hardwired NYC is taking off fast (more than 700 members after just two events), I figured that both events/communities should have their own website with full video libraries, including for people who don’t live in New York and are interested in the content. So, with the great help of my FirstMark colleague Dan Kozikowski,  I’m launching this week http://www.datadrivennyc.com and http://www.hardwirednyc.com.  Both sites have a “Watch” section where, from now on, I will post pictures and videos of events (as opposed to this blog).

Data Driven NYC: Special Data Science

The May edition of Data Driven NYC (f/k/a NYC Data Business Meetup) featured some of the coolest kids of the Data Science world, in NYC and beyond:

* Cathy O’Neil, Senior Data Scientist at Johnson Research Labs
* Claudia Perlich, Chief Scientist at M6D
* Drew Conway, Scientist-in-Residence at IA Ventures
* Chris Wiggins, Professor at Columbia University and co-founder of HackNY
* Max Shron – Data strategy consultant and former data scientist at OkCupid

Unfortunately, no videos for Cathy and Claudia – their microphones did not work.  I didn’t include the panel video either because large chunks of it are silent (due to the same issues with Cathy’s and Claudia’s microphones).  Bummer.

Chris Wiggins:

Drew Conway:

Max Shron: 

Internet of Things Meetup

At the April #NYDBM, we explored  the fascinating intersection between Big Data and the Internet of Things.

One of the reasons why volumes of data have been escalating prodigiously over the last few years has been the proliferation of sensors of all kinds (in cell phones, cars, industrial plants, etc.), providing a unique articulation between the online and physical worlds. The concept of an Internet of Things (and its cousin for the manufacturing world, the “Industrial Internet”), where objects, devices and machines are connected and operable through a network, is not a new concept, but it is now quickly accelerating.  In the Internet of Things, all objects become represented by data, and the intelligence is pushed above the level of the devices themselves, to the cloud where big data technologies help operate the devices with new levels of efficiency, factoring in not just the individual circumstances of that specific device but also those of connected devices as well as the external context affecting the network at any point in time.

We started with a few spotlight presentations by three pre-funding startups in the space:

• Canary (fka ForceField Labs): Connected device for home security and monitoring
• Placemeter: Smart in-store sensors capturing customer data(part of the current Techstars NYC class)
• Dash Labs: Connected car platform (also part of current Techstars NYC class)

We then featured the following speakers:

• Alex Hawkinson, CEO, SmartThings
• Peter Semmelhack, CEO, Bug Labs and author of a new book, “Social Machines”
• Jon Bruner, data journalist at O’Reilly and author of a new report on “The Industrial Internet”
• Steve Schlafman of Lerer Ventures
• Phin Barnes of First Round Capital

Canary:

 

Placemeter:

 

Dash:

 

Peter Semmelhack:

 

Jon Bruner:

 

SmartThings:

 

Panel:

 

Cloudera, Greylock, Platfora and Think Big Analytics

We had an all star event on March 19 at the New York Data Business Meetup with some great presentations and discussions (and some fun stuff as well: see Jeff Hammerbacher’s first few slides about how the term “data scientist” came to existence).

Many thanks to the people who made it possible:
–  Silvio Galea and Annie Dane for hosting us at the very cool WeWork space in SoHo
– David Raviv for doing amazing work with the videos
– Shivon Zilis for taking great pics and being all around super helfpul and resourceful

Here are the videos, in order of appearance:

 

 

 

 

 

And here are some pics:

WeWork, our generous hosts

Full house (make that *very* full house)

Ron Bodkin

Ben Werther

DJ Patil

DJ Patil

Jeff Hammerbacher

DJ Patil’s cool kicks and socks

Panel

Quantopian, Plaid and ZestFinance

Our February NYC Data Business Meetup was focused on the intersection of data and finance (both market and consumer finance).  Quantopian, Plaid and ZestFinance presented.

We also had a great panel presenting the customer perspective on Big Data (hype vs. reality), from a financial institutions’ viewpoint, with the following speakers:  Mike Simone (Global Head of CitiData Platform Engineering), Emile Werr (Head of Enterprise Data Architecture, NYSE EuroNext) and  Raj Patil (up until recently Data innovation CTO at UBS, now an entrepreneur).  Unfortunately, due to standard policy at some of those institutions, we can’t publicly post the video of the panel.

The slides are here: 

Quantopian

Plaid

ZestFinance

Here are the videos, in order of appearance (we also had a great “customer panel

Bloomberg App Portal:

Quantopian:

Plaid:

ZestFinance:

Panel:

SumAll, SimpleReach, Hadapt and ClearStory

Our January NYC Data Business Meetup was focused on data analytics.

Here are the slide decks:

SumAll

SimpleReach

Hadapt

ClearStory

Here are the videos:

SumAll

SimpleReach

Hadapt

ClearStory

Panel Discussion

Joseph Turian, Sqrrl, Infochimps and MemSQL

The December NYC Data Business Meetup was focused on big data infrastructure companies, with the co-founders of Sqrrl, Infochimps and MemSQL presenting to a full house.  We started the evening with a presentation by prominent data scientist Joseph Turian.

The slides are here: Joseph Turian, Sqrrl, Infochimps and MemSQL.

Here are the videos:

Intro

 

Joseph Turian, “How to do AI in 2013”

 

Oren A. Falkowitz, Co-Founder & CEO, Sqrrl

 

Dhruv Bansal, Co-Founder & Chief Science Officer, Infochimps

 

Eric Frenkiel, Co-Founder & CEO, MemSQL

 

And here are a few pics (photo credit: Shivon Zilis):

 

Recorded Future, Lex Machina, DataMarket and numberFire

The November NYC Data Business Meetup was focused on “vertical-specific” applications of big data – startups leveraging the big data stack to offer new solutions to specific industries, such as finance and government (Recorded Future), the legal industry (Lex Machina), energy (DataMarket, although it offers data sets for other industries as well) and sports (numberFire).

The slides are here: Recorded Future, Lex Machina, DataMarket and numberFire.

Here are the videos:

Christopher Ahlberg, CEO, Recorded Future:

 

Josh Becker, CEO, Lex Machina:

 

Hjálmar Gíslason, CEO, DataMarket:

 

Nik Bonaddio, CEO, numberFire:

 

Panel discussion:

 

Some pics:

IA Ventures, Accel, Data Collective, Precog and CCS at the NYC Data Business Meetup

Here are the videos from the NYC Data Business Meetup that was held on October 23, 2012, in order of appearance:

Jeff Carr, COO, Precog

 

Max Yankelevich, co-founder, CrowdComputing Systems

 

Roger Ehrenberg, Founder and Managing Partner, IA Ventures; Ping Li, General Partner, Accel Partners; Matt Ocko, Co-Founder and Partner, Data Collective (from left to right):