[Wikimedia-l] "Big data" benefits and limitations (relevance: WMF editor engagement, fundraising, and HR practices)

[George Herbert]

On Wed, Jan 2, 2013 at 8:16 PM, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> On 02/01/13 09:33, ENWP Pine wrote:
>>> Hi Pine,
>>>
>>> It might be because of the alcohol I've ingested these last days, but
>>> - what are you proposing exactly?
>>>
>>> Hapy new year,
>>>   strainu
>>>
>>
>> I wasn't proposing any specific action. I was thinking, "Big Data is a
>> cool topic, it's a big topic in its own right, it's relevant to several
>> aspects of Wikimedia, and other people might be interested in reading
>> about it or thinking about it in relation to work that they're doing or
>> priorities that they have".
>
> Maybe Wikimedia should have some sort of Buzzword Compliance Officer
> to manage this sort of thing. You know, scalable P2P in the cloud,
> mining big data on a NoSQL platform etc. etc.
>
> -- Tim Starling

Laugh all you want, but the best man at my wedding's scalable P2P in
the cloud company was acquired by Adobe, then he was poached by Skype
who were poached by Microsoft, and now he's a Very Senior Architect
spending most of his time flying around the world to far-flung
offices, architecting and implementing scalable P2P in the cloud.

And a recent company coworker was hired to mine big data on a NoSQL
platform as part of the data analysis team of Obama's reelection
campaign.

That is not to say we aren't all getting a good laugh at the current
round of fully-buzzword-compliant press articles with the new year, or
have fun watching trunk friends stagger around yelling "Fully
virtualized big data SAAS in the cloud!".

8-)


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com