Lotusphere Keynote with Tim Berners Lee, Watson, and Others

So during the keynote this morning they spoke about how Wastson works and how it might have real life applications.  To kick off, the speaker noted how Watson works

1. Understands natural language and human speach
2. Generate probabilities on the correct answers
3. Learns as it goes

All this is built on a massively parallel architecture optimized for Power 7.  (Power 7 is the architecture we have seen massively increase Portal throughput as well)

So how to make Watson work?  They are looking at healthcare in the following scenario

• Watson acts as an assistance
• It hears the symptoms and makes an initial indication
• It next looks at family history which may result in a change
• It overlays patient history
• It then overlays any medications being taken
• At this point, it can give a probabilistic determination as to what may be the cause of the patient’s problem

IBM recognizes that is can’t work alone in something like the healthcare so they are partnering with Wellpoint and Cedars Sanai.

Other possibilities include the idea of Watson and social collaboration.  The social collaboration can enhance Watson.  It can glean insight from social networks like Doximity to make better determinations

Andy Miller of Polycom on mobility, cloud, millenials and others

Note: Tim Berners Lee spoke on the value of the Semantic web.

Andy Miller is the president and CEO of Polycom.  He came to give a vision of video communications.

Myth: Video communications is built around savings on travel by putting people in a room

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Reality, video ubiquity takes it out of a conference room and puts it in lots of other locations.

Video ubiquity will put these services in the cloud and make it available to the consumer, not just large businesses

Case Studies

• 8 of the top 10 hospitals and all top 10 pharmaceuticals worldwides use video technology to make treatment decisions
• 4 of the top 5 colleges use Polycom
• Yale, Harvard, Standard, Brown ,Columbia
• Army, Navy, Airforce, and various state and local governments are using video techology
• 10 of the largest banks and six larges insurance company use video to save costs and streamline operations.  This includes video kiosks to connect to an expert
• Five of the top entertainment and media are reducing production time
• scripted in Chicago, filmed in NY and edited in LA. Video cuts the time to do all this

Top 5 trends in collaborative communications

1. This next generation was raised on video
1. 66% of mobile traffic by 2015 will contain video
2. Proliferation of mobile devices
1. expect 320 Million tablets by 2015
2. 92% of Fortune 500 are deploying iPads today
3. Tablets do and will support
3. Network readiness
1. All the major networks (ATT, Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile, etc) are supporting higher capacity.
4. Social connectedness
5. All delivered through the cloud
1. Deliver video without premise based eqiupment

Tim Berners Lee, Minoja, and Andy Questions

What are teh avenues and pitfalls when connecting to the semantic web?  It depends on the current intranet’s capacity and stability. It also depends on how open the internet is.  Tim then took the time to rail against SOPA in the House and PIPA in the Senate

What is the role of the knowledge worker?  They will have a lot of growth opportunities. The semantic technologies will drive a new class of opportunities to engage and talk about driving business outcomes.  This will put new demands on them.  They will have to understand how it works and how to use the tools.

On the IT side do you see the lines between business and IT blurring?  The lines are already blurring.  Business wants to reduce the time between strategic intent and actually doing it.  Those who cut that time will succeed.

Are you envisioning a real generation divide between digital natives and digital immigrants?  Yes but new tools will help bridge that divide.

Are their more personal applications of Watson?  Can’t date Watson but Watson can find a partner.

Tim, can you give us concrete steps to get business value from the semantic web now?  You need people who understand the semantic web.  Find bright people. It’s changing so quickly.  The open standards make it easy to evolve quickly.  Advice, join in building those standards.

follow up: to your first point, we don’t have the skills so your emphasis in on hiring for the skills.  Tim said, “I’m training.  Give them a chance to play. Let them download and play with it. It’s free”

Andy, besides calling Polycom, what do you have to do to move the needle on mult-media: There are several things. utilize what you have in place. Bring tools like Sametime. Don’t follow a rip and replace philosophy.   Secondly, understand your supply chain requirements. Understand the roadmap of how you communicate with your supply chain

Minoja, on the them of AI providing real benefits, what do I do when I get back to the office: 1. Educate yourself on what it can do.  Share it. 2. Enable. Unlike ERP systems you can start small.  With social technologies you can start implementing with a small number of people.