 Okay, we're back here at the O'Reilly Fluent Conference in San Francisco, California. This is day two of theCUBE's coverage of O'Reilly Media's Fluent Conference. I'm John Furrier, the founder of SiliconAngle.com. Go to SiliconAngle.com, that's where the blog posts and content will be flowing. Go to YouTube.com slash SiliconAngle, where you'll find all the videos here. A lot of great interviews from tech geeks, to developers, to entrepreneurs. This is where they extract a suit from the noise. And my next guest, Ann Spencer, who is the editor of the, or data editor of Strata. Editor, Strata, O'Reilly Media. You look over all of the Strata ecosystem, the community, not just the event. Now welcome to theCUBE. Hi, it's good to be here. Okay, so Strata's an event, we've been to every single one of them. So I can say I witnessed the evolution of Strata, the event that O'Reilly puts on. Then it merged with Hadoop World, which I've been to every Hadoop World. And so the confluence of the tech community coming together with the business community around the hottest trend in big data in cloud has really been interesting. So I got to ask you a couple of questions. What is your job at O'Reilly? Because the Strata is a very big event. But you look out over a broader landscape, tell us about what you do at O'Reilly. Absolutely, at Strata, one of the great things about the Strata community is that it's not just one type of person or one type of world. We've got data analysts, we've got data scientists, we've got data engineers. We have all these people bumping up against each other within the conferences, right? So one of the roles that I have is thinking about what are some of the common pain points that they have when they're working with data. Because we're really at a point where people just don't want to know what data is, they want to figure out, okay, I know what to do with the data, but what are some of the best practices? When I'm cleaning and preparing and moving and doing the analysis, how can I grab that analysis that's really going to create an impact? So Strata's slogan, the conference, is making data work, changing the world with data. And the Strata conference, just for a quick plug for the event, has expanded, obviously, International. It's been a huge franchise for O'Reilly, London, and then they got one coming up in Boston, that's Strata RX, which is healthcare focused. Obviously, medical's huge, I mean, huge data issues. You've got Sarbanes-Oxley on one end, and you've got HIPAA on the other. Huge innovation dilemma problem with that, so that's going to be probably an explosive event in terms of controversy. Now, obviously, the main act is the Strata Hadoop World. That's October 28th and October 30th in New York City, and New York City being fitting because that's a really heavy-duty finance area, a lot of big data analytics in stock market, as well as in business, so two events coming up. So the Strata events, like Velocity, we were talking about strength and power and speed, and making data work, there's a lot of different parts to Strata. You have a river of different vectors coming into the main franchise of Strata. One is analytics, one is big data technology like Hadoop and other things. Commercial off-the-shelf software, whether it's databases, or a business intelligence data warehousing, and you have, what else is there? There's a lot of, I mean, there's people issue. Well, there's also the design issue as well. And we have visualization. So again, you could run a conference on every one of those vectors. So it's converging. So how do you look at that landscape? You talk to users all the time, and not about the vendors, because we know all who the vendors are, all the big guys trying to get a position, but the customer base of the users, they're replacing the old with new stuff. So when you find them, what do you hear from them? What are some of the conversations? So one of the things I really enjoy doing is just doing a lot of listening, because even though we're coming from these different roles, whether it be an analyst or an engineer or a designer, we have some of the same problems when we're working with data. And how do we figure out how to pull those insights to create impact? And it's amazing to hear some of the common problems that doesn't matter what their role is. So one of the things that I do is I kind of step back and go, okay, what are the problems that we're trying to solve for? Right, and we're bringing everyone together. We're figuring out, okay, if we pull these different components together, this is how we can create impact with data from all these different roles. So what are the big concerns you hear from in terms of pain points? I mean, I would say there's an aspirin to take and then there's a complete reconstruction. So you have a little aspirin to take, I had a problem, I solved it, and then full transformation. So we're seeing those trends happen. How does that affect the people involved? The CIO, CFO, IT professional, cloud providers to the end user data scientists? Oh, it definitely depends on the role. Sometimes when you have a CXO or you have a team lead that all of us in this handed this initiative and they go, I have this big data initiative, what do I do? There's that issue. There's also the issue of, there's this analyst that's usually working in Excel or MATLAB and now all of a sudden they think about, well, how do I extend my skill base so that way I can learn more about R? So one of the things that I'm trying to figure out is, how can I provide them resources, bridge resources so that way they can learn more about the data science techniques they need to do their job and solve some of those problems? So it's still early on in the industry. What inning do you see or what grade would you mark the user base and the community out there? Elementary school, graduating in high school, moving on to college, different levels. Oh, I... Can you take it? It's just like, you know. Everybody is just all puppies in a basket. We're all together, right? And we all have these different levels of knowledge and skills and we're all sharing. And that's what makes it so exciting. Right. Yeah, I mean I'm really impressed with the whole big data movement we've been watching from day one. And one of the most interesting things that I noticed is that it's evolved at different speeds, right? So like you've seen the platform, you've seen the competition for apps, and in fact, Michael's and the Cloudera said at the Hadoop World before you came to the Stratoconference, this is the year of the apps and they had an, Excel parts had an app fund, $50 million earmarked fund for applications. That year applications didn't develop as fast. But what was the hottest app was analytics. So analytics brings us into a world where it's not the tech geeks, it's the business users, it's the data scientists. It's an individual in an organization that could change the business model of company by using data. How does that change your mindset? Because you have to then now go into different theaters. How do you look at that? Well, what's amazing about Stratoconference, sometimes we have these hybrid roles, right? Sometimes we'll be a data engineer and then we also have to pull insights. Sometimes we'll be a designer and we also have to work with the math. So one of the things I look at is I try to figure out, okay, what is it that they need to do at the end of the day? How is it they need to deliver it? And where are they at? And how can I provide those resources of saying, okay, you're really great at machine learning, right? You're really great at the algorithms. Now, how can I help you take a step back and go, okay, what's the human interface? Like, how can I extract that information and provide it to an analyst or provide it to a CXO and say, this is how we can create impact with this data, right? Yeah, so I saw Roger in the elevator, Roger's your data scientist, at O'Reilly, you guys do a lot of big data. Oh, absolutely. How about some of the things going on that you guys do at O'Reilly that's interesting that you could share? That's a hard question. I know you're new, so I don't want to get your fires. I saw Roger, he promised me, Roger, if you're watching, I know you're watching because I know you always watch. Come on theCUBE, we want to talk to you. He said to come on, but, you know, can you share any data or are you comfortable? We definitely use a lot of data in-house and it's because of Roger. We refer to Roger as our secret weapon, right? In terms of the projects he has going on and it's been really great because when I joined, and I definitely piggybacked some of what Roger was doing because as the data editor, it makes sense, like you need to do what you ask other people to do and do what you see that's happening in the industry. I can't really talk about some of the things. I mean, you can stay tuned to definitely come to our events. I mean, I think we've talked about before how we're looking to expand some of the things that we're doing with Strada with some of the events and things like that and that is definitely data-driven. So what's your forecast for Strada this year in terms of is it going to be another packed house? Do you think it's going to be massive? Oh, absolutely. We had over 600 proposals that came in for Strada in New York for sessions. So I think we're going to do very well. And is there Strada 2? We should get a chat, you know, Strada 2 event, an overflow. That's something that we should probably consider. We should probably consider that. That came from me, if you're watching. The, in all seriousness now, I mean, New York is the big event. I mean, obviously the demand for New York has been hot. That thing is great. Talk about the RX event, that community. Because now healthcare is very technical. I mean, computer systems have been, you know, changed how we deliver medical and healthcare and it's changing. In fact, I interviewed someone at Strada once about using big data to do better delivery of healthcare, you know, a different question. But there was some healthcare, a big time last year. You guys broke that onto its own conference. Absolutely, yes. Do you deal with that market, too? I touch upon it lightly. Actually, we have an editor that's focused on that. That's Julie Steele. She's also our co-chair for the Strada RX conference. Yeah, I've interviewed Julie. You know, data is obviously a huge pain for healthcare and pharma. And healthcare and pharma have been dealing with data for, before big data term came out, they've been dealing with that, definitely. And it's just, to me, it's really exciting because that's where we can make such a huge impact. You know, a lot of people follow big data now. It's come mainstream now. So you see a lot of the alpha geeks all are in the trenches and doing their thing. App development is going to, we're seeing that the stage is maturing, so my expectation this year is you can see a lot more app developments. But when people in the general press who follow big data and the general news cycle, they think about it and they think of, wow, it's a big deal. It's changing the society, seeing all kinds of marketing around that. What's the biggest thing that you've seen that big data's impacted the world? You share any insights around, just not to be anything specific to Strada, but just in general, things you've bumped into, ideas, products. I think something on a more personal note, I remember when I joined a data startup before I worked at O'Reilly, and one of the things when we were dealing with data, we were dealing with education technology and how when students were taking tests, you know, you roll up that data into, how do you provide the data to a point where teachers can impact teaching? Or a school administrator can impact a curriculum? Or a district administrator, we had to roll up all that data. And to me, that was, wow, that's immediate impact where you impact children in terms of how they're learning, right, with data. Take that human factor to me is really exciting. We heard someone on theCUBE yesterday talking about how Big Data is being used for monitoring hearts and implants and all kinds of medical devices. And I thought that was Brady Forrest who mentioned that really amazing example. He's got this whole internet of things going on. So again, you have another vector coming into Big Data. That is the big data coming from devices. Absolutely. The watch, the Google Glass. I mean, the speed of data has to be addressed. Is that something that's on your radar? I think if it wasn't on our radar, we would be remiss. I don't want to call it velocity, it's already a conference name, but maybe velocity will have some big data in it. Maybe that'll be happening. I think we're all converging. That was one of the reasons why I'm here at Fluent is that I was also at a chance to talk to some of the other editors where I know that you interviewed Courtney. That's some of the things that we were talking about with both Simon and Courtney about the intersections of the different areas and making sure that we don't miss out and making sure that we collaborate across O'Reilly. Yeah, and what's interesting is that Fluent Conference here is about developers, although Hadoop, World, and Strata is about developers as well, but this is kind of the pure web development, but that intersects directly with analytics. You're seeing a lot of visualization technologies. So with that, my final question for you is, what can folks expect this year from the Strata events? What can you share, just a kind of high-level description of some of the things that they might see and expect? I think with Strata, it's definitely the face time with peers, right? Not only with peers, but also people that you may not have the time to bump up against in your day-to-day job, and to be inspired and to run ideas off of each other and to sit in a session, not just sit in a session, but also just sit on the floor of the exhibit hall, right, with somebody that you just met and exchange the ideas. There's such an openness and a willingness to talk about what we're doing, right? And I think that's really great about Strata conferences. And Spencer, editor at Strata at O'Reilly Media, again, great, great event. It's expanding internationally in the different verticals, I'm sure there'll be a Strata EDU coming soon. That's just my opinion. I'm sure that the education's a big point. I think that's phenomenal. Big data's changing the world, making data work, Strata. Look for the Strata. Of course, theCUBE will be there at Strata, and we'll be doing all of our action down there as well. This is theCUBE at Fluent Conference. Tweet us, go to the Fluent Conference hashtag, which is fluenceonfconf, fluentconf. Ask any questions, we'd be happy to address them till we're out the day. This is day two of live coverage here in theCUBE at O'Reilly Media's Fluent Conference. We'll be right back with our next guest after this short break.