 We're back, live in Silicon Valley. I'm John Furrier, the founder of siliconangle.com, siliconangle.tv. We're here at theCUBE where we're at the Stratoconference where this is the second year the Stratoconference has been on a full year. This conference has exploded on the scene. Last year we had massive traffic, massive interest in big data. Stratoconference was its inaugural conference. This year Stratoconference is on year two. They've expanded the format. Obviously the big news this year is Stratoconference now merged with Hadoop World, not Hadoop Summit which will be at live with theCUBE in a few months this year. And it's really the big data show and they've expanded it to have a very comprehensive program from developers going deep on deep data all the way up to practitioners offering essentially an MBA-like program called Jumpstart that our friend Bill Schmarzow from EMC was being a professor on. So they're bringing gurus on and developers here feeding them all the big data greatness. I'm here with Alex Williams, the senior editor at siliconangle.com over services angle, DevOps angle, the enterprise, all things tech, industry veteran, Alex Williams, thanks for coming back on. Thanks John. Alex, let's talk about some tech here. So obviously the big news today is the iPad event. Dave and I were riffing on the impact of the iPad and the iPhone with mobility, forcing Android to come to the market and explode onto the scene. We saw that with Han, et cetera. So that's a done deal. It's kind of going its way and everyone knows that. Google, FTC ruling, today's headlines, the FTC chairman, new Google privacy plan forces consumers to make a brutal choice, quote. The angle here from the Silicon Angle team, including Mark Hopkins, the FTC isn't explaining what that means, but presumably they're implying that Google's saying love us or leave us, meaning force them to make a change on the privacy. Honestly, we have a story on siliconangle.com that it's totally overblown. We think that Google's got great loyalty with their users. But privacy's a big issue, right? So we are here at the Big Data Conference and this plays into the angle of data, right? So the data angle is big. Data needs to be open. And I was saying earlier that the mainframe kept computing locked in and PCs freed it up and created a massive revolution. Data has been locked into these data warehouses. Now the movement is all about opening the data up and creating massive innovation. So the question is privacy. Google has it. They're in the data business. They're in the big data business. They have all the data on us. They know what we're surfing. They know what we're searching. And I think it's also an issue about identity. And I think that's really the crux of it. What is your identity online? And how is that defined? And how can Google really get a glimpse of that? How can Microsoft see that? How does Apple see that? And that's an issue that I think is overlooked when we talk about privacy. Because, for instance, inside any company, there might be 30, 40, 50 services used, right? And people are using them on their smartphones. They're using them on their tablets. They're using me at their desk. And they're using multiple IDs to get into these systems. And so there really needs to be a better way to establish your identity. One of the most interesting things I heard over the past few years is this movement to provide every individual with almost like their own website or their own app. And that's their identity app. And that's where they kind of control all their permissions. They can say, this is my permissions, what I'm going to establish for Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, any service out there. And so then the systems have to connect back with your own identity as how you define it, not as how they define it. So obviously data, we're here at Strata. It's a convergence of many different forces coming together from developer all the way up to business. You were at some of the sessions. Couple questions for you. You're out there kind of kicking the tires ear to the ground. What are you hearing here? What's your early vibe on the show? And two, you attended the data journalism section. So I want to ask you specifically, how is data affecting the journalism vertical and other verticals in general, if you can comment on that. There's two questions. Vibe and then the big data's impact to the journalism vertical or media vertical and any other vertical you can comment on. Well, the data journalism session was packed. I had trouble finding a seat when I walked in. And they were talking through how they use data, for instance, to help understand the UK riots, how they've used data to understand this whole issue around the 99%. How they've used data to understand what Sarah Palin said in her emails. A lot of the questions then come around, well, how do you really just get that data into a system so you can then analyze it? So for instance, with Sarah Palin, there were tens of thousands of emails that were provided according to the Freedom of Information Act. But they came as paper, right? So they had to scan every one of these pieces of paper. So there was some guy sitting in a room for three days scanning paper. And now you have it in PDF. And now you gotta get that static data out of PDF and into a format that you can use. Now you get into a format that you can use. Now what tools do you use? Okay, now you've understand those tools. Now how are you gonna present that data? Okay, now you've been able to present that data. Now how are you gonna be able to tell a story? And that's really where I think is the most interesting intersection with like the data journalists and those standard reporters who are on the ground. So basically reporters are not data jockeys. They're just guys who wanna do their job. They're the users of the data. So was there a discussion about the presentation layer? The data journalists are not reporters. They're just there to say, this is what I learned from this CSV file, okay? You know, here's the information. You know, what we don't have is this and this and this and the reporter says, okay, I got it. So then the reporter goes out on the ground and they go out and find additional holes to fill in with the data. That presentation layer then comes back and how they, that's really the art, right? That is, that's really the true art. And some really interesting things that they show, for instance, they show this video of how they analyze data about the United States economy and they looked at census data and they looked at the data. So for instance, who are the millionaires? Who are the billionaires? And what power do they have? What control do they have? And what is really the impact on the overall economy and what's happened to people as economy is worsened? How have the rich done? How have the markets around luxury goes in? But they did it in such an engaging way. And it was so, and it was like, so they were able, so it's like, not even, you know, it's not even, you don't even care about the data. It's just the story, it just makes it, it's just so good. So give me a number, one to 10, one being sucky, 10 being amazing. Where is the journalism field right now relative to their use of technology and data? That's your opinion. I think the Guardian is leader and I would be hard pressed to find, you know, anyone who's getting close to them. The industry as a whole number and then you want to rank the horses. Okay, the, okay, overall I'd say it's probably a two or three. That low. Yeah. Okay, so let's go in and talk about the winners and the... And I think that's being nice. Generous. Okay, yeah, I agree. I think if they don't have technology from the ground up like SiliconANGLE.com, they're screwed. That's my opinion. Done. Yeah, seriously, I mean, the leaders out there right now handicap the best players in media. Guardian, TIMES, Journal, Forbes, these guys. How would you rate them? Well, SiliconANGLE's obviously, you know. We'll get to the blogger conversation. Number one. We'll get to the bloggers soon. That's the fun part. But let's go to the mainstream media because they are working hard. I mean, the TIMES, I love the TIMES, love the Journal. Let's look at it this way. Data is increasingly opening up. The New York TIMES is doing a fantastic job. The Washington Post is doing a fantastic job. TIMES is a paywall. Yes, Journal is a paywall. I'm talking about in terms of just understanding the data and creating something out of it. And the New York TIMES is done a fantastic job. And I think then, you know, then it really tips down quite a bit. But there's lots of interesting works being done that are outside like the mainstream, like individuals and even different kinds of organizations who are like opening up information in the form of infographics. And infographics, I think get a bad rap because what infographics really do is they're just an expression of that new capability to open data in new ways. You know, if people want to look at infographics, they're very enticing. I love it.