 Welcome to News Desk on SiliconANGLE TV for Monday, October 29th, 2012. I'm Kristen Folletti. Last week was SiliconANGLE's Big Data Week, with intense coverage coming out of IBM's Information on Demand conference, as well as O'Reilly and Cloudera's Stratoconference out of New York City. Join us now with his breaking analysis on these stories is SiliconANGLE founding editor Mark Risen-Hopkins. Welcome, Mark. Howdy. Big Data Week is over and SiliconANGLE was all over the map, so tell us about what were some of the highlights from the week. So as you know, we started out in Las Vegas for the IOD conference, and then we headed into New York City for the last half of the week and covered the new hybrid O'Reilly-Cloudera-Hadoopworld Stratoconference. They've merged the two together, and now, from now on, it will be referred to as Stratoconference World Out in New York City. And it was a great show. I was at Stratoconference. Of course, the rest of the team was over there in Las Vegas, and some of them made the crossover for the two shows, but the big themes, the big highlights, seemed to be kind of a real-time analytics was a major deal. There was a big sense of the maturation of the market. There's a lot of evangelization going on, as there is at just about any O'Reilly event, but even at the IOD, there was a lot of evangelization. And I think the biggest thing, the biggest highlight of the week is the fact that we've got, there's a greater industry recognition of Big Data as a thing, as opposed to some sort of, you know, just some sort of passing fad. SiliconANGLE is always on the lookout for what you call tech athletes. Who were the returning stars this year and who were stars to look out for? So yeah, it's tech athletes. I can't remember who came up with that term in the cube, but I think it was actually at one of our big data events, but John likes to use it quite a bit. And so, you know, we call ourselves ESPN of tech. Tech athletes makes kind of sense in that context. It was Avi Mehta from Trish Sada. He's one of the people that we discovered at Hadoop World, the second Hadoop World in New York City several years ago. And he returned, of course, originally he was with AOL now with his own startup, Trish Sada. Over in Las Vegas, Pauline Nis was another returning tech athlete. She's a GM of ESS and over at Intel, Jeff Hammerbacher, the chief data scientist for Cloudera was there, Doug Cutting, one of the founders from Cloudera, Alistair Krull and Ed Dumble. These are two really intelligent fellows that always have something interesting to say. They were there at Strata. They're from the Strata conference as well as working on their own projects. They were speaking a lot about some data acquisition. Basically they had these little data acquisition units all over their sensors that were collecting data. They spent a lot of time talking about that and how the data could be used. Of course, we also had some new folks as well that showed up, Orrin Falcovitz, who is the CEO and co-founder of a company called Squirrel. There was a gal named Camille Fortier from Rent the Runway. That was kind of an interesting company that she spent a little time talking about how data is central to their operation there at Rent the Runway. Then Jason Silva, who is well-known television personality in underground tech scene, did some work for current TV as well, spoke about data journalism there at IOD. You threw out a few company names. What were some of the more interesting companies that you saw? Two of the most interesting ones I saw personally were over there at Strata, Rent the Runway and Squirrel. So Rent the Runway is actually not what's traditionally thought of as data company, but it's a great case study for what the new data company will be. It's every company is a data company, and that's the general idea. Rent the Runway's business model is built around the fact that if you like fashion, but you also like social media, you may buy a dress or buy an outfit and wear it out to a party, pictures taking of you at this party and they're uploaded to Facebook. Everyone's seen you in that dress. You can't wear it again. So you're spending a lot of money on dresses or outfits that you can't wear twice. So the Rent the Runway's idea is that you can rent stuff like really, really high end for about the same price as what you would buy it for or less, buy a regular dress for or less, and wear it once and then return it. It's kind of like a Netflix for dresses and outfits is what they described it as. But there's a lot of data to that company, just like Netflix, right? We get the recommendation engines at Netflix, same sort of thing with this company, but they've also got added elements that you wouldn't necessarily have in digital entertainment, like preferences for dresses or preferences for outfits, like is it a short dress? Is it a party dress? Is it a formal gown? These are personal preferences that are not necessarily consistently reflected in designers, like they might be. And there's not a lot of metadata around a dress or an outfit. So there's a whole interesting data issue they're trying to solve there and they're actually successful at, it seems like, and talking about that on the show. And Squirrel was interesting to me as a new company because it's another analytics company. Like I said, real-time analytics made a strong showing as a theme at the event. These guys do real-time analytics with security in mind. There are a lot of NXX NSA folks that went out and started a big data startup. So very, very unique approach to the big data issue. And of course, if you want to talk about companies we all know and love, the big data space, Cloudera, Hortonworks, and Hedat, data stacks, these were all made very strong showings. Cloudera, especially since this is a former Cloudera run show. So really, really interesting stuff, a lot of new entrants that have interesting stories and interesting entry points into the world of big data. As you mentioned, you spent your time in NYC with the Strata Hadoop World Conference. What were some of the major themes that you saw? So I've touched on a lot of them already. So there was, like I said, real-time. There's a strong emphasis on real-time analytics with big data, which sounds simple, but really isn't because of the unique way that a lot of these NoSQL-style databases approach data organization, the very scheme of light, and therefore, you know, there's things that have to happen that aren't traditional database problems. And what we're learning is there is a lot of what we're learning for those of us documenting this is that there's a lot of different courses for courses, a lot of different database types for different types of time frames when you need the analysis and that sort of thing. So that's one of the things that sort of showed up during the show. There's also been a lot of conflation of the term analytics with big data. A lot of people saying, you know, I've got a big data solution when really it's just the same analytic solution that they had prior to the term big data becoming a thing, they're just calling it big data now because it's the easiest way to market it. So, you know, some of these guys actually would kind of fall into the silicon angle definition of big data and some people wouldn't. And so that's, I saw a lot of that during this show. And I've also seen on the part of the organizers, oh, Riley, really seemed intent on widening the tent. That's kind of a political term, you know, or Republicans say they're a big tent party allow a wide range of ideas within the party. I think there's on some of the evangelists within the world of big data, you've seen a widening of the definition of big data to allow more people, more companies, more ideas to be kind of shoehorned into the idea of big data, which has led to the last thing that I saw at NYC, which is the start of a real commercialization at of the big data world. You're seeing a lot more venture capital being thrown at this world. You're seeing a lot more big players like IBM, who did rebrand their analytics conference or software conference into a big data event. You're seeing a lot more capital come into the world under the umbrella of big data. Big data has been incredibly hyped, not just this year, but over the last several years. How real is it, though? Do you see this conference as affirmation that big data is not just an idea or a concept, but something that's here to stay and is going to continue to be here? So, yeah, I think, well, I mean, honestly, I would be lying if I said that I thought big data was just hype, but I have a vested interest in that. I run a blog and media network that is built on the themes of big data, so I might be a little bit biased. That said, though, I really think what we're seeing here is a trend that has legs. Big data is obviously something being latched onto by a company like IBM, which says volumes about what they think the longevity of the idea. If they're going to rebrand the fastest growing aspect of their business as a big data arm of the company, as opposed to just boring old analytics, then that says something about the longevity of this market. But I also would also point out, like I said, the venture capital. I got invited. I'm an editor for a news network. I don't get invited to a lot of venture capital parties. It's just, I get invited to briefings. I get invited to product launch parties. I don't get invited to venture capital things as a general rule, especially being based out of Dallas, but every, even in the New York events that I go to, but every night that I was in town, I got invited to at least two different private equity or venture capital parties, which that's a major shift. There were those venture capital and private equity parties weren't even there last year, and certainly not the year before at Strata Hadoop World. So when you've gotten that amount of cap, that large amount of capital interested in being influxed into the big data world, I think you have to say that there is at least a midterm lifespan available for this market because otherwise where's the money going? So there's going to be some runway for the big data world for the next few years. And then there was this other idea, the last kind of data point I would throw out there for this being not hype, but actual businesses. We kind of threw out this idea of, Kristen Nicole actually wrote the post, but we threw out this idea on the air and around the show that big data week is the new South by Southwest. It's the new hip thing. It's the new thing where where all the startup action is happening. And it just like went viral as just an idea, not just as a post, but as an idea was one of the most talked about ideas and posts and themes from the show by any metric, by any big data metric. Looking at social media, looking at posts from other organizations, this idea that this could be the new South by Southwest has a lot of legs. And as we know, South by Southwest been around for decades at this point and continues to be a hub for geeky activity. And one of the places, the coveted slots to launch a startup. So I think that these things kind of point to a fact that this is here to stay. We're only going to get more and more data in the world of technology, not less. And so these are the people, these are the early adopters that are gonna be creating the solutions to understand that mess of data and then do what we do here, bring the signal from the noise. Well, Mark, thanks so much for the roundup and we'll talk with you again soon. Absolutely. And remember for superior event coverage and the latest breaking analysis, join us here at Newsdesk on SiliconANGLE.tv.