Big Data. I know, you’re totally sick of this topic. The chatter about Big Data is just numbing – even the Harvard Business Review joined the chorus a few months ago.
But is anyone actually working with Big Data? At least in Boston, US, talking has begun to give way to doing.
Hack/Reduce, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based not-for-profit organization, officially opened the doors of its funky workspace last week with a big launch party, attended by technologists, investors, entrepreneurs and other hangers-on, including Deval Patrick, governor of the state.
In their own words:
“Hack/Reduce is Boston’s big data hacker space. A 501(c)(3) non-profit, hack/reduce provides the community of students, data scientists, industry professionals, and other enthusiasts the space and the resources – intense computer power, large data sets, and subject matter experts – that are critical for making new big data discoveries.”
Governor Patrick is excited.
“The whole world is searching for wisdom to help transform society’s problems, like transportation and poverty.
“This place will help find ways to turn data into wisdom, and it’s a great opportunity for Boston to dominate the field of big data.”
Hack/Reduce’s co-founder Chris Lynch is even more excited:
“Big data is a $100 billion market, with thousands of experts around the world. We’re taking advantage of the opportunity by bringing together the government, academia and the technology industry.
“The future of big data is not in Bombay, Shanghai or San Francisco – it’s here in Cambridge.”
Fred Lalonde, CEO of travel startup Hopper, is the other co-founder of Hack/Reduce, and his hope is that the project will act as a catalyst for big data solutions in the travel industry.
“The Boston/Cambridge area is the travel technology capital of the world – Kayak, Google/ITA Software, TripAdvisor, Amadeus, Smarter Travel Media, all in one town
“And these companies are getting serious about the technology and commercial models needed to build, manage and work with big data. 2013 will be the year of big data in travel.”
There’s apparently plenty of interest in the big data community to support Hack/Reduce.
It’s more than 100 applications for their resident hacker program, and their sponsor list is long and impressive, including big technology vendors and large venture capitalists
They are also soliciting applications for contributors – individuals who can bring something to the table and want to be involved.
Lalonde thinks there’s nothing like hack/reduce out there.
“There are lots of other hacker spaces out there, but the only place like this is the Mt. View campus of Google, and that’s a closed environment.”
But what Hack/Reduce really needs to succeed is a continual supply of data, and convincing the travel industry to let go of data may take some doing.
“Any company that owns a data set should consider anonymizing it, then donating it,” says Lalonde. “Every data set has potential value.”
There’s been a lot of talk about gatekeepers of data in the travel industry, but what Lalonde is talking about is access to data that is not consumer-specific and without much intrinsic value.
Historical information, like flight schedules, or future information, like regional hotel development funnels, could be excellent fodder for innovation.
Perhaps the sniping about the control of data could give way to the realization there are many sets of travel data out there that don’t need to be so fiercely protected, and that could become part of the public data domain.
The technology is cheap enough, and the interest is great enough, that the ability of intersecting seemingly unrelated sets of data – travel data over travel data, or, probably more interesting, travel data over non-travel data, to see what happens could lead to great innovation.
Or not. But that’s the risk Hack/Reduce is willing to take. And it’s about time.
NB: Server image via Shuttersock.
NB2: Disclosure – Lalonde is also a co-founder and chairman of Tnooz
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About Valyn Perini
I really wish authors would define what they mean by big data in every article that mentions it on Tnooz.
Are you referring to ‘a lot of data’? If so, then the travel industry has been better than most at dealing with large, nay huge, quantities of data for many years.
If however you’re referring to technologies that are generally associated with the term ‘big data’ (eg. MapReduce, Hadoop etc etc) then it’s not surprising that these aren’t getting widely adopted yet as they’re not mainstream, not accepted enough in big enterprises at this time and also mean enterprises changing their IT strategies and potentially sunsetting a lot of technology investment they’ve already made.
It’s actually very confusing and misleading for senior travel execs who constantly hear ‘big data’ with no clarification as to what that means. I regularly meet with clients who tell me they want to be doing ‘big data’, how it’s going to help their business but they don’t really understand the practical meaning of that. They get a little disillusioned when I explain that they most likely already are… (in one interpretation of the term) and in the other interpretation they may not be ready to face that big an organisational change right now.
Leveraging data is vital for travel co’s, to better understand their customers by analysing data for insight and CRM purposes, for better understanding their sales, product performance, patterns they can tap into etc. Travel companies deal with huge quantities of data in reservation systems and internal apps, but rarely think cross discipline or cross product area as to how the data can be combined to create new and potentially profitable apps or insight (OTA’s very guilty of this). But what we need is use cases, advice and real analysis, not musing about a mythical, unexplained thing called ‘big data’.
Totally agree Steve, nothing new/innovative one little bit about this.
There are some that think the world will stop if we don’t ‘innovate’ – perhaps they should define the word ‘innovation’ – and contain something that’s actually useful in the definition!
I echo the above sentiments. Back in the early 90s, database marketers were already using anonymized aggregated data enhancements against in-house customer files for greater marketing insight & direction. These were either assessed independently or appended directly via suitable “key fields”. Hospitality industry was indeed an early pioneer back then, together with financial services.
What Steve denotes as “non-mainstream data” is where some untapped potential lies and the challenge appears tied to data transformation/distillation such that hitherto unrelated datasets can be adjoined.
Yes, you’re exactly right, there are some oppportunities with the data which has to date not been ‘joined up’. That is also where the new technologies can help as they allow for large amounts of data to be more easily lifted, sorted and analysed.