Teddy Goff

 Teddy Goff led a team of more than 200 people focused on digital media for President Obama’s re-election campaign. They generated more than 133 million video views, developed innovative tools to build grassroots communities, and raised more than $690 million. Recently, he and two colleagues formed a strategic marketing consultancy, Precision Strategies. Here, Goff talks about the importance of cultivating relationships and how President Obama’s re-election campaign ultimately relied on the effective use of predictive analytics.

What was the digital campaign’s key contribution  to President Obama’s re-election?

 It put supporters back into a primary role. We realized the most important thing we could do on the digital side was to cultivate relationships with the supporters on e-mail, Facebook, Twitter. We wanted to keep them inspired, engaged and informed. If we gave those people a reason to hit the retweet button every now and again, hit the share button, they could reach almost everyone in the United States more powerfully than we as a campaign operation ever could. President Obama on election day had about 34 million Facebook fans. Those people were friends with 98 percent of the U.S.-based Facebook population, which is more than the number of people who vote.

Click here to view the embedded video.

 Why are social networks so powerful in politics and business?

Social networking technologies are giving ordinary people more resources, more access to information and to each other. People are so turned off to politics today. They’re turned off to political advertising. But they trust their friends. It’s the same in business. Every business is going to be increasingly relying on ordinary people to transmit their messages. Everyday people can do a lot of damage if they’re not getting a positive experience, or they can become the best marketing engine a business could hope for.

 Did you deliberately craft a system of engagement across platforms?

 We tried to think about our relationships in as holistic a way as possible. Political campaigns have often thought about online supporters as being a different constituency than offline supporters; volunteers as being different from donors. But most volunteers donate and most donors volunteer. So you’re able to get a much more complete picture of a person if you integrate all sources and we had some success doing that. We wound up toward the end with a unified database that pulled in donor data, online data from clicks, and volunteer data, as well as commercial data. That gave us a much more comprehensive picture of who people were, so we could serve them better.

 Can you talk about the importance of authenticity in an age of social media? 

 It’s simple. You can’t fake it. You cannot use a lot of banner advertising or a clever tweet to paper over the fact that your product is no good or your corporate values are awful or that you don’t treat people well. All of these changes in technology are making companies be better because they’ve got no choice. They can’t get away with not being authentic. Sure, your tweets should be clever and your banner ads should be great, but all of that stuff decreases in importance as the Internet imposes greater accountability and visibility into the business.

 Do you have any advice for how companies and can be more agile in this world of real-time information?

 Well, the first thing I would talk about is structure. I do some consulting with large corporations that have a marketing department and a sales department and a PR department and a communications department and maybe a brand department. It’s an organizational scheme that pre-dates the Internet. That may have worked for creating a TV ad or a press release, but that’s not a process conducive to firing off a tweet out during the Super Bowl blackout because every department is fighting over the new toy. By contrast, in the Obama campaign, we didn’t have to deal with legacy systems, and so there was never a question that digital would be a free-standing department co-equal to everything else. As a result, we didn’t have to have a cross-departmental battle over every last thing or argue our case to a manager who was coming at things from a completely different point of view. I guess the point is that certain structures and incentive systems prevent agility. It’s better to not have to contend with that.

 How did you use predictive analytics?

 We predicted where people stood, how likely they were to vote, and even the likelihood that our contact would have an effect. Our analytics team not only predicted how people were going to vote but also how people were going to vote at various times of day. In a way, the entire campaign was predicated on a couple of big predictive models. A campaign has a finite number of door knocks or phone calls that they can make or commercials that they can run. So the whole ballgame is making sure you use those resources as efficiently as possible. You never, ever want to send a volunteer to go knock on a door where the person is not going to vote for President Obama because that’s one fewer door knock you can make. There were certain situations where we determined that a token knock actually had a counterproductive effect. So we weren’t only looking for undecided voters; we were looking for persuadable voters likely to be moved in the right direction. That’s all predictive modeling.

 What’s next in your career?

 Social media and the Internet are forcing people and organizations and governments to do better work and treat people in a more responsible way. Being involved in that, I think, is a real privilege. I’ve done that in the political world. Doing it in corporate settings or with non-profits sounds like a pretty fun way to keep that going. I do think that certain kinds of injustices, whether it’s bad behavior by companies or politicians, are inevitably going to go away. But it makes a big difference whether they go away in 10 years because people like me are screaming for change at the top of their lungs or in 100 years because the practitioners wind up drowning in the rising tide that they didn’t see coming. Look at what’s happening right now around marriage equality. The issue has completely turned around in nine years and the Internet is driving that. It’s probably inevitable that this issue will be resolved, but I’m a 27-year old gay man and I’d like to see this issue resolved by the time I’m 35 and not 50. The Internet gives people like me the ability push things more quickly than they otherwise could be. I think that’s a good thing, and a good way to spend one’s time and energy.

Technorati Tags: IBM, obama, Teddy Goff

Alfred Vanderpuije, Mayor of Accra, Ghana

By Alfred Vanderpuije

This week at the World Economic Forum on Africa in Cape Town, leaders will come together to discuss Africa’s future. One of the three focus themes is the importance of ‘Strategic Infrastructure’ as a foundation for the continent’s growth. As Mayor of Accra and Chief Executive of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly, I would say that there are few areas as crucial for infrastructure investment as cities.

Buoyed by an emerging oil and gas industry and a rapidly growing consumer class, Ghana’s economy is one of the fastest growing in the world. Investors are flocking to the country’s capital Accra to take advantage of new business opportunities and become part of this success story. Mastercard recently identified Accra as one of Africa’s top cities in terms of economic growth potential over the next few years. Local and foreign firms are also driving a number of urban development opportunities such as Ghana Cyber City, King City and Appolonia City which aim to set up modern, high-tech hubs within and around Accra.

I welcome these initiatives, however, at the top of my agenda is Accra itself and the transformation of its existing systems and services for the benefit of its citizens and businesses. The truth is we cannot look to Accra’s future opportunities, without looking into the challenges of today.

Accra’s existing infrastructure is being put under increasing strain by an influx of new residents – the city’s population has expanded by over 1 million people – a 35 percent increase in the past decade alone. As we cannot, and will not, put a wall around the city to restrict the arrival of new residents, we can expect this trend to continue.

We must therefore act today to ensure that the city’s systems – from transportation, to water, sanitation, energy, healthcare, public safety, education and administration – are able to accommodate and cope with this influx of new residents.

Click here to view the embedded video.

For instance, today nearly all transportation in Accra is by road, but 70 percent of the vehicles carry only 30 percent of the people – a trend which causes significant traffic jams during peak hours.

Accra also suffers from perennial flooding problems and in 2011 there was extensive loss of life due to flash floods within the city. These problems highlight the extensive modernization required to our sanitation and storm water systems.

At the heart of many of these problems is our inability to finance projects to maintain and transform Accra. The reality is, my Metropolitan Assembly struggles to raise enough revenue for city services due to out-of-date revenue collection systems, tax evasion and fraud.

The government of Ghana and the Accra Metropolitan Assembly are already taking steps to address these challenges. Recently, Ghana’s President, John Dramani Mahama, launched the National Urban Policy Framework and Action Plan to promote the sustainable development of Ghanaian cities and towns. In Accra, we have put in place the Millennium Cities Initiative to raise the standard of living and we are beginning the transformation of many of the city’s systems. The Accra Sanitary Sewer and Storm Water Drainage Alleviation Project, supported by the U.S. government, also stands to improve waste water treatment for the city’s four million residents.

We recognize we cannot do this work alone. We need to tap into expertise and experience from across public and private sectors and civil society, within Ghana and around the world. We also recognize that the infrastructure we are currently installing has to be designed to withstand the challenges of tomorrow. We must therefore turn to the latest technologies to ensure that our systems are optimized and smarter.

IBM recently offered its expertise to the Accra Metropolitan Assembly to help tackle some of the city’s most intractable problems. A team of IBM experts travelled to Accra last year to work alongside our own. Just last week the company presented me with a report which outlines some of the key challenges and possible solutions in areas such as transportation, city services and energy. I also met with Dr. Kamal Bhattacharya, Director of IBM Research-Africa who presented some interesting new solutions specially designed for Africa. 

We see great opportunity for technology in Accra. For example, in the area of revenue collection, we see potential to use mobile payment systems to enable citizens and small businesses to pay for their taxes and city services electronically. Once payment systems are digitized, it will become a lot easier for my administration to identify cases of tax underpayment or fraud.

In the area of transportation, we could also turn to mobile phone data to help us to understand how Accra’s residents move around the city and how we could use that data to enhance our transportation systems to avoid traffic bottlenecks and traffic jams. We have a number of mobile service providers active in Ghana who could act as partners for such work.

In the area of water and sanitation, we could use technology to help monitor and manage our drainage systems and predict possible cases of flooding.

Technology holds great potential in Accra. However, we also recognize that what makes a city safer and smarter are its people. We need to forge a better relationship with our citizens and increase their sense of responsibility for their city. Accra’s residents need to take an interest in caring for the city. Nearly every one of our residents has a mobile phone – this creates the perfect channel for reporting problems and threats to the city’s infrastructure.

Across Africa, cities are growing quickly – economically and demographically. In Accra we need to embrace technologies and show leadership to ensure that our city is not left behind.

Technorati Tags: africa, Big Data, Ghana, IBM Smarter Planet, mobile computing, smarter analytics, Smarter Transportation, WEF 2013

IBM CEO Ginni Rometty

Fairfax is a prime example of a company that has aggressively adopted technology to transform the way it does business and interacts with customers. Hywood was a featured speaker today at IBM’s CMO+CIO Leadership Symposium in Sydney, where IBM executives and clients interacted with nearly 100 chief marketing and chief information officers from Australia’s leading companies.

In a keynote address, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty told the audience that the explosion of data makes it possible for companies to address customers as individuals. “I think this will change the relationship you have with your customers fundamentally, no matter what industry,” she said. “And it will change the relationship between the CMO and CIO.”

Like many companies around the world, businesses in Australia and New Zealand are waking up to the opportunity to use data not just from transactions but from insights gleaned from social media and other new sources to understand their customers better and market to them more successfully. This means chief marketing officers are in an unaccustomed position. It is they, rather than the chief information officers, who can see clearest the need for leveraging information technology in new ways. That situation argues strongly for CMOs and CIOs to join forces and lead in the transformations of their companies in this era of big data. Each can bring their own expertise to the partnership.

Working together, CMOs and CIOs can take advantage of four technology shifts that are revolutionising the world of business: mobile, cloud, social business and analytics. Each of these shifts is a revolution in itself, but, taken together, they are helping to rewrite the business leadership agenda. Many companies, including IBM, are exploring a “mobile first” marketing strategy–designing applications, messages, owned content and advertising that fits the dimensions and use scenarios of smartphones and tablets. Cloud computing is often the fastest route to launching a new marketing program and offering new products and services to customers. Social business software enables deeper collaboration between employees and beyond corporate boundaries. And analytics software mines insights from all of the new sources in near real time, making it possible to anticipate and take advantage of sudden shifts in the market .

One of the reasons Fairfax has weathered the digital media storm relatively well is the company’s willingness to see what’s coming and adapt. Surprisingly, soon after the emergence of the Internet in the 1990s, it was two Fairfax librarians who alerted editors to the potential of the Net as a powerful information source. Ever since, the company has vowed to lead the digital transition. Now they have dozens of mobile applications and Web sites targeting everything from news to lifestyles. “It’s an iterative process. We need to stay ahead of the customer,” said Hywood.

In the past, many companies felt comfortable by adopting the “fast follower” approach. They could survey what their most nimble competitors were doing and monitor shifts in customer demand and feel confident that they wouldn’t be left too far behind. No more. Markets change so quickly. Look how fast Apple has lost the feature edge in the smartphone category. So it’s incumbent on corporate executives–and CMOs and CIOs in particular–to map a course and adopt technology that puts their organizations out front and keeps them there.

Technorati Tags: Big Data, cloud, Fairfax Media, IBM, mobile, social busienss

By Richard Silberman, Writer/Researcher, IBM Communications

During the past year, we’ve profiled nine exceptional “People for a Smarter Planet” who exemplify the spirit of change, innovation, creativity and curiosity that lie at the core of building a smarter planet. They are inventors and researchers, academics and executives, thought leaders, dreamers, risk-takers, pioneers.

These individuals come from a wide range of fields and possess an array of interests and expertise. What they all have in common is a passion for their work and a commitment to make the world a better place.

They include Ruhong Zhou, whose avian flu research may help prevent a global pandemic; Dave Bartlett, IBM’s smarter buildings guru; Bill Reichert, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist with novel advice for entrepreneurs; and sustainability expert Sarah Slaughter.

If you haven’t met them yet, here are nine People for a Smarter Planet you should know.

Technorati Tags: business analytics, cloud, IBM Research, IBM Smarter Planet, innovation, smarter analytics, Smarter Industries, Smarter People

Paul Brody, Global Industry Leader, Electronics, IBM

By Paul Brody

People have been talking and writing about the “Internet of Things” for more than a decade. It’s the idea that at some point billions of electronic devices and sensors will be connected to the Internet in parallel to the hundreds of millions of people who have access to the Net. But, unlike so many of the whiz-bang technologies that are forever predicted but never arrive, such as flying cars and time machines, the Internet of Things is on the verge of becoming a reality.

So, what exactly is bringing the Internet of Things to fruition? A big factor is the plunging cost of connectivity, which is being driven by the emergence of Heterogeneous Networks (often referred to as “HetNets”). HetNets offer a way to increase the density and bandwidth available to mobile devices. 

To give you an idea of their potential scale, Free.fr, one of the world’s first HetNets, located in France, has more than 4 million WiFi hotspots connected to the  network and enjoys data transfer costs that are probably far below $1 per gigabyte. While the rise of HetNets is driven by insatiable consumer demand for smartphone bandwidth, the biggest impact will be felt when it becomes cost-effective to connect just about anything (cars, washing machines, vending machines, lights etc.) to the Internet. And, anyone who was inLas Vegas earlier this year at the Consumer Electronics Show knows that this type of ‘uber-connectivity’ is no longer just a pipe dream.

The second major factor driving the Internet of Things is the explosion of low-cost, smart, standardized sensor networks. Consumer hobbyists are leading the way here. Kickstarter, the world’s largest funding platform for creative projects is hosting numerous sensor projects that are designed to enable consumers to rapidly deploy and utilize large numbers of sensors around the home and office.

Raspberry Pi is one of the most popular recent initiatives in this space. The company has created a credit card-sized computer that integrates with physical devices like TVs and keyboards to give users PC functionality, such as spreadsheets and word processing, without having to buy a computer. Designed for hobbyists, it starts at a mere $25.

Another interesting initiative is Sensordrone, a multi-sensor device for smartphones that was recently funded by Kickstarter that gives phones even more capabilities, like connecting to printers. In another development, Nokia pledged to push the envelope in terms of adding new and innovative sensors and geo-location capabilities to their phones.

Finally, all these devices and services are increasingly being stitched together with online services for better integration. A service that I think is very compelling is If This Then That (IFTTT) -an online web service integrator. It allows users to set triggers, such as when new tweets appear or photos are uploaded, and then match them to actions, such as sending an email with that information. Personally, I have more than 24 tasks running on IFTTT. The website is about a year old and until recently it focused purely on online services.

This is relevant to the Internet of Things because in the last few months, IFTTT has added “Channels” that connect to physical devices and it started with a home power management system. The result: integration of physical devices and virtual services across multiple providers for consumers. All of this with point and click simplicity. So, if you forgot to turn off the house lights before leaving, you can simply tweet them off. Similarly, you could control all the devices and gadgets in your house with a smartphone.

I showed this to one enterprise CIO who immediately instructed his staff to sign up and try the service to see how it can be applied in their own company.

When all these things come together, the result will be an Internet of Things that really works for consumers. And, as we have seen lately, where consumers go, enterprises follow.

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Check out Paul Brody’s blog on Electronics industry and follow him on Twitter.

Technorati Tags: connectivity, HetNets, IBM Smarter Planet, internet of things, mobile phones, mobile telecommunications, smart phones, smarter communications, WiFi

Ling Shao, IBM Distinguished Engineer and Chief Architect for Internet-of-Things and Wireless, IBM Research, China

By Cindy Geng, Market Development & Insights, IBM Research, China

Telecom operators in China have their hands full.

The rapid rise of data being generated from smart phones throughout the country is creating profound challenges, from unbalanced network loads and low frequency spectrum utilization, to increasing network construction, maintenance and upgrade costs. What the industry needs is a  more flexible, smart network architecture.

According to market researcher, IDC’s 2012 Top 10 Predictions report, “big data will join mobile and cloud as the next ‘must have’ competency as digital content grows to 2.7 zettabytes this year (48 percent over 2011), and will reach 8 zettabytes by 2015.”

For China, the telecom’s current infrastructure cannot meet consumers’ need for more personalized, diversified and intelligent telecom services.

IBM Research labs in China and India, with their partner China Mobile Research Institute (CMRI), intend to transform this current wireless infrastructure of scattered and closed hardware platforms into a centralized, flexible and open platform with the Wireless Network Cloud (WNC) – an IT and wireless network infrastructure combination first in this domain.

Moving mobile data to the cloud

Today’s wireless towers send data to mobile devices over Radio Access Networks (RAN). Each RAN base station can only connect with a limited number of antennas (which is the leading reason for dropped calls between stations).

Ripping, replacing, or even just updating these base stations is costly; a single station can cost upwards of US$100,000. In addition, network voice call load – what the stations were originally built to manage – is low and underutilized, while the network can’t meet the growing demand for services offered through mobile devices. Furthermore, stations typically don’t communicate well with one another because they’re proprietary, and different generations of systems must meet different regulatory standards.

Click here to view the embedded video.

WNC changes this existing wireless communication infrastructure by integrating multi-core processors, high speed system interconnects, virtualization technology – and of course cloud computing. It provides consolidated support for today’s multi-standard and multi-system software radio communication on a cluster of general purpose servers. That means radio frequencies will be generated by software, rather than by today’s incompatible RAN base stations. Support will happen via software upgrades, even for different standards.

Ramping up to WNC

IBM Research’s collaboration with CMRI began with a Cloud-Radio Access Network (C-RAN) in 2010. It uses cloud computing’s collaboration and virtualization technology to enable base stations to share compute resources to reduce energy consumption, improve spectrum efficiency, and improve bandwidth.

CMRI tested C-RAN in several cities, and will roll it out nationwide, soon. The group’s studies show that C-RAN running on traditional base stations can reduce network operation expenses by up to 50 percent, reduce capital expenditures in wireless network construction by 15 percent, and decrease energy consumption by up to 70 percent.

“WNC will extend C-RAN by aggregating base station processing capabilities to a virtualized base station cluster, generating radio signals of different standards through IT software,” said Ling Shao, IBM Distinguished Engineer and Chief Architect for Internet-of-Things and Wireless at IBM Research,China. “In addition, it will realize real-time allocation and management of calculation and processing capacity in the cluster.”

This open platform will not only help telecom operators inChinareduce network construction costs, but also improve resource utilization. Sharing processing capabilities between virtualized base stations reduces interference between base stations, and improves network coverage.

The best part? For end users, it means fewer dropped calls, wider bandwidth, and new services.

Technorati Tags: communications, IBM, mobile telecommunications, smarter communications, Smarter Planet, telecommunications, wireless communications

By Andreas Fuchs, co-project leader, Electric Mobility, EKZ, Kanton Zürich, Switzerland

It is estimated that by 2050, 95 percent of cars will be equipped with an electric socket. This will mean that more than five million parking lots in Switzerland alone will be need to be equipped with a charging station to enable electric vehicle (EV) charging. Now imagine if all of these cars began charging at the same time and the impact it would have on the power grid.

While the electrical grid in Switzerland is not yet “smart,” the fact remains that EVs are being purchased. It is therefore, up to the auto manufacturers, utilities and equipment suppliers to ensure that the charging process is coordinated and controlled in order to prevent grid overload.

This was the driving incentive behind the Smartphone application (app) pilot that we are conducting with IBM Research in Zürich and the University of Applied Research Zürich in Winterthur, ZHAW. The goal is to study how mobile communication can be used to remotely control the EV charging process.

As you can read here and watch here – the driver can set boundary conditions for the charging process, using a smartphone, such as immediate or later charging, or delegate the charging responsibility to the utility. From this point, a charge schedule is created based on the availability of renewable resources such as sun and wind, as well as current grid conditions.

The main menu

Image 1: The Main Menu

In the graphic above you can see the interface for the app, which is web based and works on all of the latest smartphones and tablets.  Going in an counter-clockwise direction:

• Starting on the lower right edge: “Vehicle” one can choose which EV they plan to drive.  This could be particularly useful for car sharing programs or for managing an EV fleet of cars, similar to what we have at EKZ.
• On top to the left: The battery state of charge and an estimation of the remaining range in kilometers is displayed.
• On top to the right: Users can see a GPS map showing the locationof the EV in relation to the closest charging stations (data by www.lemnet.org).

• Bottom, to the left: This button offers EV drivers with the option to select from three charging modes – the first being “Immediate” which basically means that once plugged in, the car will begin to charge. For this project, the Twingo car was set with a default charging current that would provide drivers with a typical daily distance of 40km in Switzerland.
• The second charging option – “Premium” automatically shifts the charging period to the night. This will help avoid adding strain to the grid during the day, when most systems   are running.
• The third option – “Intelligent” allows the user to delegate the charging to the utility. Using a virtual power plant application, a utility can determine time of charge and load based on the charging history. For example, a car that is needs to be charged up to 85 percent at 4:30pm when the owner leaves for work.

Image 2: The blue rectangle during the night represents off-peak load charging of the electrical car.

Many companies are making in-roads in developing innovative technologies that have the potential to not only change how consumers get from A to B, but also change their level of interaction and control.

Image 3: The virtual power plant application calculates a “charging time table” that takes conflicting requirements into account, such as user preferences and available energy.

Before, consumers would just grab a set of keys and go – however, in the years to come, it will be a more connected experience. To prepare, many countries – especially in Europe, are implementing infrastructures to support the mass adoption of EVs – look no further than Denmark, Germany, the United Kingdom or Ireland and of course Switzerland. We have the cars, now all we need is reliable energy, and the roads, charging stations, technology, as well as the consumers to keep up.

For more information: Visit http://www.klewel.com/conferences/iamf2012/ and http://www.klewel.com/conferences/iamf2012/

Join the #EVWeek Twitter Chat on April 12, from noon to 1pm ET @smarterplanet. For more information, visit: http://storify.com/smarterplanet/p4spchat-electric-vehicle-adoption

Technorati Tags: electric vehicles, energy, EVs, EVweek, IBM, smart grid, Smart Grids, smarter charging, Smarter Cities, Smarter Energy, Smarter Planet, Smarter Transportation, sustainability, transportation

By Jonathan Taplin
Director of the Annenberg Innovation Lab
The University of Southern California

  As the parade of gowns and penguin suits made their way down the red carpet and into the Oscar awards ceremony last night, I had one eye glued to my TV and the other to my Twitter feed.

For more than three decades, my career in entertainment has spanned the worlds of music, film, technology and finance. As a long-standing member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Director of the Annenberg Innovation Lab, I always await this event with eager anticipation.

But this year I decided to marry my love of film, digital media and technology by applying science to the Oscars. Why?  I wanted to better understand how the public’s opinion of Oscar nominees stacks up against the actual winners on awards night.

Like many movie fans, not all of my favorite picks mirror the Academy’s choices, or those of the movie-going public for that matter.  I’m not ashamed to admit that I was shouting at the TV during the 2011 Oscar telecast when “The Social Network” didn’t take home Best Picture. That’s why the collaboration between our Lab, IBM and the LA Timesto create the Oscar ‘Senti-Meter’ was so groundbreaking.

Using advances in analytics and natural language processing, the Senti-Meter enabled us to analyze millions of daily public comments via Twitter, comparing volume and even more importantly assessing the tone. It let us pick up on positive, negative and neutral opinions, even snarky vs. sincere tweets about the best actor, actress and film nominees.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Like similar analyses by the Lab and IBM on fashion and sports, we’re now able to take advantage of technology to uncover hidden insights and better understand consumer sentiment.  It was a fun way to follow the Oscars horse race, for sure, adding a visual and entirely new dimension to reporting by the Los Angeles Times.  And it was also a terrific way for our students to gain highly sought skills in the latest technologies that will set them apart in the business world.

But this is about even more.  Social sentiment analysis can change the way movie studios typically operate by giving them the ability to quantify the types of movies and celebrities fans prefer. It can also help movie distributors better ensure box-office success by tailoring marketing campaigns to specific audiences. Studios can use this technology to help evolve the test screening and exit survey process that typically involves polling a much smaller sample size with predetermined questions. By adopting social analysis, the studios can cast a far wider net and gain more thoughtful and honest feedback.

I believe analytics is the next game changer for Hollywood.  These technology tools will influence entertainment content and dramatically impact the bottom line by using consumer sentiment to create future box office hits.

So you should be aware that as you were pecking out Tweets last night during the Oscars, you were participating in the early days of a grand experiment on how we’ll put all the data in our lives to work. From now on, via Twitter and other social media, the voices of movie fans will be amplified and will be “Extremely Loud”, but you won’t need to be “Incredibly Close” to the red carpet to be heard.

Jonathan Taplin is a Professor at The University of Southern California and the Director of the school’s Annenberg Innovation Lab. He is a member of the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The Annenberg Innovation Lab and IBM are collaborating on student-led research to apply analytics technologies to business.

Learn more about how IBM and USC are collaborating on analytics and social sentiment.

Read more about how the Oscar Senti-Meter project will impact the media and entertainment industries.

Technorati Tags: Analytics, Big Data, business analytics, communications, data, IBM, IBM Research, predictive analytics, retail, smarter commerce, Smarter Planet, social business, Watson

by Scott Stainken, General Manager of IBM’s Global Communications Industry

Next week my colleagues and I travel to Barcelona for Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2012.  While there, we’ll be answering what we think are some of the most important questions being asked by smarter communications providers today.  Questions like…

…How can I increase campaign response rates? 

…How can I increase customer retention?

…How can I reduce time-to-market with cloud services? 

…How can I participate in the healthcare industry opportunity?

We’ll answer these questions with real-life customer stories that demonstrate how service providers are:

• Delivering smarter services to generate new sources of revenue faster.
• Transforming operations to achieve business and service excellence.
• Building smarter networks to optimize current and next-generation networks.

These are the imperatives we see emerging from our clients, and IBM believes the answers lie in three key enablers:

Advanced Analytics

Delivering smarter services requires pulling the vast amounts of consumer data available into a meaningful view of the customer.  By applying advanced analytics, a communications provider can create this view and map personalized service offers tailored to each subscriber by need.  Our clients are applying analytics with considerable success; we’ll be sharing many of their stories at MWC.

Cloud Technology

A next generation platform like cloud speeds design and deployment of smarter services.  Cloud makes it easier for communications companies to quickly expand their services offerings into new, rapidly growing verticals like healthcare, banking and government.  IBM has a complete portfolio of cloud solutions based on our clients’ deployment preference for private, public or hybrid cloud., and since launching in 2010, we’ve gained momentum helping service providers create, manage and monetize cloud-based services.

Security

The data explosion for mobile users will challenge the reliability of virtually all networks, and only after an organization has mitigated the risk to people, data, endpoints and infrastructure can it focus on empowering mobile employees.  With full mobile security, organizations are more agile and responsive, can generate new revenue, and facilitate the delivery and monetization of security threats.

On behalf of my fellow IBMers, we’re looking forward to seeing you in Barcelonanext week.  We’ll be exploring the answers to your questions in a private two-story courtyard pavilion.  This new home gives us a great venue for more intimate and focused conversations away from the distractions of the floor.  I hope you’ll come see us in the IBM Pavilion at 3.0 Courtyard CY23 armed with YOUR questions.

For more information on IBM’s participation at the even, visit our speakers and demonstrations.

Technorati Tags: communications, csp, GSMA, mobile, mwc, networks, scott-stainken, smarter-networks, smarter-telecom, smarter-telecommunications, stainken, telecom, telecommunications

By Steve Canepa, General Manager, Global Media & Entertainment Industry

February seems to be a month of excitement for all movie, television and sports enthusiasts. It’s that time of year – Super Bowl madness and Oscar Buzz – frenzy so electric that it transcends worlds – into the social media world. Think about it, how long does it take for you to see a Tweet or Facebook post once you hear the winner for Best Motion Picture or following the first touch-down? Seconds?

Information flows so quickly that Twitter alone is handling approximately 35MB of data a second, every second. The majority of this social media data represents public ‘streams of consciousness’, data that approximates human thought and speech, what we in the business call unstructured data.  But, as anyone who has filled in a tax form, booked a flight or applied for a loan knows: computers prefer data with structure, data fields that have entries in strictly controlled formats.

The good news is change is coming. Computers are becoming smarter about unstructured data (unstructured data isn’t just natural language … it’s photos, videos, emails, tweets, audio, sensor data, mobile device data).  For example, using advanced analytics technologies and natural language processing we can now begin to understand the patterns behind human expression. Not just ‘key words’ that have been identified and indexed, but all words, as we type them or say them.  We may have spent most of the computing age training humans to communicate with computers, using methods optimized for the machines, but today the reverse is happening. We’re now training computers to communicate with us and understand us in our own language. It is not easy. It is as the IBM Research team behind Watson declared, a Grand Challenge. But it’s a challenge that can lead to some very important and far-reaching results.

Watson represents a pinnacle achievement in Deep QA and natural language processing but there are many routes to the top and plenty of room for additional exploration and discovery. The team of researchers, students and faculty at the University of Southern California (USC) Annenberg Innovation Lab are taking a slightly different approach to the Grand Challenge. Rather than using the Answer Question formulation of Jeopardy!, they are applying IBM analytics software, and some very smart coding and modeling, to train computers to understand and analyze Tweets. The project is part of an ongoing collaboration between the lab and IBM to explore how technology can be used by organizations from news outlets and journalists to movie studios, broadcasters and retailers to better understand, respond, and predict public sentiment. To date, the model has been applied to film forecasting, the World Series and fashion retailing trends, in an effort to identify social media trends and better understand public opinions. For example, just last week IBM and USC analyzed millions of public tweets to determine the fans’ sentimental Super Bowl Quarterback favorite – Tom Brady or Eli Manning. Just like the game, Eli Manning in a late game-changing move, overtook Tom Brady as the Social Media MVP with 66% positive sentiment vs. Brady’s 61%.

But why stop at the World Series and Super Bowl? AIL and IBM are now collaborating with the Los Angeles Times to measure moviegoer sentiment toward the upcoming Academy Awards race.  Dubbed a ‘Senti Meter’, we’re analyzing Oscar- related positive and negative opinions shared via millions of tweets to determine who will win “The People’s Oscars”. The project has been profiled by the Los Angeles Times and we can all follow the evolving sentiment for Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Picture categories over the next two weeks by visiting http://graphics.latimes.com/senti-meter/.

This project is much more than just analyzing which best picture or movie star fans are rooting for – it’s an example of how movie studios can better understand their audience preferences and use social media to improve their marketing programs and in turn improve box office results.   There is no doubt that the Twitterverse and other social media platforms are changing communication as we know it. Tweets, Facebook and blog posts are becoming a vital resource for many organizations including the media industry to identify trends, inform reporting and understand as well as connect with their audience.

Think of how much change in the last year has been driven or expressed or reported in social media. Think how much social value could have been derived if we’d had the ability to understand and react to these social media conversations and sentiments – in context and in real time. We can now analyze the vast river of public data that streams from Twitter in its unstructured complexity, and apply a level of sentiment to the commentary. In other words the computer can now determine, with the certainty level of a non-native speaker, that the tweet it just analyzed expressed a positive or negative sentiment and how strongly that sentiment was stated – all in real-time. We can then apply this analysis to deliver business value – the effectiveness of marketing activities, customer responses to services, products and promotions, the impact of advertising, or the reaction to real world events…   the list is limitless.

This new capability will eventually deliver solutions founded on semantic analysis of Big Data that are only just now being imagined. And it will happen faster than we expect. Stay tuned, there is more on the way….

Learn more about the work IBM and USC are doing on social media sentiment http://www.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/36720.wss

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