IOD - what you missed!

Well, that’s it – the exhibition stands have been taken down, the speakers have flown out, the attendees are all back home with their families, and the organizers have packed away their banners. #IBMIOD has come to an end for another year – but what an event it was!

Those people lucky enough to attend were able to find out the latest thinking from IBM and partners in terms of DB2, IMS, Big Data and Analytics, Tools and Utilities for DB2 and IMS, and Cross Platform sessions. In addition, there were client-led session, hands-on labs and workshops, expert panel sessions, and birds of a feather sessions. And there were even more relaxing sessions, such as the “Rock the Mainframe” System z reception.

This year’s theme for the event that ran from Sunday 3 November to Thursday 7 November was “Think Big. Deliver Big. WIN BIG” – and that was reflected in a number of the announcements from IBM that were made during the conference. Looking for correlations or anomalies in your Big Data – then you need IBM SmartCloud Analytics Predictive Insights. Looking to find the optimum place to put your data – in terms of speed versus cost – then you need IBM SmartCloud Virtual Storage Center. Want the fastest Hadoop appliance around – then it’s the IBM PureData System for Hadoop that you need. Need to anonymize or mask data from various sources – try InfoSphere Data Privacy for Hadoop. Like to see what’s going on with your big data sets – then look out for InfoSphere Governance Dashboard.

8:15 Wednesday morning in “The Next Generation of Innovation” session, delegates were treated to tennis star Serena Williams as a featured speaker. There were also some very interesting keynote sessions with IBM executives sharing their thinking about Business Analytics, Enterprise Content Management, Information Management, and Business Leadership. Plenty of food for thought there for delegates to take back to their organizations.

The EXPO was a great place to visit to talk to all sorts of vendors and get a feel for what they thought was important and how their products and services might make a difference at individual sites. With so many vendors attending, it was the ideal place to really compare and contrast what was on offer.

And, of course, if you weren’t able to make the conference, there was Livestream, which broadcast some of the sessions, such as Monday’s opening general session, Win Big in the New Era of Computing. And there were a host of other sessions over the four days. Similarly, the Video Library allowed people to watch replays from general sessions, keynotes, selected elective sessions and sponsor interviews directly from the Livestream library. There was also an online photo gallery allowing non-attendees and attendees to see “the action each day”.

Let’s not forget the buzz about the conference in the Twittersphere. In a week that saw shares in Twitter not only go on sale but pretty much double in price, it was interesting to see how people were using Twitter to tell others what they were enjoying at the conference. And the IOD Web site kept everyone up-to-date with the #IBMIOD tweets.

So with tired delegates, speakers, vendors, and organizers having made their way home, and those people who followed events at Madalay Bay, Las Vegas from a distance, they can all be confident that Information On Demand 2013 was a hugely useful event to have attended in person or virtually. And the organizers are going to have to work amazingly hard to top this event next year.

On a completely different topic...
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