The closing keynote address at MarkLogic User Conference 2009 was delivered by Stephen Arnold, president of ArnoldIT, whose session Multi-Dimensional Content: Enabling Opportunities and Revenue was attended by a packed house. Arnold, IT guru and author of the numerous books, including his latest, “Google: The Digital Gutenberg”, was a riot. His presentation style was delightful and made it easy for the audience to understand the concepts and thought-provoking ideas he proposed.
Arnold told the story of supermodel Tyra Banks recent call for short stature models (for a reality TV show) in NYC. As it turns out, the city police department was called in for crowd control because so many wanna-be models flooded the streets surrounding the venue in which auditions were being held that a traffic jam and a melee ensured. How did so many people find out about the auditions? Twitter. Now the NYPD is using Twitter to monitor local events — especially those of the flashmob type.
His point was that tools like MarkMail could easily be used by organiztions to filter through and anlalyze real-time information streams like those coming out of Twitter. Doing so, he said, would provide users with knowledge they are not able to gain in any other practical way. Such filtering can help organizations make intelligent business decisions based on actionable data.
Arnold told the audience that he believes that JetBlue, the only profitable airline in the industry currently, made a smart decision when they created a “flexible framework” using MarkLogic Server, relying on existing - familiar - tools instead of trying to teach people lots of new skills. Flexible frameworks are the future of information technology and the foundation on which revenue-generating activities will be built from now on.
“I don’t want to learn how to do new stuff. You don’t either,” Arnold said. What’s needed, he continued, are solutions that help individuals find what they want in the “best possible way” — not in a perfect way, but in the best possible one. Smart companies know this. That’s why they are adopting the framework used by MarkLogic to tackle information challenges.
“I am a strong supporter of the MarkLogic approach,” Arnold told the attendees. “Not because they asked me to be, but because I see the practical applications for their technology.”
“Indecision is the bad thing,” Arnold said. “If you wait (to make a change) and the shift begins, you have little warning to adapt or move.”
