How Smart Apps Will Revolutionize Computing

#sxsw #SmartApps

The history of computing boils down to this: someone enters data; a computer spews out data. We enter data by keyboard, or mouse, or touch screen, or even facial gestures, and a computer responds. But the world is about to see a computing revolution: a world in which "smart apps" pull in data from the world around us without humans doing anything proactively at all. Late for your flight? No worries, your software agent will automatically re-book you. Soil too dry? Your sprinklers will turn themselves on. Driving too close to the car in front of you? No problem, your car will avoid a collision. These applications are in early stages, but rest assured, the long-term implications of this emerging class of computing will be profound. Quentin Hardy of the NYT leads a discussion on Smart Apps with KPCB General Partner Mike Abbott, Jawbone VP of Data Monica Rogati and Magneto Founder and CEO Gadi Shamia.

Presenters

Gadi Shamia

Co-Founder & CEO

Magneto

Mike Abbott

General Partner

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Mike Abbott joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 2011 and focuses on investments in the firm’s digital practice, helping entrepreneurs in the social, mobile and cloud computing sectors rapidly scale teams and ventures. Mike serves as an expert resource on enterprise infrastructure, cloud computing and “big data.” He also helps entrepreneurs win the race for talent in a hyper-competitive recruitment environment.

An engineering leader, entrepreneur and investor, Mike led the building of innovative, high-performance applications and services at Twitter, Palm and Microsoft before he joined KPCB. Mike is also an expert in “big data” businesses, having founded Composite Software. Formerly the vice president of engineering at Twitter, Mike led the team to rebuild and solidify Twitter’s infrastructure, growing the engineering team from 80 to more than 350 engineers in less than a year and a half, and scaling Twitter’s architecture to support 250 million daily tweets. Before joining Twitter, Mike led the software development team at Palm that created HP/Palm’s next-generation webOS platform. Earlier in his career, Mike was the general manager at Microsoft for .NET online services, which became Azure. He was also co-founder of Passenger Inc. Mike has advised and invested in numerous software companies throughout his career, including Cloudera, Hearsay Labs, Jawbone, Saynow, Reverb Technologies, Toytalk and Locu.

Mike holds a bachelor’s degree from California Polytechnic State University and has completed coursework toward a Ph.D. at the University of Washington.

Monica Rogati

VP of Data

Jawbone

Monica is a world-class data scientist and an applied machine learning expert. Her passion is turning data into products, actionable insights and meaningful stories. As the VP of Data for Jawbone, she leads the UP data team, with the goal of helping people understand life patterns and providing data-driven products that promote a healthier lifestyle. Prior to Jawbone, Monica was one of the early members of the LinkedIn data science team, where she developed and improved some of LinkedIn's key data products for matching jobs to passive candidates, discovering people you may know and recommending groups you may like. Monica's compelling data stories are often picked up by the mainstream press, including the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, NPR and CNN. Monica holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from CMU, where she focused on text mining and applied machine learning. She authored eight US patents and numerous publications that have appeared in top-tier peer-reviewed journals and events.

Quentin Hardy

Deputy Technology Editor

The New York Times

Hardy is the Deputy Technology Editor for The New York Times, also overseeing Enterprise Computing and Enterprise Resource Planning, and is a Blogger at Bits covering Technology.
Hardy was named deputy technology editor for The New York Times in August 2011. He previously held a variety of positions at Forbes, including Executive Editor, Bureau Chief and Senior Technology Editor. Prior to Forbes, Hardy served as a Technology Reporter for the Wall Street Journal.
Hardy received graduate degrees from Columbia University School of Journalism's Knight-Bagehot Fellowship and the University of London, as well as a B.A. in English from Kenyon College.