While my roomie Sophia covered the day’s events eloquently with words, myself being the visual oriented person that I am, preferred to take pictures and snapchats, posting the occasional tweet about one thing or another.
The keynote was amazing and pretty funny. Hilary Mason likes to play around and make software create artwork so we have some Mona Lisas. We also had an attempt at a portrait of Jennifer Lawrence but somehow it blended in with puppies and I was frankly too shocked to take a picture in time.
I did not attend the same lectures as much of the group, there was a lot of confusion as we looked for the right lecture halls in a huge, HUGE space, running from one lightening session to another. In the hustle, I split off from the group to chase after the things that interested me: data science, wearable technology with the IoT, Cloud Security, and even a special lecture with Twitter about the impact and unpredictability of virality.
After the first Keynote, I attended the first Wearbale Tech session by Gina Sprint. Her group was using ankle monitors on elderly and handicapped patients who were undergoing physical therapy to minutely measure the impact of it in the patients’ health, vitals, posture, gait, and about 8 more variables, This would allow the therapists and data researchers to eventually design predictive algorithms that would give live diagnostics from the wearer to the healthcare provider. If it sounds boring or that its been done, think of a fitbit on steroids that can measure and detect much much more than just heart rate and daily steps. And then think of what they will eventually be able to do with these algorithms to help people heal faster.
The second wearable tech session I was lucky to catch was about Fa-Shun-Able tech. Generally, we think that wearable technology only has health purposes…well it does primarily, but that is precisely the issue. People who’s health devices are so awfully designed that the user’s health issue becomes broadcast to the public. The speaker went into great detail about electronic textiles. The case study was about Seasonal Affective Disorder. The only solution for those who have it is to spend an hour each morning in front of a lamp. The issue being, who has that kind of time?! Why not bring your lamp with you?….But wait, you would look pretty stupid carrying a lamp around, wouldn’t you? All these questions culminated in a scarf and golfer’s cap and a few other seasonal items that had build in LEDs that could be turned on and off with a button, and went from therapy item to stylish accessory at the speed of…well…light! The best feedback this case ever got was that scarf looked so cool in and of itself (it really did), that the tester would have worn it even if she didn’t have S.A.D! So this scarf not only solved the need for discretion, it also added a bonus for style!
Twitter’s presentation was hilarious, the comics were perfectly on point. The speaker explained how Twitter prepares for virality and how it takes a huge toll on their servers, and even though they prepare for the load, they just hope everything works enough because there is no telling how big a trend a certain hashtag will become. The picture above spoke to me though. That’s what I do when I am trying to get my java code to run.
Above, we have the Facebook Lunch event poster. That was a rare opportunity. I met some students from a university in town who were also undergrads. The two were a programming pair and it was kind of the cutest thing.
The Cloud Security and Networking sessions I attended were 3 back-to-back sessions, 20 min each. The first speaker was from Goldman Sachs, and kind of monotone and static in presenting, but luckily, it was over quickly. Second speaker was Brian Chess, VP of NetSuite, one of the sponsors of the GHC15. We learned about the Pros, but the many many Cons about security in the Cloud. The system of cloud security isn’t a new thing, according to Brian, we have had it all along with the security model of banks. In fact, the models are so similar that cloud security and banks have the exact same threat: insiders. The last cloud security session was perhaps the one I understood the most (thanks Prof. Khan!), where the speaker described DDoS attacks on cloud networks. More than 34% of all DDos attacks this year have been on the Cloud, they are just the bigger and juicier target.
Finally, the Career Fair! It was amazing learning about so many different companies, so many took resumes on the spot or had you submit online right away. Some of my favorites were Fast Enterprises, Thumbtack, and Palantir. Earlier in the day, I spoke to Amazon, Google, GitHub, and Rosetta Systems. They are much more zen before the career fair haha. But of course, the most important part was probably the swag. So much swag. Above is a custom screen printed t-shirt by CISCO, perhaps considered the holy grail of GHC15 SWAG. They had you select a shirt color and size, go to the screen printers (that they hired) and pick a background image and a foreground image, screening them right away. They then heated to seal the ink, and voila! The whole thing took 2 minutes (if you know what you wanted) and the queue was probably 30 people and 1.2 hours long.
End of Day 1 of GHC15