Get Them to the Geek Fest: Incorporating Analytics Into Everyday Software

that story to a wider audience,” says Clancy, who sits on the board of the conference sponsor, the San Diego Software Industry Council. As part of that effort, Clancy and other organizers have worked to bring prominent analytics leaders to San Diego as a way to both present their recent work to the San Diego audience and to highlight projects in San Diego for the analytics community at large. For example:

—LinkedIn search architect John Wang is set to demonstrate a beta version of the Mountain View, CA-based company’s new social media product, Signal, which incorporates analytics that enables users to consume the news and information that is most relevant to them. Supermath attendees also will get access to the private beta program to experience how Signal’s social search and news search engine capabilities can be used with their personal LinkedIn profiles.

—Mountain View, CA-based Intuit, which maintains its TurboTax software development in San Diego, plans to demonstrate how it applies text analytics to large amounts of unstructured customer feedback—and how that leads to improvements in Intuit’s products and customer support.

—SANDAG, the San Diego Association of Governments, is scheduled to explain how traffic simulation works in conjunction with an $8 million grant the agency received to analyze the Interstate-15 corridor as a potential freeway and light-rail “multi-modal” transporation system. The presentation is intended to demonstrate how computer-based simulation can affect regional decisions about transportation infrastructure, and how information can be leveraged to optimize roadway operations.

—LISA, the Laboratory for Intelligent and Safe Automobiles at UC San Diego, has been exploring innovated ways to incorporate real-time sensor data into driving a car to make automobiles of the future safer and more “intelligent.” Researchers have been working with Volkswagen and Nissan to develop a “driver assistance system” that can predict—and mitigate—how a driver will make lane changes, turns, and react to various emergencies, based on their prior behavior.

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.