Today I was invited to attend InfoSecurity Europe, Europe`s largest Information Security industry event.
As always, it was interesting to have a chance to catch up with this rapidly moving field, and a great opportunity to chat with old friends.
Apart from gimmicks (VR everywhere, car racing and helicopter simulators, giant robots, etc), swag (all kinds of Star Wars and other Sci-Fi related giveaways, from toys to t-shirts) and junk food (from candy to icecream to chips, the booths did not have healthy alternatives, although the food vendors did), the most interesting part of these events is always the talks, specifically the hands-on demos.
Today I was invited, along with my son, who at 14 has been a videogame developer for years, to attend the Intel Buzz videogame developer workshop. It was not only a lot of fun, but WONDERFUL to attend with him!
Although a small event, it ended up being extremely interesting, with an area to try indie games and new technologies, and a long list of talks and panels, including one-on-ones.
May 27 I was invited to participate in the “Computing in Cancer Workshop” organized by Microsoft Research in Cambridge.
It was a great opportunity to network, meet with colleagues and other researchers, and especially to learn a lot.
The fascinating lectures were:
Antonio Criminisi (Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research): Machine Learning for Medical Image Analysis Jasmin Fisher (Senior Researcher, Microsoft Research): Virtual Models of Cancer Giles Maskell (President, Royal College of Radiologists): Current problems in diagnostic radiology Fiona Gilbert (Head of the Department of Radiology, University of Cambridge) Dennis Wang (Senior Bioinformatics Scientist, AstraZeneca): Predicting drug combinations and biomarkers of response: a crowd-sourced solution Florian Markowetz (University of Cambridge, CRUK Cambridge Institute): Quantifying patterns of tumour evolution Francesca Buffa (Associate Professor, Department of Oncology, University of Oxford): In-silico systems biology and functional genomics approaches to accelerate biomarker discovery Hoifung Poon (Researcher, Microsoft Research): Machine Reading for Cancer Panomics Raj Jena (Academic Consultant Clinical Oncologist, Cambridge University Hospitals): Computing for Radiation Oncology – from cell culture to the clinic Bertie Gottgens (Professor of Molecular Haematology, University of Cambridge): Defining Cell States and Regulatory Networks using Single Cell Genomics
The weekend of February 27 and 28 I set up my first art exhibition as Independent International Art Curator.
In collaboration with the Internet Freedom Festival, held in Las Naves (Valencia) from 2 to 6 March, Net Freedom Art Show is an international, itinerant, collective and multidisciplinary contemporary art show. After its debut in Valencia, it will be exhibited in galleries around the world (New York, London, Santiago de Chile, and Kaunas).
On February 25 a group of medical imaging researchers from Microsoft came to our company’s headquarters in Valencia (Spain) for a day-long workshop on bleeding edge medical image software.
I must admit that just a few years ago I would have laughed at the idea of such an occurrence for many reasons. But things change, and now Microsoft is much more open (and convinced) about Open Source software, their researchers have demonstrated exceptional ability in advanced medical imaging analysis algorithms (unlike their failed business strategy around Amalga), and my company has grown and innovated to the point where it captures the interest and even enthusiasm of some of the largest technology companies in the world.
Yesterday we went to see a couple exhibitions at Somerset House, in London.
The first exhibition we saw was “TINTIN: Hergé`s Masterpiece”. Basic but obviously appealing, it was too crowded to be enjoyable.
The second one was “Big Bang Data”.
While undoubtedly interesting, especially for someone who works in, teaches, and loves bid data and technology like myself, to me the most interesting aspect of this exhibition is that everyone who was there had already experienced the subject.
I spent Wednesday evening and most of Thursday in Zürich.
On Wednesday I had dinner with some business partners; “business as usual”.
But on Thursday, after my business presentation to potential customers, I had the very rare and exclusive opportunity to visit one of the main data centers in Switzerland. Here are some impressive facts about them:
they host 1/3 of Swiss banks data internet traffic = 40% of Switzerland’s internet traffic energy bill = 2 million Swiss Franks per annum 2 different energy suppliers from 2 different access points, with preferential oil supply in case of a failure (full reserves for 5 days for the generators) almost 50 telecoms suppliers, from many different countries, providing direct access for their customers worldwide RFIDs paired with 3D fingerprint scanners which measure the fingerprint but also the morphology, pulse and temperature separate isolated room to open packages, to minimize the risk of fire single person magnetic doors temperature, movement, and sound sensors double-gated entrance even to the parking lot!
