Follow Splunk Into The Big Data Revolution That Changes The Jobs Equation

April 23rd, 2012 – Forbes Columns

A recent AP story opens with a sobering line: “The college class of 2012 is in for a rude welcome to the world of work.”  Opportunities are weak, the article notes, and those with ‘soft’ degrees are having the most trouble.  Hardly news to the Millennial generation.  And it’s no comfort that their parents (count me amongst them) faced the same type of dire job market when they graduated.

We boomers didn’t know it then, but good times were just around the corner. The burgeoning revolution of personal computing and the Internet (together with favorable government policies) unleashed several decades of growth that was bullish not just for the tech dweebs that built the revolution, but for the broad economic engine that the revolution unleashed.  Intel,Microsoft, AOL, Oracle, Sun, Apple and others changed the world.

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On the Precipice of the Next Great Growth Cycle

April 3rd, 2012 – Speeches / Testimony

Keynote speech before the Gulf Coast Power Association

Houston, Texas  

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Amazon’s Kiva Robot Acquisition is Bullish for Both Amazon and American Jobs

March 23rd, 2012 – Forbes Columns

You can imagine an episode of The Office in which Michael Scott has to tell warehouse supervisor Darrell that he’s being replaced by a squat, turtle-like orange robot.  In that world, odds are it would end with the robot carrying Michael out the door holding his pink slip, and Darrell promoted.

In the real world, people will worry about the big-picture job implications of Amazon, warehouse king, paying $775 million to buy Kiva Systems, an obscure and nine-year-old supply-chain robot-maker.

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Big Data Unleashes the Electric Equivalent of a Free Keystone Pipeline

March 19th, 2012 – Forbes Columns

So I find myself in a refurbished Cold War bunker just north of Philadelphia where the future of the long-haul electric business is on full display.   Literally.  Massive data flows are collected, analyzed, modeled, forecast and presented on displays the size of several Imax screens. 

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