The Greater IBM Connection Blog

Quick Screencast Overview of the SmarterCities Scan

A quick screencast overview of the Smarter Cities Scan project, created with the excellent new service/tool Screenr.

New Paradigms in Using Computers: NPUC 2009 Webcast

Catch the external webcast of NPUC 2009 (New Paradigms in Using Computers) from IBM’s Almaden Research Center, tomorrow, starting at 12 noon Eastern, on the GBS New Intelligence Video Studio

AI: Analytics Innovators Series Video

This web video series features examples of groundbreaking companies, services and products that epitmize the age of smarter analytics, pervasive computing and new intelligence that IBM's new Business Analytics & Optimization Services was created to advance.

See more BAO content and clips at the Global Business Services New Intelligence Video Studio.  Know of other analytics innovators we should feature? Share in comments here!

Episode 2:

• RecycleBank a kind of "frequent recycling" rewards program
• Earthmine a 3D city mapping service based on Mars Rover technology
• FitBit Tracker a $99 wearable health monitoring device that measures your bodily activity and sleep patterns

Jack Mason, Strategic Programs & Social Media
IBM Global Business Services
http://smarterplanet.tumblr.com

BusinessWeek: The Family Doctor: A Remedy for Health-Care Costs?

How making primary-care physicians the center of America's health-care system could drive down costs

Interesting story in BW that includes some discussion around IBM's patient centered medical home model. Here's an excerpt:

This medical home may sound like the "gatekeeper" model of the 1990s, a managed-care creation that was all about holding down costs. But advocates say the new concept is designed to help patients, not insurers. It's more like doctoring 1950s-style, when a Marcus Welby figure handled all the family's medical needs. This time it's juiced up with digital technology.

It also represents a politically painless way to streamline a disorganized and wasteful system that chews up a crippling 18% of the U.S. gross domestic product. That burden is felt particularly by private industry, which covers 60% of the nation's insured. Since most businesses try to ferret out waste and disorganization in their own operations, the medical home is a concept they can embrace in good conscience.

One of the biggest advocates is IBM (IBM), which shelled out $1.3 billion last year on health benefits for its U.S. employees and retirees, equal to one month of the company's net income. Dr. Paul H. Grundy, 57, who holds the unusual title of director of health-care transformation for IBM, is a medical-home evangelist who led the company to start the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative, a coalition of some 500 large employers, insurers, consumer groups, and doctors. Part of his goal, he says, is to show that "employers can drive the medical-home idea as buyers of care."

Jack Mason, Strategic Programs & Social Media
IBM Global Business Services
http://smarterplanet.tumblr.com

Smarter Planet Widgets: Analytics, Healthcare, Cities & Energy

We've developed a set of widgets on key Smarter Planet topics that you are welcome to add to your site, page, or blog, or share with your contacts and network.  Simply copy and paste the embedding code that works for your site.

 

We've also made these widgets available as Facebook applications.  Please feel free to put these to work and enable our community to function as a social media catalyst.

Smarter Healthcare Widget

• http://apps.facebook.com/smarterhealthcare/
• http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/smarter-healthcare

Smarter Cities Widget

• http://apps.facebook.com/smartercities/
• http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/smarter-cities

 

Analytics Album Widget

• http://apps.facebook.com/analyticsalbum/
• http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/analytics-album

Smarter Energy Widget

• http://apps.facebook.com/smarterenergy/
• http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/smarter-energy

Jack Mason, Strategic Programs & Social Media
IBM Global Business Services
http://smarterplanet.tumblr.com

Building the Smarter Enterprise with Business Analytics & Optimization

IBM's new service line Business Analytics and Optimization is capturing information and turning it into intelligence. It's identifying patterns faster, pulling insights from noise, converting data into action, analyzing, optimizing, mitigating, finding and preventing. Business Analytics and Optimization is helping people predict with greater confidence.

For more, see the Smarter Enterprise channel on the Smarter Planet site on Tumblr.

Jack Mason, IBM Global Business Services
Strategic Programs & Social Media

Business Analytics & Optimization Services: IBM's New Consulting Organization

Can you predict and respond to opportunities and threats? Optimize operations to capitalize on new sources of revenue? Proactively manage risk while ensuring efficiency? IBM Business Analytics and Optimization capabilities are your most powerful ally in the new economic environment.

In addition to this overview on this new business analytics focus -- helping to build smarter enterprises -- you can follow developments through two new social media channels:

• The Smarter Planet Network on Tumblr
• IBM Business Analytics: Twitter ID, ibmbizanalytics

Jack Mason, IBM Global Business Services, Strategic Programs and Social Media

Change.gov video clip on technology (IBM, cloud computing)

A noteworthy video clip recently posted on the change.gov website and YouTube from the members of the Obama Transition Team's Technology Innovation and Government Reform (TIGR) group.

They discuss how technology can bring reform and transparency to the new administration, the Citizen Briefing Book they've established, innovations such as cloud computing and how Federal agencies need to lower the cost of delivering services.

You'll notice IBM is mentioned ... and a familiar face is around the table: IBM alumnus, Irving Wladawsky-Berger.

Igniting the New Intelligence, on the Building a Smarter Planet Blog

This week's topic for the Smarter Planet initiative is big, and thought-provoking. It is all about big data and the big breakthroughs that can result from the new insight and understanding of it.     

Read the post: How the "Deep Web" and Petaflop Power will Put the Smart in Smarter Planet 

And while you're at it, you can see the latest on the Smarter Planet site on Tumblr, which features multimedia posts on developments across the Smarter Planetscape. We've recently added "channels" of topic-specific content so that you can sift through the Tumblr site's growing archives. First up, the newest channel featuring posts that relate to the frontier of New Intelligence.

Smarter Planet: New Intelligence
Smarter Planet: Retail
Smarter Planet: Energy
Smarter Planet: Broadband

Jack Mason

IBM Global Business Services, Strategic Programs

Fostering a New Generation of Innovators to Build a Smarter Planet

Global Entrepreneurship Week – Nov 17-23, 2008

One of the most interesting and rewarding jobs I had when I worked for IBM was Global Marketing Manager for Women Owned Businesses. I had the opportunity to build relationships with women’s associations around the world and to meet many dynamic and passionate women who dared to venture out on their own and make a difference – not only in their own lives but in lives that their businesses touched.

If history is any guide, the current economic crisis will provide entrepreneurs new opportunities while others decide to retreat and call it a day. Let's remember, it was during the economic downturn in the 1970's when an ambitious little venture called Microsoft got its start. Clearly, what we knew and things we thought we could count on yesterday have changed. And from this environment of uncertainty, one key to our recovery and towards building a smarter planet will be to nurture entrepreneurship and innovative thinking so that new leaders of change can emerge.

Having recently caught the entrepreneurial bug myself, I was pleased to learn that this week (Nov. 17th – 23rd), the first ever Global Entrepreneurship Week is being held in 56 countries around the world.  Not surprisingly, IBM is one of the global sponsors…and it’s even hosting a webcast with a panel of women business owners to show how women are taking a leadership role in bringing innovation to the marketplace. 

The purpose of this week is to engage young people around the world to encourage them to pursue entrepreneurial ideas and opportunities through activities and with the support of entrepreneurs, government officials, non-profit leaders and educators.

I believe everything happens for a reason, so I know my IBM experience with women owned businesses was probably one of the catalysts that inspired me to get out of my comfort zone and embark on an entrepreneurial venture of my own – producing an independent documentary film.

As IBM leads the charge to create a smarter planet today, its support of initiatives like Global Entrepreneurship Week is also helping to foster the environment needed to nurture young people to become the next generation of innovators we’ll need to build an even smarter planet tomorrow.

So what can you do to help foster a positive entrepreneurial spirit in the young people around you?  Think about it – because the quality of our future will likely depend on it.

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Jane Scandurra (IBM'er '95-'06)

Co-Producer / Co-Director

Single - a documentary film