Saturday, December 5, 2009

On World Economic Forum 2010 technology pioneers

Today I wish to congratulate my colleagues from Streambase for being recognized by the World Economic Forum as "2010 technology pioneer".

The area of event processing is still evolving and has a lot of innovative people and companies, while there are other innovators in this area, Streambase is certainly an innovative company and among the first wave of products in this area. They deserve a salute for this recognition.

It is also a good sign for the recognition of the event processing area, as one of the areas that deserved being mentioned as one of those with highest impact on the world economy.

6 comments:

Mark Palmer, StreamBase CEO said...

Thanks, Opher - I completely agree with your thoughts that the real significance of this will hopefully be broad recognition of the important innovation in event processing in general. The buzz does continue to rise, here was my take on the StreamBase blog:

http://streambase.typepad.com/streambase_stream_process/2009/12/streambase-wins-davos.html

Brenda Michelson at Elemental Links did a nice job of covering:

http://blog.elementallinks.net/2009/12/rise-of-event-processing-streambase-named-2010-world-economic-forum-technology-pioneer.html

And her predictions, which sparked some debates:
http://blog.elementallinks.net/2009/12/2010-the-rise-of-event-processing.html

And watch for upcoming coverage in Time Magazine, Business Week, and more about Davos and event processing.

Paul Vincent said...

Hi Opher, Mark: Congratulations too... I think. After all, there is possibly the small issue of some correlation between a list of VC investors
and the WEF award selectors list... :)

Cheers!

Mark Palmer, StreamBase CEO said...

Hi Paul -

I doubt you speak for TIBCO with the suggestion of nepotism towards the WEF. And I doubt you seriously question the integrity of the 59 member selection committee of the WEF, which includes Geoffrey Moore, George Colony (CEO of Forrester), and Esther Dyson. Yes, it is true that Accel is a part of that large selection committee. But as you can see in the public selection process descriptions, committee members are required to recuse themselves from the selection process involving affiliated companies. You can see details of of the selection committee, and the selection process and policies, here:

http://www.weforum.org/en/Communities/Technology%20Pioneers/SelectionProcess/SelectionCommittee/index.htm

Perhaps you would like to clarify what "small issue" you have about the participation of the selection committee, the integrity of the selection process or the integrity of the likes of Moore, Dyson, and Colony? I'm sure they take their reputations very seriously.

- Mark

Paul Vincent said...

Hi Mark - of course, marketing is marketing and hype is hype. But your aggressive response to a simple observation might seem suspicious to some.

Personally I was hoping for a simple rebuttal like "good catch but representative X made his vested interests known to the WEF and the vote still went to Streambase".

Instead you chose to make comments about process and reputations. Hopefully that is just your style and not an indication of anything compromising.

Cheers

Opher Etzion said...

Mark and Paul. Since you chose to have a debate hosted by my Blog, I'll take the liberty to add editorial comments:

Mark: Paul is right that your reaction could have been less impulsive, especially given the fact that the facts seem to be on your side.

Paul: While everybody has his own style, I can understand why Mark got upset by your posting, since one can easily infer that the decision was biased, and thus not appropriate. I am not important enough to serve on this respectable committee, but I have served in various much-less-important committees that granted awards and grants in various forums. In all of these committees there were strict procedure to identify and declare conflict-of-interest, even in conference program committees (which is significantly less important forum) there is a practice to identify that one committee member has a conflict of interests to review and participate in decisions of certain papers. Back at the website of the WEF, there is indeed a claim that all committee members have been requested to identify conflict of interests, as this is a common phenomenon, so I presume that there are procedures within the committee's work to account for it. For example: in some committees that I've been, people were asked to leave the room when proposals with conflict-of-interest for them have been discussed).

As said - this is an editorial comment which does not state any opinion about the decision itself.

Paul Vincent said...

Hi Opher: your comment is fair and to the point.

"I can understand why Mark got upset by your posting, since one can easily infer that the decision was biased, and thus not appropriate".
That, of course, is the point: without transparency and disclosure, inappropriate inferences can be formed from available facts.

Cheers!