Tried an experiment this week that may be of interest to some -- although I am not the first I'm sure. When I go to a conference, I usually try and take decent notes about what I heard and more importantly what it made me think.

This week I was at the MIT CIO symposium (#MITCIO) and the MIT Center for Digital Business Research (#MITCDB) research report out. Rather than taking note on paper, I just wrote down all my thoughts on my Twitter account (@CEBESS). Not all that novel, but an active change in behavior for me. Hopefully, my few followers were not too annoyed.

The side effect of this change is I could see the comments by others who used the same hash tag in a chronological context. With only 140 characters, it is easy to lose context about what the post was actually about when you are typing on a phone furiously. But with all the other posts being done by others it’s more useful.

I used my Samsung S2 SkyRocket phone for all the posts at the #MITCIO session and my Slate7 for the #MITCDB event. Both worked well, but on the Slate7 I was able to use TweetChat, so I didn’t ever forget that hashtag, which is all too easy to do when you’re in a hurry.

I was a bit shocked by the number of people I ran into at the #MITCIO event that I already knew. @kimStephenson, @Thedodgeretort, @mkrigsman, @M3Wilkinson and a number of others were there that I have interacted with before.

Running a bit behind on getting blog posts out this week, but I thought I’d try to get one out early about the MIT CIO symposium I attended yesterday.

Jeff Cutler did a great job of summarizing what went on at the Big Data session and wrote it up in a blog post, with pictures and everything.

A couple of the key elements discussed were:

• Correlation is NOT causality.
• When dealing with Big Data, you need to Measure, Experiment, Analyze and Replicate. Having expectations is important.

I did ask the panel a question about their view on:

When you expand your knowledge about the organizational behavior and management process using big data techniques, management may be one of the most well understood and best targets for automation so what are the implications for business and business schools. I don’t think they really understood the question, since their answer was targeted at a whole other set of issues related to how management uses the output of Big Data efforts.

I did talk to Erik (the moderator) after the session and he agreed that this is an area where organizations have significant opportunity in the future. When you think about business processes and the data available, there is structured and yet-to-be-structured data as well as well understood, yet-to-be-understood processes and chaotic behavior (I almost said chaotic process, but if it is chaotic it can’t be a process). Most of that management work is ripe for automation, freeing up people to work on other creative (leadership) tasks.

I was thinking about writing a post about the history of HP Discover, but realized that most within IT are actually more worried about the future than interested in the past.

The IT industry behavior is definitely changing. We’re moving from a focus on cost savings and RFP driven engagements between companies and suppliers into an environment that is more consumption-based. Where nearly anything in IT can be purchased “as-a-service”. This allows for a much more business-led approach, focused on business value generation, yet with a demand for a relatively short return on investment. This leads to many asking for advice on what they should do or just a level-set on what is actually happening and what others are doing.

HP Discover 2013 in Las Vegas is an opportunity to interact with others and see where HP is focusing its efforts. If you want to see what it is like, you can see highlights from Discover Frankfurt in 2012. Or visit the full HP Discover Session Catalog to see where HP Discover 2013 is focused and the sessions that matters most to you and your business.

There is even a blogging community developing where you can get the inside scoop - Buzz

Four of the big trends organizations want to know more about today are: mobility, analytics, cloud services (flexible resource acquisition) and security. All of these will be covered by multiple sessions from multiple perspectives. Nadhan put out a post the other day on how CIOs can get their priorities right at HP Discover 2013 in Vegas , the approach he descibesmay also be of interest.

Follow HP Discover at:

•  @HPDiscover Twitter
• HP Discover LinkedIn Group
• HP Discover on FaceBook

I am talking with an organization about some of the business and IT trends that may be quite disruptive at their intersection. I recently came across this set of slides on CIO Insight that discusses their view on the IT Growth Outlook and Trends in 2013 that overlaps many of the items I will be talking about today.

As I mentioned last week I presented on the importance of understanding Attention in business to the New Horizons Forum , part of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) conference. I put the Attention Scarcity in a Connected World presentation out in slideshare, if anyone is interested.

The nice thing about going to a conference outside your normal area of concentration is that it allows you to look at things differently. One thing that caught me a bit by surprise at the conference was the degree of overlap with the concepts presented in the New Horizons’ keynote titled "Big Bets in USAF Research and Development" by Maj General William Neil McCasland, Commander, Air Force Research.

Much of his presentation was about the impact autonomous and semi-autonomous systems were having on the military and the shifts that need to take place in both the implementation, validation and testing of these systems, as well as the processes that surround them. Granted he was coming at the problem from a different perspective and was focused much more on the automation side than the interaction between the humans and automation, but he touched on many of the same points as my brief presentation.

These overlaps drove home the “perfect storm” that is taking place in automation, regardless of the industry. Many people realize that the tools are out there and have different perspective of what the tools can do. These differences are actually what innovators need to look out for, since in many cases they can complement an approach. Even when they are not complimentary, the lessons learned may still be applicable.

The panel I was part of at the conference was moderated by Rupak Biswas, NASA Advanced Supercomputing division chief. After our panel, we had a long discussion about the shifting role and capabilities of automation, behavior modification and the role of IT organizations within organizations.

One of the areas we discussed was the use and deployment of gamification within an organization, specifically related to knowledge management and sharing of expertise. Although the IT organization definitely needs to be involved in the integration of information and its flow related to knowledge management and collaboration tools, the business side needs to be responsible for the goals, metrics, rewards and behavior changes that are required. They are the ones who will judge success of the project.

Collaboration between these two groups will be required, since neither can accomplish the task effectively on their own. This may seem obvious, but since some organizations view the IT team as a more cost conscious, support organization and that core business process tasks need to be funded and attacked separately from the IT efforts, this isolationist view may be a luxury that is too expensive to maintain.