Intelligence. Beautifully engineered. We are a data science agency.

Coming up: O’Reilly Strata Conference 2012

Jacomo Corbo will be speaking about Improving Productivity Using Real-Time Data at Strata 2012 in Santa Clara, CA, February 28 – March 1.

Measuring productivity remains a notoriously difficult problem, nowhere more so perhaps than in innovation. Feedback on the progress of projects and the performance of workers is scant, highly uncertain, and collected either too infrequently or too slowly. Yet such information is indispensable to the efficient allocation of resources to innovation projects. These challenges are all the more acute for companies involved in complex product development, where performance hinges critically on an organization’s capacity to constantly and consistently innovate. At the same time, information captured by enterprises has generally gone from scarce to superabundant, affording them an unprecedented opportunity to monitor information flows, observe worker interactions and organizational structures, and estimate individual and organizational performance.

We will discuss how companies are using data to obtain sharper, more timely insights. Specifically, we will present how real-time information about engineering collaborations are being leveraged to measure, model, and ultimately forecast organizational productivity and project performance with a level of accuracy and timeliness heretofore impossible. Over the past couple of years, QuantumBlack has developed and deployed an analytics tool to help companies in a variety of industries, from aerospace and automotive to software and semiconductor manufacturing, improve the yield of their project investments. The software tracks and analyses real-time communication and collaboration data, as well as data on performance metrics related to tasks and projects under assessment, to forecast organizational productivity, predict the success or failure of projects, identify performance bottlenecks and drivers, and ultimately help optimize resource and work allocation strategies.

The talk will center on case studies involving successful deployments at several Formula One (F1) teams. We will show how we were able to forecast the productivity of innovation teams, improve investment yields by as much as 15%, and raise productivity by nearly 20%. Certainly, this is no free lunch and we will dwell on some of the more important difficulties: the technological and computing challenges associated with machine-learning and real-time analysis of a transient data set that can grow at the rate of several terabytes per day, some of the privacy issues associated with trawling employee communications even if by machine-only readers, and finally some of the cultural and management challenges that we and our clients faced in deploying a capability that forecasts individual and organizational performance. By the same token, there is a great deal that enterprises can do to help build and facilitate the adoption of analytical capabilities within their ranks. After all, and as we will show, the returns certainly warrant the effort.

Celebrating TechHub’s First Birthday Bash

On July 7th, it will be a year to the day since the TechHub offices first opened on the Old Street roundabout, aka Silcon Roundabout, providing a fantastic shared office space for tech start-ups and entrepreneurs from across the UK, Europe, and beyond.

We’ve based our London office at TechHub since January 2011 and have really enjoyed and benefitted from being part of the scene. We get regular drop-ins from government Ministers and Lords, journalists and broadcasters, as well as visits and talks from interesting people–Jimmy Wales and Nicholas Negroponte to name just two–and interesting companies–Pearson and Google most recently. We’ve delighted in the buzz and energy in the place, the tech expertise on hand, and the great social scene (and espresso) that comes from working in Shoreditch.

Techhub was founded on the aspiration of establishing itself as a hub for technologists and entrepreneurs to gather and work together, exchange ideas and contacts, and support each other. One year on, it’s certainly well on its way to being just that. It has attracted people from all over Europe, enticed them to base their tech start-ups here, and generated a real global community with a buzz and vibrancy about it that is nothing short of contagious.

Happy Birthday, TechHub, as we look forward to another successful and lively year ahead.

Meet us in Montreal – June 9-12

On the occasion of the upcoming Formula One Canadian Grand Prix, we’ll be in Montreal from June 9th through to June 12th, roaming the paddock and enjoying what never fails to be a great time to be in the city.

Expression Blend Workshop for WPF/Silverlight Developers

QuantumBlack is hosting a 2-day training workshop on Expression Blend for WPF/Silverlight Developers on February 23-24, 2011.

Drawing on our extensive experience building highly visual, rich, user-centric application with Silverlight, WPF, and Surface technologies, we are in a unique position to offer training in the practical and real-world use of Expression Blend.
This 2 day hands-on course is perfect for experienced designers and developers working with WPF or Silverlight who are not currently using Expression Blend. Or people with some Blend experience who feel they are not getting as much value as they could out of the tool.
Over the 2 days, participants will learn how to use Expression Blend to:

• Create and configure panels and controls;
• Create, manage, and apply resources, styles, and templates;
• Use databinding in the design and development process;
• Use animations, effects, and behaviours to bring applications to life;
• Use SketchFlow to rapidly create interactive application prototypes to share with users;
• Integrate Expression Blend into the overall design and development process.

Taught by experts in WPF, Silverlight, Surface, and Expression Blend, the course is totally hands-on and interactive, ensuring attendees spend more time doing and less time listening. Pre-defined exercises and labs provide the structure through which to explore and learn Expression Blend, along with the option of attacking specific areas or problems of interest to the attendees.
Along the way, attendees will learn many tips and tools for working with Blend, when and when not to use it, and will learn about the User Experience (UX) process and the different ways developers and designers can work together.
To book a place on a Practical Expression Blend course, or to have QuantumBlack run this course internally for your design and development team, please email training@quantumblack.com.