LDD Today

Lotusphere 2003: Tuesday, January 28
The human element

by
Richard
Schwartz
I'm so glad that I chose sleep over writing this report last night. I sure needed that extra hour! But in addition to that, I just had a conversation over breakfast with Mary Ellen Zurko, IBM's Security Architect for the next gen mail project, and I want to write about it right away because it's so relevant to my attempt to communicate to you readers what I think Lotusphere is all about.

As happens so often here at Lotusphere, Mary Ellen's and my paths crossed quite unintentionally. I simply sat down at a table in the Dolphin dining room, not knowing any of the people there, listened to the conversation, and joined in. And as soon as Mary Ellen and I saw that we had a common interest, we knew we had to take advantage of the moment. As I mentioned yesterday, one of the reasons I'm here at Lotusphere is to talk about spam mail in my BP-107 session. And Mary Ellen is very much aware that spam control is an aspect of messaging security, her area of responsibility for IBM. She just dove right in to an intense conversation with me, asking detailed questions about available technology and which vendors at the show she should talk to about anti-spam products. She also wanted to know what capabilities users need, which ones should be built directly into the next gen mail product, and what hooks should be provided for allowing custom anti-spam features to be added.

Mary Ellen informed me of research projects IBM has undertaken, and we really seemed to connect when we got to talking about some of the more advanced approaches to analyzing spam and how they have arisen out of the algorithms used in knowledge management products (which in turn came from the academic world of comparative literature). When we ran out of time, we exchanged cards and promised to email each other with further information. I was so impressed with Mary Ellen's knowledge, her ability to connect the dots before I had even laid them all out, and especially her passion for finding out anything and everything she possibly could to improve the product she is working on.

This is a wonderful illustration of the "essential human element" that IBM has made the theme of this year's Lotusphere. This conference brings together a group of passionate, dedicated professionals. Once a year this critical mass of people comes together, and the result is exactly what you would expect—the unexpected. The human element is what turns data into knowledge, and knowledge into benefit. The technology we work with is great, but it is great only because it facilitates human connections.

In the fight against spam, relatively simple technology can actually be very effective. But the problem of "false positives" (email messages you want to receive, but which are rejected because they have characteristics that make them appear to be spam) forces us to be more sophisticated. If an organization receives 10,000 email messages every day, a one percent false positive rate is far too high, because 100 messages would be lost every day. Software using algorithms that can make the same decisions humans make, with an accuracy of at least 99.99 percent is a very ambitious goal. But it is essential that we strive even to exceed that goal. In my opinion, the only way we will exceed that goal is by writing software that learns from its users—from the entire community of users, and from each individual user. Some vendors here at Lotusphere are on the right track in this regard.

So, how did my day go yesterday you ask? You're probably familiar with the classic Monty Python's Flying Circus "Spam, spam, spam, spam..." routine. Well, yesterday's refrain for me was "Swan, swan, swan, swan..."! My room is here in the Dolphin, where I'm sitting and using a brand-new broadband connection in my room (which is not really so broad at this time given that there are thousands of laptop users sharing it, but I'm still grateful to have it!), but here's how my day shaped up:
If you've never been to Lotusphere, let me assure you that the distances involved are not short. If you're a golfer (or like me you occasionally pretend to be one), then you'll understand when I say that the trip from the Dolphin to the Swan is a long par 3, and from the Dolphin to the Yacht and Beach Club is a very challenging par 5. But those analogies don't quite do justice to the distances, because that's just the door-to-door experience. Once you're inside any of these venues, you still face very a significant walk to get to whatever room you're supposed to be in. I'm not complaining, but my feet sure are! It happens every year, despite the cushioned insoles that I buy and despite alternating pairs of shoes so that I'm getting slightly different arch support every day. Blisters are just part of the Lotusphere experience. That's a human element that I wish wasn't quite so essential. The Turtle, aka Scott Wenzel, webmaster of the Totally Unofficial Gonzo Lotusphere Page has the right idea. He's been seen motoring around the conference on one of those Segway hyper-intelligent scooters.

Yesterday—or was it on Sunday?—I mentioned that there are a few people here who have been to all ten Lotuspheres, myself included. I've been trying to collect as many names of ten-for-ten people as possible. I doubt I have them all, but here's what I've got so far. In addition to myself the list includes the following names:
I'm pretty sure there are more, especially among IBMers. If I uncover any more names of ten-for-tenners before the end of the conference, I'll post them in another one of my daily reports. Even if it is just the nine of us, however, I'll bet that the number of people who have made it to nine or eight or seven Lotuspheres is at least an order of magnitude greater. I sometimes find it hard to believe about myself sometimes, and even harder to believe about so many of us, that such a major piece of our lives, of our essential human element, has been so devoted to Lotus technology that we've taken a week out of our schedules every year to come to Orlando. Fifty days of my life have been spent at this conference, plus another 20 days of pre- and post-conference business activities (not to mention another 14 days of pre- and post-conference family activities). But perhaps it should be no surprise at all, considering all we get from Lotusphere, from that critical mass, from the interplay of all of our collective essential human elements.