SophiaConf2012: Big data and Open data take pride of place
Primarily focused on Open Data, SophiaConf2012 bought together nearly 700 Sophia Antipolis professionals on 2nd-4th July.
The third edition of the Open Data event at Sophia Antipolis, SophiaConf, organised by the Telecom Valley Open Source Commission, from 2nd to 4th July, delved into the heart of three current themes: “Big data”, “Open data” and “Open Source: Admin & Supervision”. Nearly 700 Sophia Antipolis professionals attended high quality interventions assured by national experts and local companies.
Surfing on current trends, SophiaConf is interested on the phenomenon of data and has chosen to treat two different aspects. The conference on 3rd July entitled, “Big data, NoSQL, Big Search” had a mission to bring light on the challenges and management and massive data research tools, in an Internet environment which is more and more saturated in data. Some of the major entities and start-ups of the technopole (SAP Labs France, Orange, France Labs, Gridpocket and Eurecom) shared their best practices and explained their chosen solutions to reply to this new problem.
The opening conference, 2nd July, was dedicated to the presentation of support tools for the administration and management of information systems in the cloud. One guest, Jean Gabès, creator of the Shinken tool and main player in the Open Source community, came from Bordeaux to discuss the fork of Nagios.
On 4th July, two complementary oriented conferences “open data producers” and “transformers” approached the subject of Open Data. The objectives of these two conferences are firstly, to provide context with the intervention of Charles Népote (FING) on the origins and challenges of Open Data, and the legislative and legal aspects (Jean-François Carrasco, Conseil de développement (development consultant) at CASA, and Pascal Agosti, Cabinet Caprioli & Associés). Secondly, the presentation of Open Data Institution’s processes (Nice Côte d’Azur Metropole, Public Health Unit of Nice University) and specifically the announcement of the launch of the Open Data portal of the PACA region on 10th July, by Stéphane Martayan, that includes the release of 100 data games. Others involved (Data publica, Janua) raised the question of the possibility, or not, to create business models in the Open Data field, what impact and especially what reuse?
During the second part “Open Data transformers”, more technical and aimed more specifically at developers, the speakers gave a few examples of reusing Open Data, for example, for community services for an image of OpenStreetMap France represented by its President, Gaël Musquet. Three Inria researchers (Fabien Gandon, Julien Cojan and Patrick Valduriez) presented various methods and tools to facilitate formatting and data integration.
En savoir plus : www.sophiaconf.fr
