The O’Reilly Strata Conference has given us insight into the world of big data, how it’s being used and what the future holds for this specific aspect of cloud management.  We’ve been covering the conference extensively, highlighting keynotes and panels, as well as holding a number of interviews at our CUBE.

Yesterday featured several speakers and keynotes, starting with Simon Rogers of The Guardian Data Store. He discussed data ‘journalism’ in context the magazine’s Data Store, as well as Wikileaks. He noted how user engagement and participation is a key aspect of the operation, and where journalism stands in Big Data, saying, “the power of stories; didn’t kill journalism. Instead it enhanced it. Provide good journalists with the tools to enrich their stories.”  Guardian journalist James Cameron adds, “the only questions left will be answered by computers because only computers will know the questions to ask.”

A panel of three industry experts, including Amber Case, Brad Cross and Toby Siegler followed Rogers’ keynote. The group discussed the factual influence of data progress on society, the position of search as the only end user Big Data system today and the rise of location-based services and mobile, asking, “What’s the next technology to unlock big data…?

Amber – “not brain implants… Better location-based data, that knows where you’re going and pushes relevant data to you in real-time.” Brad – “a mix of what’s happening on the internet now, and on mobile now.”

One highlight of the Strata event was EnterpriseDB’s Ed Boyajian, who followed the panel and discussed the gaps between IT budget growth and data growth, and the benefits of the open-source cloud.  He takes a deep look into real-world aspects of the cloud, encouraging us to “compare growth of IT budget to growth of data… and business demands to use that data more effectively… Gap between growth of data (and demands on it) and IT budget creates real problems.”  Boyajian later stopped by theCUBE, which we’ll be recapping a little later on.

After Boyjian came DJ Patil from LinkedIn, who discussed the growing demand around professional data and connectivity, noting, “To connect the world’s professionals and help make them more productive and successful’… requires data. Insights on activity today, plus insights on possible career directions.”

SiliconANGLE attended Strata and set down for interviews with all the big names, including Tim O’Riley himself. See here for day 2’s keynotes, and here for the Data Market session by Pete Soderling and Pete Forde.