Life Captured and Shared on the Web, A Data Storage Discussion with Dave the CEO of HDS
(Picture: Thomas Hawk, Dave Roberson, and Kris Tate)
One of the things I love about the web is it’s ability to be a platform that lets humans connect and share their lives thoughts and experiences.
Last night, CEO Dave Roberson of Hitachi Data Systems (my recent employer) hosted a fantastic wine pairing in SF with key members from the growing web industry. Folks from Zooomr, Joyent, Bebo, LifeMoxie, ArcScale, Approver, Martin McKeay, Box.net and others. Respected Data Storage Blogger Ben Rockwood got to meet Hu Yoshida, who flew in from his vacation in Southern California just to attend this dinner.
Thomas Hawk, Data Storage “Poster Boy”
It’s rare to meet someone that creates as much data as Thomas Hawk. One of the most memorable conversations to me was web photographer and Zooomr CEO Thomas Hawk describing all of the data he creates over a single day. Every day he takes a few hundred pictures in raw format (12mb per shot) and saves them on his personal hard drive (Which cold likely be the the Seagate drive attached to his new Apple). Thomas then takes his top pictures and processes them in Photoshop, which is followed by uploading to Flickr, and of course Zooomr, his own website.
On many photo sharing sites, the image is then processed into different sizes, and the original saved, it’s then replicated into different storage backups for safety. If the photo is printed from an online service, the data may be moved yet again to a printer, causing even more replication. One photo can easily be 10X the data of the initial raw image, and will spread over the web.
As Web as the Platform, Mobile devices will capture
While in Japan last month, I was checking out the mobile phones, some which have real time video conferencing. Apple is rumored to deliver the iPhone with iTunes, which will continue to add more digital media on one’s belt, in most cases, this data will be stored or retrieved from the web storage cloud. Jeff McManus whipped out his mobile and show us how folks connect on Dodgeball. Flickr reports that there are over 1000 pictures just uploaded by the Nokia N70 yesterday, that’s just one phone model on one day.
Consumers will create mass data, load and share on web
Normal consumers can easily capture pictures, video, on mobile devices, sometimes uploading real time to the web. Dave and I talked about the young generations living much of their life online, through social sites and instant messaging. My little cousin told me that ‘email is for old people’, they primarily use real time texting. This digital generation is capturing and sharing their lives online.
On one of Joseph Jaffe’s podcasts, he indicated that by 2010, half of all media will be created by consumers. Using the web amateurs are now creating images, video, media, and reporting the news and it’s scaring the professionals.
Other Players
With Sun gunning for the startup web market, and Online Data Storage companies entering the market such as Amazon, Box, Omindrive, it’s good to see Hitachi Data Systems reach out to this growing community, the web is empowering common people to capture, share, and store their lives online.
Thanks Dave and other HDS folks for the wonderful evening, of wine, food, and sharing.
Other Resources
- The Data Storage Wiki
- HDS Blogs
- HDS Forums
- I’m watching the Online Data Storage Market
- Hu Yoshida, provides his observations
- Martin McKeay observes the event
Update: Clarification (Dec 8th)
A lot of people have a hard time understanding the difference between large divisions in a company, this should provide some clarification:
Hitachi Data Systems (my former employer) and Seagate (a client of my employer Podtech) have different products. Hitachi Data Systems sells Data Storage solutions, most commonly found in Data Centers. This is not to be confused with another division at Hitachi that focuses on Disk Drives. Seagate is known for having consumer and disk storage devices, such as the one Thomas mentions below in the comments. While as an employee at HDS, I helped organize the event, and supported it after my leave.
Lastly, as of last week, I now work at Podtech.net, which makes for an interesting intersection. I’m very much involved in the technology industry, as I have relationships that reach into many sectors of the same family.
Just wanted to be VERY clear as folks as people get these two companies companies confused frequently, and to make sure there is no conflict of interest.
Oh and Thomas Hawk and Kris Tate are friends.
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The future of data storage…
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Excellent Wrap up Martin….
Man, I thirst for storage. Thirst for it. I’ve got about 4.5 terabytes of personal storage right now. Thanks again to PodTech and Seagate for my most recent 750 gig drive. Seagate does make awesome drives by the way. I owned several of them before doing the Photowalking show with Robert (they sponsor his show).
Good seeing you last night Jeremiah. Looking forward to doing more stuff in Vegas at CES. Thanks for introducing us to Dave as well. I need a lot of storage, but of course Zooomr needs far more.
The wine tasting was great.
Cheers,
Tom
Thanks Thomas, we all look forward to your next photowalking video with Scoble.
Say hi to me next time you’re in the Podtech Office.
[…] The people here are all fast movers, self starters, it’s really a talent shop, I’m working hard to catch up with this crew. PodTech is hitting a milestone this week, we’ve moved to a new office on Page Mill, (everyone gets their own desk) a much larger office than the incubator startup at Sand Hill road. (about the size of two garage stalls) Keep running This last few days has been so busy, as I’ve changed my communication mix, ran a roundtable exercise, attended and supported an event held by my previous CEO, moved to a new office, and today, I’ll be meeting my first client that I’ve brought in. We’ve some big news to share soon, stay tuned. […]
[…] We had a great turn out thanks to blogger and global web strategist Jeremiah Owyang who helped us organize this event and invite these new companies. Among the guests were Box.net an online storage company, Joyent an “Office 2.0” company, Zooomr an online photo company, BeBo.com an online photo/video/social sharing company that also owns Birthday alarm an online greeting card company, LifeMoxie online career mentoring services, Approver an online document management company, NING a provider of web apps to create custom social websites, and ArcScale an HDS partner who focuses on Web 2.0 companies like Facebook. We also had Mark Mckeay a writer, thought leader and blogger on data security. This was a very interesting evening, with a lot of new ideas, interesting individuals, and great conversation. […]
[…] This was at Dave’s get together Wed night, he told us his kids use Zooomr! Kris is one of the most brilliant and industrious minds around. […]
[…] Speaking on unexpected, life is funny sometimes, by shear chance, I attended a recent HDS event for companies in the Social Networking space. Jeremiah has blogged about the event here. At the event was Ann Tardy of LifeMoxie, a company that provides a methodology, training and a web based application to match mentors with individuals seeking mentors. Initially, she has focused on getting companies to setup the service as part of their HR offerings so that employees within a company can sign up to be mentors, or to find mentors. She described it as Match.com for mentoring. Each employee has a profile that allows you to check their potential as a mentor. The application acts as a coach to both the mentor and the individual to walk them thru the mentoring process. While I haven’t seen the application, it sounds very intriguing. You should know, that Ann has more moxie and energy than 99% of the people in the world, if nothing else seek her out and pick her brain, you won’t be disapointed. […]
[…] I had a thank you dinner with Hu and his wife a few weeks ago, he presented me with a thoughful card and gift certificate to Best Buy, where I frequent! Just a few weeks ago, Dave Roberson the CEO of Hitachi Data Systems hosted a dinner with leaders of the emerging web indsutry I saw Hu even after my departure from HDS at a Storage 2.0 Dinner. Thank you Hu, it was an honor to work with you, now I’m a consultant to help other great companies like Hitachi. […]
[…] In the past few months, I’ve noticed a trending in Fortune 500 companies integrating Bloggers, Podcasters, Viral Video at events. In early 2006, there was fear and caution from the this unknown medium, but I see it taking hold now. Here’s how smart corporations are benefiting from Social Media Here’s a few examples of how corporations can benefit from embracing social media and those that have voices about your market. Example 1: Bloggers and Corporations meet in real life Some companies have figured out that executives and product teams at a corporation can greatly benefit from meeting with passion bloggers in a particular industry. I helped to coordinate the Hitachi Data Systems meeting with the CEO and the Web 2.0 crowd (of course most are bloggers), Microsoft invited me to their IE7 launch with their product team, last week, Michael Dell hosted a roundtable, and colleague Robert Scoble was invited to have lunch with Bill Gates. […]
[…] As someone focused on the Enterprise Web Space, I’ve been watching this market, in fact I was on point for this on behalf of Hitachi Data Systems before I came to PodTech. I helped to coordinate a dinner with the CEO and CTO of Hitachi and some local Web 2.0 companies, and I saw what Sun was doing, they’re moving fast. […]
[…] likely replicated for backup and safety reasons a few times on the Yahoo servers. We discovered at this dinner with Dave Roberson that Thomas Hawk (one of the top photographers in the blogosphere) consumes 10mb per photo with his prosumer camera […]