Severe windstorm killed two in Alberta

I am very saddened to hear the severe windstorm killed two people in Alberta yesterday, one child in Calgary and one person in Camrose.

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A Camrose press conference.

Here are videos people shot at Camrose.

Here is a video of the storm and after the stage has collapsed shot by Mike McGuire of CISN Country, 103.9,

Prize-induced Innovation

After finishing my Netflix million dollar Prize interview with The Ensemble team, it is fun to read Carlos Lozada’s Washington Post article “Want to Innovate but Avoid Risk? Offer a Prize.” Here is an excerpt (emphasis added),

“Drawing from a larger McKinsey study, the authors find that, increasingly, prizes are designed less to reward general excellence (think Nobels or Pulitzers) and more to offer incentives for particular innovations — from improving Netflix’s movie recommendations to creating a higher-performance car battery. Since 1991, nearly four-fifths of new large prizes have been such “inducement” awards, focused on specific goals.

[...] but the prizes are also designed to help them avoid or spread the risks of innovation. For instance, the Ansari X Prize offered $10 million for the development of a manned, reusable spaceship capable of flying 100 kilometers from the Earth’s surface — a hefty sum, for sure, but one dwarfed by the more than $100 million that competitors collectively spent pursuing the award.”

Some quick observations,

• The prize sponsors get all the publicity and attention on a problem/challenge long before they have to pay any money.
• The prize money that the sponsors need to “pay” actually “shrinks” because of yearly inflation as the nominal amount stays the same!
• Many prize competitors actually compete for the money AND the fun! Witness how many mindless hours are spent playing classic games like minesweeper!
• This detailed McKinsey study (124 pages) looks like something worth reading (or scanning).

China Road – Ocean People meet Old Hundred Names (洋人遇老百姓)

I believe outsiders can sometimes look at things with a fresh pair of eyes and give us amazing insight. Examples include director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant‘s look at Britain. Sam Mendes‘ look at America.

I just had a listen of Rob Gifford‘s CHINA ROAD: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power and highly enjoyed it. Here is an excerpt from Rob‘s bio at NPR,

[Rob Gifford] came to London in 2005, after six years as NPR’s correspondent in Beijing.

[...] His first book, CHINA ROAD: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power was published in 2007 by Random House. CHINA ROAD tells of his 3,000 mile odyssey across China, following the country’s equivalent of the US Route 66 –- called Route 312 — all the way from Shanghai to the Kazakh border. The book is based upon a seven-part radio series that Gifford filed for Morning Edition.

Here are some praises of “CHINA ROAD: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power“,

““How I envy Rob Gifford and his journey along China Road. How grateful I am to him for allowing me to share the trip through his vivid writing and his deep knowledge of and great love for China. As vicarious enjoyment goes, this one’s a ten.”
–Ted Koppel, managing editor, Discovery Channel

“My gosh, I loved Rob Gifford’s book. His journey along Route 312 is a great road story–from Hooters in Shanghai to the Iron House of Confucianism. China Road is insightful, funny, analytical, anecdotal, full of humble humor and magnificent discoveries.”
–Scott Simon, host of NPR’s Weekend Edition and author of Pretty Birds

“Here is China end to end, told from its equivalent of Route 66 as Gifford journeys from Shanghai to the distant west, talking to truck drivers, merchants, hermits, and whores. Gifford portrays China with affection and humor, in all its complexity, energy, hopefulness, and risk.”
–Andrew J. Nathan, Class of 1919 Professor of Political Science, Columbia University”

Check out Rob’s NPR free online seven-part radio series. If you enjoy the radio series as much as I did, I highly recommend you borrow or buy a copy of “CHINA ROAD” to have a read (or listen, the book is on a book CD).

Credit: I first heard of this wonderful book via “22 July, 2009, 蘋論–「西行漫記」新篇：中國紅星的殞落“. This is what Li wrote about Bob,

“作者齊福德（ Bob Gifford）是哈佛碩士，學了 20多年中文，他在結束多年擔任美國國家公共廣播電台（ NPR）駐北京特派員之前，決定獨自踏上 312號國道，一條從東往西橫跨大陸，由上海直達哈薩克邊境近五千公里路程，他一路搭巴士、貨車、順風車和的士，目的是要巡視一遍中國歷史與文化，尋找中國明天將會怎樣的答案。”

Note: “《 312號公路》年前出版的英文原書名是《 China Road》，副題是「 A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power」。”

Netflix Prize – The Ensemble interview @ Kempton’s Virtual Cafe

Few nights ago, I had the great pleasure to chat with four members of The Ensemble team, one of the two teams that beat the 10% improvement goal set by the Netflix Prize – million dollar challenge.

To make the Skype audio interview more enjoyable to you, I’ve edited the interview for length and also eliminated some dead air, silence and noise. (For example, I was a bit confused about the Prize solution submission process and got a nice explanation that I ended up removing for length reason.)

Here is the chat (in mp3 or streaming audio) with The Ensemble team’s Lester Mackey, Joe Sill, Ces Bertino, and Bo Yang in their own voices and words.

• introducing themselves
• talking about what they’ve contributed to “The Ensemble” solution
• the computation resources used in achieving the results
• how are the results from different team members “combined”?
• talking about how the last 30 days of the final competition was like?
• And how did the cooperation from various teams and people happen?
• How did they create a cooperation agreement in the final days?
• What was the process for Grand Prize Team and Vandelay Industries in their decisions to split the prize money amongst the team members?
• Given that the “BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos” team has been contacted by Netlflix to check their code and documentations, so BPC‘s likeliness of winning is pretty high, how do the The Ensemble team members see their experiences in the Netflix Prize competition?

I personally think both BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos and The Ensemble are developing and creating some cutting edge technologies. While the participants may not fully realize it yet, but their efforts are now part of some ground breaking computer science history!

Once the prize award/money has been settled, I hope both teams will consider writing up technical papers to share the insights they gained. And may be even share their software code under a suitable GNU General Public License or something like that.

Finally, I hope you’ve enjoyed the interview as much as I in conducting it. And I want to thank Lester, Joe, Ces, and Bo again for a wonderful chat.

P.S. Here is Lester writing about the “Final Submission Countdown“. And here is a link to a New York Times article, “Netflix Competitors Learn the Power of Teamwork“ plus an interesting post “What The Netflix Prize Tells Us About Innovation, Collaboration, Info Sharing And Game Theory“.