Strata big data Santa Clara - should be interesting

I'll be in Santa Clara CA next week (2/27-3/2) attending the Making Data Work: Strata 2012 - O'Reilly Conference.

I believe this is the first non-healthcare conference I've ever attended [1], and it will be my first visit to the heart of geekdom. Big data is fashionable these days, and it's always fun to attend fashionable things. Lots of interesting commercial and ethical aspects, since the most profitable use of big data seems to be finding ways to exploit the vulnerable.

It's hard on my family for me to be away that long, so I'd better use the time well. I'm hoping to put out a summary post when I'm done.

[1] In my real life I work in applied clinical informatics in the depths of a large publicly traded corporation -- and before that I was an academic family physician and country doc.