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Title:

Data is Money: How Geeks are Changing Finance

Your vote:
Yes No
Organizer:
Eric Olson, Olson's Observations
Description:
Clearly the financial world needs some innovation, and fast. This panel will bring together experts in finance and technology to talk about how the future of finance will be influenced by data geeks and technologists. We will explore new financial data formats, like XBRL, and discuss how these formats, along with other recent advances, will allow all of us to play a role in the creation of a better financial system.
Questions
Answered:
  1. What are the main issues in finance today both for individuals and for the macro economy?
  2. What are some of the standards that are emerging for financial data?
  3. What is XBRL?
  4. What are the implications of XBRL?
  5. What is being done to make personal financial data easily syndicated?
  6. What implications are there around personal financial data becoming more easy to syndicate?
  7. What are ratings agencies (i.e. Moody's), what do they do and why do they need to change?
  8. What were some of the causes of the financial meltdown and how could they be prevented with better technology?
  9. Why does a sound financial system matter and why should we all care about it?
  10. What are some of the ways people are using new financial data formats to improve the financial system?
Level:
Intermediate
Category:
Back-End Programming / Databases, Economic Concerns, Government and Technology, Information Architecture, Social Issues
Type:
Panel
Event:
Interactive 2010
Eric Olson
on 18/8/09
Potential panelists:

Charlie Hoffman: Creator of XBRL (featured a few months back in Wired)
Jesper Andersen: Co-founder of Freerisk.org (also featured in Wired)

XBRL is a structured data format for financial data that makes financial data machine readable.

Freerisk.org utilizes standards like XBRL to allow people to create their own risk models and test their effectiveness.

Both of these panelists have already expressed interested in doing this panel if the panel is accepted.

Who would you like to see on this panel?
Eric Olson
on 18/8/09
Charlie Hoffman is also the author of the forthcoming book "XBRL for Dummies" which explains XBRL in laymens terms. (http://bit.ly/14mLb0)

Both he and Jesper are excited about this panel (I spoke with both of them today).
Paul Wilkinson
on 18/8/09
Daniel Roth of Wired wrote the definitive article on XBRL -- http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-03/wp_reboot. Any of his sources would be good panelists. Of particular interest to the SXSW crowd may be ideas to advance similar standards in other industries to make more information available to investors and consumers alike, thus improving capital allocation and making goods and services markets more efficient. (Why could Wall Street agree on an industry standard for business information but health insurance companies and health providers have yet to agree on an industry standard for patient information? How can XBRL-like technology be adopted/applied to address the privacy and security concerns that are the main excuses for slow progress in the health sector?)
Eric Olson
on 19/8/09
Thanks for the note, Paul. I agree that the Roth article is solid. I will re-read it and look for more panelists.

I also like the idea of taking part of the panel to look at parallels (e.g. healthcare).
Derek Miller
on 6/9/09
I think examining health care alongside this is a really interesting idea. Either way, this panel should be superb.
Blu-ray Video Converter
on 21/11/09
What's in the world?
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Developed for SXSW by Lindsey Simon