MyData 2016 blog

1
Apr

MyData 2016 Speaker Interview: Irene Ng

Interview Transript

Molly Schwartz: Hi, Molly Schwartz here. I’m one of the researchers on MyData at the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology and I’m here speaking with Irene, who’s the Principal Investigator of the Hub-of-all-Things project out of the University of Warwick. And we are very excited about the work that they’re doing there, and she will be one of the speakers at the first-ever MyData event from Aug 31 – September 2nd of 2016. So hello Irene, could you go ahead and introduce yourself and give a little bit of your background, what work you’ve done that relates to this MyData concept.

Irene Ng: I was 15 years an academic and 15 years an entrepreneur, so I’m a little bit of a hybrid now. My interest in data is very much stemming from an interest in the Internet of Things, or the Internet of everything, mostly to do with personal data. I’m actually very excited about personal data because of a specific concept called the HAT [Hub-of-All-Things], and the HAT is going to be returning or helping people grab all the data they have online and on the Internet back into their hands. And they can do wonderful things with it. So I’m really looking forward to talking HAT at the MyData conference.

MS: So what kind of thing are you expecting to get out of this MyData event?

IN: Well, I’m really excited to meet people who have been working in the data space. I mean there are really incredibly talented people and talented companies out there that have been working a lot in the data space. Matching, matching different kinds of data with different kinds of services, so that we can get more personalized products and services. That becomes very interesting to me. And also the other aspect of data is the fact that we could look at different kinds of ontologies, different ways of organizing data in structures. I mean we don’t have to live with the kind of data that we collect, they could be transformed in so many different ways. So I’m really excited to meet different people who have been working in this space and sharing my ideas with them.

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