Context: the challenge… and the opportunities

“Context”: a little word loaded with big meaning. For some, “context” is just location. For others, “context” is activity inferencing and much more. But ultimately, context only matters to us when it provides meaningful information, actionable insight, or other relevant value in use.

Please join us for this PARC Forum panel comprised of perspectives ranging from research to application. We’ll discuss definitions of context, examples of how technology currently provides context and where it’s going next, and opportunities — from email and notes to calendars and other user applications.

Presenter(s)

Moderated by Dave Peck, who has been active in the social media, social networking, and online community management space (and "any other buzz term you can come up with for new media"), the panel includes:

Oliver Brdiczka, Manager of Contextual Intelligence research, PARC
Oliver focuses on constructing machine-learning models for human activity from various sensors, with the goal of enabling context-aware applications and services that understand human activity and anticipate human needs. Before joining PARC, Oliver managed research on Ambient Collaborative Learning at TU Darmstadt in Germany and earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science and M.S. in Imagery, Vision, and Robotics from INP Grenoble. Oliver has authored 50+ publications in the fields of activity recognition, context modeling, machine learning, human-computer interaction, and e-learning. His work has influenced a range of commercial and government research projects, including CALO (which was later spun off into Siri) and most recently DARPA's ADAMS (for detecting security threats).  

Philip Constantinou, VP Products, Evernote
Philip is a technologist with extensive experience developing, deploying, and operating internet-based service infrastructure for over 13 years. Previously, Philip served as Associate CIO at Stanford University where he oversaw systems development and data management at the School of Medicine, including mission-critical administrative, community, and clinical research systems. During this time Philip tackled challenges such as massive research databases supporting millions of patients while also meeting stringent security and regulatory requirements. Philip has extensive internet startup experience, including serving as Vice President of Engineering at Driveway Corporation (a consumer web service which scaled to millions of users) and Director of Engineering at Caresoft Inc. (which developed web tools for care providers and patients to manage their healthcare online). Philip has a degree in Computer Science from Stanford University.

Chris Holmes, CEO and Co-founder, Meshin
Chris was brought into PARC as an entrepreneur-in-residence to define commercial opportunities based on years of contextual intelligence and other research funded by Xerox inside of PARC. He created a lean startup opportunity in the mobile space, Meshin, which is focused on creating a smarter calendar experience based on contextual connections of personal information. Chris has advised technology companies from multiple boards for venture capitalist firms. He started in the technology space with his own company, Visionware, which he brought to the United States from England and successfully sold to Santa Cruz Operations. Chris holds a Firsts Degree In Physics from the University of Birmingham, UK.