Stanford might be, along Harvard, the best known university of the United States and having the chance to enter its campus might be the dream for many students. On the 18th October 2016, Caweb on tour achieved this dream as Gauthier Vasseur welcomed us on a campus that resembles an ancient greek coastal village. Who would not like to teach or study with such scenery?
Gauthier Vasseur, born in France, started his career in finance and operations sector – the way his family saw his life. Nevertheless, his dream job was waiting somewhere else, in California, where he was offered a position as a High tech executive in Silicon Valley with companies such as Google or Oracle. In the time, his need to share his knowledge with larger Audience made him want to enhance his professional career. Therefore, Gauthier started to give lessons in big entities like Stanford continuing studies, Crédit Agricole or Airbus.
Thanks to his decision and goodwill, we could participate on a workshop named “Big Data Analytics – What’s in for me ?”. But before starting the real course, Gauthier gave us a short overview of what Silicon Valley really is : a place where people respect hard work and failure is accepted, where learning and innovation never ends and where investors expect 1 out of 20 ideas to be worth over $1 billion.
Big Data can be characterised in 3 words – volume, velocity and variety. The most important is to remember that Big Data doesn’t need to be necessarily big if we ask the right questions. If you’re smart, volumes can be managed. Just make sure you handle information properly:
- identify the data
- collect the data
- organize
- store in a database
- analyse
- report
- execute
When you have access to technology, to algorithms, to data and you’re integrated into business processes, nothing can stop you from Big Data. And that’s how Gauthier Vasseur concluded his workshop, in which he eagerly shared his knowledge.
Of course, you cannot finish a trip to a famous American university without visiting its shop : from hoodies, to caps and flags, anyone can find at least one thing to prove that they have been – somehow – to Stanford University.
The journey to Stanford was concluded with a lunch break on its campus and we are sure that some of us left dreaming of returning to this prestigious university.