In London recently, after an inspiring exchange of emails and tweets I finally had the pleasure to meet Ajit Jaokar in person.
Ajit is a man of many talents; an academic, consultant, teacher, scientist and father. His span of interests is reflected in the range of topics he blogs¹, tweets and teaches about.
I was first introduced to Ajit via email by Annalie Killian, Founder, Curator & Exec Producer of the Amplify Festival². Annalie is one of the most connected people on the planet, with an incredible global network of interesting and inspiring people.
It quickly became evident that some of the Meeco innovation projects would be enhanced by Ajit’s insight and data science expertise. We see so much about big data, however we at Meeco have long held the belief that ‘small-data equals big insights’³ and we wanted Ajit’s to help us prove it.
Ajit's expertise is focussed on the application of machine learning techniques to complex problems and the Internet of Things (IoT).
He teaches Big Data for Telecoms at Oxford University together with moderating and chairing the Oxford Next Generation mobile application panel. He also teaches the city sciences program at UPM - Technical University of Madrid.
His nominations to industry leading bodies include World Economic Forum’s ‘Future of the Internet’ council (2009), the World Smart Capital program (Amsterdam) in 2011 and in 2012 to the board of Connected Liverpool for the Smart City vision.
Since 2009, Ajit has been an advisor to the European Internet Foundation on Technology and Policy issues and involved in IoT roles for the EU funded Fp7 project webinos project. He is the co-author of ‘The Digital World in 2030'. In May 2005, he founded the OpenGardens blog and is a regular speaker at conferences including MobileWorld Congress, CTIA, CEBIT, Web20 expo, Java One, European Parliament, Stanford University, MIT Sloan, Fraunhofer FOKUS, and University of St. Gallen, Switzerland.
Right now Ajit is working with us on a range very interesting projects including;
MeScore
One of my passions is to develop a score to help you assert yourself as the most reliable source of information about you. We call this a MeScore. Why you may ask? We see this as one of the ways to empower individuals to be consulted about how and when their information is used. If it is more reliable and cheaper to come directly to you, then it gives you more control. Ajit is helping us develop the algorithms to calculate a MeScore.
Decision Engine
Taking the brilliant work of the Meta Model for process developed by Brian Grimmer⁴ and Peter Midgley, we are working together to build a simple Decision Engine to help people make day-to-day decisions. We believe a calm place to make informed decisions amidst the pressures of life will benefit society. We are extremely excited to be working on this project with Brian, Peter and Ajit and look forward to the convenience and peace of mind it will bring.
Machine Learning
What if we had the same power to understand the patterns in our life the way that large data driven organisations do? What if we could to teach our devices to help us achieve better outcomes? What if that learning could be personalised, but instead of belonging to Google or Amazon, it belonged to you? Ajit is working with the Meeco team on ways for you to ‘train’ Meeco to understand and predict your wants and needs. It’s early days; we’ve just started experimenting with our own personal data, but the results are fueling our curiosity, so stay tuned!
Ajit has also inspired us through his recent blog on Calming Technology. We love the idea that amidst a world of technological advancement there can still be a calm-place where we can feel a sense of sovereignty in our connected world.
Please join me in welcoming Ajit.
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¹ This web page is no longer available.
² This web page is no longer available. To view an archived copy click here.
³ This web page is no longer available. To view an archived copy click here.
⁴ This web page is no longer available. To view an archived copy click here.
