Mark Schneider, Chief Technology Officer at Zipscene

WHAT WE DO:  

“We work with data from many sources. Right now we’re dedicated to the restaurant space and we’re one of the only companies that can take data from point of sale and marry it with data from payments and from all the other places where we leave breadcrumbs on the internet. Then, using some very sophisticated algorithms, we develop a person’s affinity to do things within certain contexts. For instance, if it’s a rainy day, do you eat an appetizer or desert? Does the fact that there’s a ballgame or a concert affect your eating habits? We then rate, score and index all of those, and we build segments off of it that can be marketed to. So we’re not only looking for programmers with a specific background, but they also have to deal in and understand the concepts of big data, machine learning and deep learning - all buzz words - but very hard to find. UC and Xavier have a couple very good programs around that and we are seeing some very good design come out of NKU. Some of the smaller schools have more of the artistic user interface development, and that’s important to us because we’re trying to show concepts that aren’t really tangible, they’re contextual things.” 

What are the top 2 challenges facing IT organizations this year? What are the top 2 opportunities? 

“We have to be PCI compliant because we see payment information, so we have a ton of privacy rules to follow, and we have monthly outside audits. Hacking is the dark side of technology; we have to be very careful about that and we spend a lot of time and resources on it.”

[*Conversation: PokemonGo as an example of good intentioned technology, but with both good and bad user outcomes.]