At RulesFest 2011, I had the privilege of moderating a chat between Dr. Charles Forgy, the inventor of Rete, and Carlos, my dear friend and co-founder of Sparkling Logic (also known for inventing Blaze Advisor in a previous life). What I liked most about the talk was how candid they were, especially Charles. I was fascinated to hear both of them agree (with nuance) on the disruptive times we are going through right now.
Here’s a rundown of our panel: After a few icebreakers for Charles and Carlos, we discussed the various waves of technology disruption. I was looking for their insight as to what was happening back then and why it changed the face of artificial Intelligence, business rules, and decision management successively. Then we talked about the most recent trends with Big Data, cloud, mobile, and other things that have reshaped computing industry. We closed the session with rapid fire questions. You can view our slides here.
The most interesting “clash” between our titans involved the most unusual usage of the technologies they developed. I’ll let you weigh in on which gets the most unusual prize.
- Charles once visited a customer that said they used OPS/J in a nuclear facility. Charles questioned whether that was a good idea. The customer immediately reassured him: “oh… it is just a small reactor!”
- Carlos discovered the incredible complexity of product design with the usage of rule technology for bra design!!! As he recalled, there were several considerations (size, fashion trends, culture) that made the design a complex puzzle.
I hope that they will release the video soon for our collective enjoyment :)
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