Leslie Fine - HP Prediction Market Expert joins the team

We are pleased to announce a new member of the Xpree family. Leslie Fine joins as our VP of Market Design, and comes to us after 8 years at HP Labs, where she was the lead researcher responsible for the BRAIN product.

BRAIN is HP's prediction market solution and is a groundbreaking technology in the field. HP and Caltech pioneered the use of prediction markets in corporations. Prior to joining HP Leslie received her PhD from Caltech in Economics, where she studied mechanism design, particularly inducing liquidity in thin markets and information market design.

Welcome to the team Leslie!

Open Innovations event at the Computer History Museum

I was asked to attend a conference on Open Innovations, a topic in which we here at Xpree have some interest. The venue for the event could not have been more appropriate: the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. Speakers included innovators from Max Mancini from eBay, Rich Friedrich from HP Labs, Roy Levin from Microsoft Research, Roger Meike from Sun, Ike Nassi from SAP, and Marie-Anne Neimat from Oracle.

Unfortunately I missed Max’s presentation (the first of the day), but the next several speakers turned out to be quite interesting; namely, HP’s Rich Friedrich, Microsoft’s Roy Levin, and, most impressively, Sun’s Roger Meike, who went into detail about some of the innovations and innovative techniques used at Sun. Among the innovations he mentioned was Sun’s Black Box (ironically, which is not black), one of which UC Berkeley recently purchased that sits right outside Soda Hall, and the SunSPOT, a rather unique device that lets you design on a high level on embedded devices, which, classically, was a rather difficult proposition.

Visiting Roger’s table after the end of the speaker series, I had an opportunity to chat with Roger as well as play with some of the SunSPOTs. Amusingly, one of Meike’s associates reacted with surprise when he noted that he could run two applications on the same SunSPOT without any problems, something he had apparently never attempted before. As he stated in his presentation (I’m paraphrasing), “We love chasing shiny new objects.” Compared to more structured innovative techniques other companies presented, Sun’s innovation labs seem to allow for more of this freeform growth of technology, which is an exciting thing to see.

For our part, we were interested in seeing how innovations are fostered and dropped by different corporations. It seems to me that most take a sweeping, shotgun-like approach to innovations; throw engineers in the right direction then shake them a little, and good ideas will fall out. In my opinion, greater importance should be given to streamline innovative development to push development forward, not outward. While good ideas do come out of freeform research divisions like Sun’s labs, not everyone is so positioned with the financial security to make such a lab possible. For smaller companies, this is not an option.

For more details on the event (and pictures!), visit http://www.djcline.com/2008/08/20/aug-15-2008-sdf-innovation-and-research-fair/

Rational Exuberance

Back in May I attended a conference organized by the Corporate Executive Board. I was on a panel with Nate from Inkling about using Prediction Markets in corporations. Lots of fun.

After my talk, Mr Greenspan slipped me a few ideas for prediction markets which we are now incorporating into the product. Stay tuned for some laissez faire driven economic wizardry.

Forrester paper on Prediction Markets

Forrester published a paper on Prediction Markets about 3 weeks ago, well worth a read.

The paper highlights:

• The history of PM
• Why PM are a useful addition to the "market research toolbox" (I also think that they are a valuable addition to any risk mitigation toolbox
• Success factors for a good PM
• Some examples of where PMs don't work (one's tongue in cheek, I hope :-) : "Will my wife get pregnant in the next three months?")

Excellent presentation, callouts, graphics as you'd expect from Forrester, and something you definitely want to leave with a customer on a visit.

Trader Tuesday #3: Remember me and little fixes

Apart from the little fixes that always pop up every now and again, we added two new features: Remember Me functionality and a new report.

The new report allows our administrators to see the trades per day in the last 30 days, the last 7 days, or over all time. This allows for admins to see the activity levels in their markets at a glance, giving them the opportunity to see the trends in trading of the users in the market.

Also, remember me! Seems simple, but now, with the click of a checkbox upon login, users will be remembered for two weeks, so there is no need to log in every time. This should aid users in their quest to become this month’s Top Trader. Have at it, traders!

Happy Birthday Xpree!

Today marks our one year anniversary of the founding of Xpree! We even got a cake!

Our cake:


Our CTO Alam and our CEO Mat:

The Team!

Trader Tuesday #2: Make me faster!

This week’s release consists of several fixes of slow code, most notably in the Top Traders list. Look for new features next week in Trader Tuesday #3!