Kathryn Buford

As a scholar, social entrepreneur, and consultant, Kathryn has led and consulted on projects for The Embassy of Jamaica, Americorps, BBC, Sony Entertainment, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and various small businesses, creative agencies, nonprofits and media brands. Her writings and commentary have appeared in publications like BBC, GOOD, CNBC and Live Unchained -- her former blog (of 6 years) for women and creatives across the African Diaspora. She holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Maryland, College Park with concentrations in social theory and social and cultural entrepreneurship.

Latest from Kathryn Buford

Strata conference day 2 wrap-up | #BigDataSV

John Furrier, Dave Vellante and Jeff Kelly review key trends and insights from day 2 of the  2014 Strata Conference in theCUBE. Most notably, the panelists discuss key data partnerships, the rise of Pivotal and need for more big data apps. Discussing major players like MapR, Cloudera and Hortonworks, Vellante says the industry is like ...

For Actian, Big Data 2.0 is all about simplicity | #BigDataSV

Time is the new gold standard for big data success. John Santaferraro, Vice President of Solutions & Product Marketing at Actian joins John Furrier and Dave Vellante in theCUBE, discussing the importance of rapid innovation. The co-hosts also explore the progression from Big Data 1.0 to 2.0. “It used to be you could transform yourself every ...

MapR innovates so that users profit | #BigDataSV

Jack Norris, MapR CMO joins John Furrier and Dave Vellante in theCUBE. In their ongoing coverage of the 2014 Strata Conference in Santa Clara, California, the three discuss new MapR goals and strategies in addition to market innovations, in general. Norris says MapR maintains “a truly focused business model,” providing innovations and advantages that benefit ...

Data science meets interaction, meets the cloud: Introducing CrowdChat | #BigDataSV

Dani Ryan, CrowdChat CTO and Co-Founder joins John Furrier and Dave Vellante in theCUBE for their ongoing coverage of the 2014 Strata Conference in Santa Clara, California. CrowdChat is a new platform to host #hashtag chats across multiple social networks. CrowdChat not only provides users a new way to communicate with each other, but web analytics ...

Microsoft Hortonworks partnership will “bring Big Data to billions” | #BigDataSV

Eron Kelly, Microsoft’s general manager for SQL Server product marketing, and John Kreisa VP Strategic Marketing at Hortonworks join John Furrier and Dave Vellante in theCUBE for our #BigDataSV event. Kelly and Kreisa discuss the Microsoft/Hortonworks partnership as Furrier and Vellante inquire about what makes this new collaboration unique and fruitful. Tomorrow, Microsoft will be announcing ...

What it takes to be a business intelligence leader | #BigDataSV

Andre Boisvert, Actian Board Member, and long-time leader in Business Intelligence, joins John Furrier and Dave Vellante in theCUBE. The discussants explore Boisvert’s take on the future and significance of Big Data. Furrier and Vellante also glean insight from Boisvert’s 25 years of executive experience with enterprise leaders like Oracle, Cognos and IBM and his ...

Actian’s modern technology trumps Microsoft and Oracle|#BigDataSV

Mike Hoskins, Actian CTO, joined theCUBE co-hosts John Furrier and Dave Vellante to kick-off the first day of Strata Conference in Santa Clara, California. Having spent $150 million dollars to acquire assets, Actian has assembled all of the next generation IPs into a single analytics platform, allowing users a level of flexibility in data interaction ...

ShareBuds’ simple solution for the headphone world

We live in a headphone world. From 50 Cent’s new sweat repelling sport earphones to Diamondz rhinestone encrusted headphones recently revealed at the CES 2014 trade show, big brands continue to capitalize on the luxury headphone trend. Average users, not connected to the music industry, are willing pay thousands of dollars for the ultimate listening ...

Brand publish or bust: Contently’s Shane Snow explains power + profitability of storytelling

In his Adweek mini-manifesto, “Genuine Brand Publishing Needs to Trump Generic Content Marketing,” Contently’s VP of Content, Sam Slaughter states: “A great story told on behalf of a brand isn’t really any different than a story told on behalf of anyone. It has a beginning, a middle and an end. It has characters and a ...

Chronus Marketing VP Says Big Data Will Have a Bigger Impact on HR in 2014

Big data metrics help companies in general, and HR in particular, enhance their human capital, which directly impacts their bottom line. Chronus, a leader in providing mentoring and talent software to a range of clients, predicts 2014 will be an important year for HR and big data will help us interpret its growth. More specifically, ...