RichRelevance Chief Scientist to Showcase RecLab Project at CloudSlam 2011
Darren Vengroff to detail RichRelevance’s new open-source project designed to spur innovation in retail personalization through the cloud
San Francisco, CA – April 19, 2011 –– RichRelevance®, the leading provider of dynamic e-commerce personalization for the world’s largest retailers, today announced that Chief Scientist Darren Vengroff has been selected to present on RecLab, an open-source project designed to spur retail innovation via the cloud. Vengroff’s session will detail how RecLab takes full advantage of the cloud and the implications for all kinds of research communities, focusing on the ways that the cloud can help researchers avoid the pitfalls that have historically made it difficult to work with real data and live traffic. The session takes place virtually on April 22 at 3 p.m. EDT, and will be available to conference attendees through the CloudSlam site, http://cloudslam.org/.
“Innovation in this space has been stifled to date, as researchers have lacked the environment to test their hypothesis and algorithms against actual consumers,” said Darren Vengroff, Chief Scientist at RichRelevance and head of RecLab. “Through RecLab, we’re giving them the opportunity to go after actual industry challenges, including one of the most basic problems in retail: will someone buy this or not? By leveraging the flexibility and reach of our secure cloud, we’re enabling them take their best shot at coding a solution, testing it, ensuring it works, and then allowing it to run in a real retail environment. This is a huge spur to innovation and one that underlines the power that the cloud offers. I am extremely excited to join CloudSlam and showcase this novel approach to innovation through the cloud.”
RecLab is an open-source project operating under the Apache 2 license. It defines all of the key Java interfaces and APIs for interacting with the RecLab environment. It also provides simple implementations of these APIs that allow developers to design, test, and debug their algorithms quickly and efficiently without having to take the time, effort, or expense of setting up a large cluster of their own.
The project supports a wide variety of contextual and behavioral data, both at model build time and at runtime. Code running in RecLab has access to both immediate click-by-click and a wide variety of past shopping behavior. In RecLab, researchers begin with synthetic data sets, derived from probabilistic models, not real shoppers. However, once code has been written, tested, and debugged it can be submitted to run live against a small segment of traffic on a live retail site through the RichRelevance cloud. More information on the environment, as well as a tutorial on building models within the environment, can be found here.
About CloudSlam
This hybrid conference, April 18-22, is a global event, covering latest trends and innovations in the world of cloud computing. Conference panels, workshops, and tutorials are selected to cover a range of the hottest topics in cloud computing. More information on the agenda and registration can be found here.
About RichRelevance
RichRelevance powers personalized shopping experiences for the world’s largest and most innovative retail brands, including Wal-Mart, Sears, Overstock.com and others. Founded and led by the e-commerce expert who helped pioneer personalization at Amazon.com, RichRelevance helps retailers increase sales and effectively monetize site traffic by providing the most relevant products, content and offers to shoppers as they switch between web, store and mobile. RichRelevance has delivered more than $1 billion in attributable sales for its clients to date, and is accelerating these results with the introduction of a new form of personalized advertising called shopping media which allows brands to engage shoppers where it matters most – at the point of purchase on the largest retail sites in world. RichRelevance is located in San Francisco, with offices in Seattle and London. For more information, please visit www.richrelevance.com.
