ATTENDEE SPOTLIGHT

Interview with eBay's Kenny Shi

Rules Fest chatted with Kenny Shi, Software Developement Manager at eBay about what he found most valuable about Rules Fest 2010 and why he wanted to come back in 2011 as a presenter. Here is what he had to say...

Rules Fest: Thinking back to Rules Fest 2010, what was your biggest "a ha!" moment - when something really made sense to you for the first time?

Kenny Shi: When James Taylor spoke about management of decisions instead of management of rules, it had struck me. We had spent plenty of investment in managing individual rules, monitoring their performance, etc., however, rules are just individual contributors to the overall decisions. We should pay more attention to the performance metrics at decision level, such as accuracy, cost, gap and conflicts of decisions.

Rules Fest: What was the most interesting conversation you had?

Kenny Shi: I had participated in the bootcamp where Larry Goldberg and Jacob Feldman illustrated the Decision Model and how it could be implemented using OpenRules. It was a great opportunity to spend a day of time with the experts, and to learn and argue in an interactive setting. In my domain where rules were used, infrastructure and groundwork had been built, benefits had been realized, however, efficient management of rules and transparency of how decisions were designed needed improvement. We were struggling to best model our decisions, reusing logics, and representation formats to communicate decision logics to other groups. The Decision Model made a lot of sense to me. When I grasped the concepts in the bootcamp, I couldn't help thinking "this is exactly what I had been looking for"! I highly recommend bootcamp sessions.

Rules Fest: What was the most useful contact you made?

Kenny Shi: One of many pleasant experiences attending Rules Fest is that I had finally met the industry thought leaders face-to-face. Being in the field for a while, even before coming to Rules Fest, I had read plenty of books and followed many blogs in rules area. Among them, it was an honor to have had chats and exchange cards with Carole-Ann Matignon. We have been in touch since Rules Fest 2010. She has provided lots of help and suggestions whenever I had questions. She is an enthusiastic practitioner, an innovative pioneer, and a great mentor.

Rules Fest: When did you feel validated ("Hey, I've been doing that like that!")

Kenny Shi: It was always an approving reassurance when I heard a presentation describing a concept or a technique that was similar to what I had been doing at my work. At my company, we had built the rules and decision systems based on our own needs and architecture. I don't think we had connected with industry much, but amazingly, I had found a lot of similarity and synergy between what we had implemented and what everybody else had done. For example, the emphasis on data analytics, the integration between rules and predictive models. It was very exciting to find similar best practices, and comforting to find that others had faced the same challenges so that we were not fighting alone.

Rules Fest: What was your biggest take-away?

Kenny Shi: The biggest take-away from Rules Fest 2010 was: [discovering] what were the next steps for my company. I considered ourselves pretty successful in using rules and achieving great results. But I needed a vision and directions about how to evolve further and how to provide more values to business. I had obtained exactly that from the conference. These were some of the topics I heard and that I had built into the roadmap: management of decisions, big data and how data can help decisions, modeling of rules and decisions, CEP.

Rules Fest: What did you enjoy the most?

Kenny Shi: I had truly enjoyed every minute of the Rules Fest. Hearing other's experience, challenges and solutions, getting [a] glimpse of new trends and directions, connecting with professionals who had the same passion - these were all priceless. I felt like being home with a big family where everyone had the same interest. I remember that at the end of each day, though tired, I was so excited writing up notes of what I had heard and learned from presentations, and was so eager to send out to my colleagues. When I returned to work, I immediately set up discussions with my rules analysts and product managers to share my learnings and to find out what we can improve from them.

Rules Fest: What made you decide to want to be a presenter in 2011?

Kenny Shi: Right after Rules Fest 2010, I decided to come back in 2011. In fact, I wanted not only to participate, but also to contribute. I was truly encouraged by all the experts I had met in 2010. I believed I could help in two ways. First, I could share what has worked and what doesn't with attendees; some of the interesting challenges at my company are hard to come by, so I'd like to give a perspective from my experience. Second, I hope I could show companies who are exploring and are searching for the right solution to solve decision making challenges that rules is the good fit - it has worked for me, and it will work for them.

Rules Fest: How can a company benefit from coming to Rules Fest? What's the value proposition as you see it?

Kenny Shi: For companies that haven't started taking advantage of rules, the conference provides case studies to show it really works in real life for real companies; for companies that have planned to adopt rules technology, the conference shares valuable best practices that they need to avoid making same mistakes and to ensure their investment has the biggest return; for companies who are already leaders in using rules, the conference provides a channel to connect with others and to help the technology be widely adopted.

Rules Fest: Assuming that you wouldn't be here otherwise, why are reasoning technologies important to eBay?

Rules Fest: What single thing can Rules Fest do to better serve reasoning technology developers?

Kenny Shi: Developers want to learn what is the proven and most effective architecture, design and implementation to build out reasoning technology.

Rules Fest: What single thing can Rules Fest do to better serve reasoning technology managers?

Kenny Shi: Managers want to learn from the practitioners on the trends and directions this technology is evolving towards.

Rules Fest: Thanks for your time!