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I really like industry events: the intensity; the competitiveness; the pithy debates; the BS; the incredible concentration of opportunity. The good ones have the pulse and cacophony of a third-world bazaar. The evening parties aren’t too bad either, especially when they’re in New York or Las Vegas.

Fortunately, we had High Performance on Wall Street 2008 in New York this week. It was at the Roosevelt Hotel, La Grande Dame from La Belle Époque. I felt out of place without my frock suit and top hat, but mentally returned to the 21^st century and enjoyed the healthy debates on in-line risk calculations, low latency, complex event processing, co-lo architecture, etc.

Candidly, with all the market animation this week, it was tough to gauge what the atmosphere would be going in to the event. With rare exceptions (“Hey, where’s the Lehman dude on the panel?”) things went rather smoothly. Hats off to Pete Harris for keeping things lively and moving.

I was able to catch some very good panel discussions as well. I’m always leery of panels because … well … many (regardless of the event) are truly awful. Often panelists are inarticulate, rambling or just too timid to have an opinion. And moderators? They’re running the show but often forget their role and responsibility to us not seated on the dais. Far too typically moderators go through the panelists in sequential order asking softball questions. For most of the audience this proves (often after the ubiquitous high-carb lunch) a quick route to slumberland. When I’m in the audience, I want to be entertained and mentally challenged. I want Jerry Springer meets Harvard. Hey Mr./Ms. Moderator: pick a fight, force a debate, enlighten me and stop wasting my time.

Off my soapbox and back to the panels (because this was not much of an issue at this week’s event). I very much enjoyed the session “Gaining First Mover Advantage with a Low Latency Market Data Solution.” I skipped the concurrent “Low Latency Market Data Distribution – Software and Hardware Approaches” panel because I work with Barry Thompson and get to eat, drink and debate with him all the time. What struck me about the first panel was a very poignant comment made by an excellent panelist. He commented on the market obsession with low latency and the collective failure to account for devastating effect of outliers – late, non-low-latency information. Algos just don’t like outliers and it screws many of them up. Outliers are low-latency impurity. 99.44% pure is good for Ivory Soap, but it’s not good enough for today’s environments.

This subject deserves much more scrutiny. Outliers undermine low latency. Maybe a debate on this at the Roosevelt next year?

=rob.ciampa

Tags: low-latency (1) outliers (1) pete harris (1) high performance on wall street (1) 

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