Lexis Nexis, a very large provider of business, news and legal information is sponsoring a student contest. The winning student will receive an internship in the US.

LexisNexis Academic in collaboration with KPMG’s Innovation team will begin a Big Data crowdsourcing project. A banner with the title “change the future of information” was placed on the front page of Academic on November 8th. The first five hundred students to sign up via the banner will be eligible to participate. These students will gain entrance to the crowd-sourcing platform created by Chaordix. The challenge to the crowd participants will be:

Assume you have 1) 30,000 media and news sources, some with an archive of up to 30 years; 2) information and financials about millions of companies globally; 3) a great web search and spidering technology in many languages; and 4) a super computer to analyze and mine that “big data” – What would you do with it? What business would you create? What technological innovations would you invent?

Crowd participation will last four weeks. Shortly after that time, LexisNexis and KPMG will review the crowd’s ideas and determine a winner. The best over-all student idea will win an internship with the Innovation Department at LexisNexis.

To go to Lexis Nexis Academic, visit http://resources.library.ubc.ca/660 (Use a browser other than IE).

Best regards,
Janice M. Wallace, B.A., M.A., M.S.Lib.
Head, David Lam Management Research Library
Canaccord Learning Commons
Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia