March 2009

Pulling on the root of bad business writing

March 23, 2009

In his fine weblog Startup Diaries, David Silverman takes a good stab at answering the eternal question: Why is most business writing so bad? He writes, for example, “I blame this on an educational system that rewards length over clarity. When you get tick marks for bulls’ eyes — and no demerits for the number [...]

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Big BI, meet Big Ag

March 18, 2009

Swap out a few terms in a recent New York Times story about farmers’ attempt to split California, and you might see the IT vs. business saga.

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Rejecting stale tech marketing words

March 12, 2009

Read a pile of technology marketing and you quickly assume that you alone despise many of the words you keep hearing. They’re words like optimize, leverage, synergy, and utilize. People in this industry don’t really talk like that, do they? Many don’t, at least not in private, and they don’t tweet like that, either. One [...]

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Don’t call me “non-technical”

March 10, 2009

When I’ve referred to “non-technical” users, I’ve always meant just about anyone working far away IT. Well, based on research by Lyzasoft’s CEO Scott Davis, I think I’d better be careful with that definition. My concern is not for IT people. It’s for the “quants” in finance, marketing, accounting and operations who may not write [...]

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In dead bird vs. flow chart, bird wins

March 2, 2009

So many BI flow charts resemble the view out my hotel window in Las Vegas on the rooftop just below: a tangle of ducts, pipes, platforms, valves, and big metal boxes. What got my attention was a bird that had landed on a metal box and died.

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