November 2009

Why tools take root, or not

November 30, 2009

The people in an audience who ask what seems like a rude question are often the ones worth listening to. Take, for example, one guy I heard recently. He talked about his old movie camera — which was relevant to the subject, cinema — but his question had parallels with a perennial issue in BI. [...]

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You know it when they dance

November 17, 2009

Here’s that eternal question again: how do you know when whatever you’re working on is good enough? Today, two perspectives. The Oscar-winning sound designer Walter Murch, speaking Friday night at the Rafael Film Center in San Rafael California, told about talking shop with Michael Jackson’s engineers. They told Murch that they had no special insight, [...]

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Keeping people engaged

November 16, 2009

How refreshing to stumble into a trade show that has its eyes on users and their collaboration. Enterprise 2.0 came to San Francisco early this month, and I liked what I saw. Take, for example, Liquid Planner, the hosted project manager. Unlike conventional planners, it makes no demand for the single completion date, so laughable [...]

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No wizard, just you and the data

November 3, 2009

What’s the hardest part of training a new data analyst? Resetting the trainee’s mindset. “They start out with the idea that there’s a right answer,” says Joe Mako. Joe’s leaving his job — where about one year ago he began analyzing data — to go work for the producer of Lyza. Lyzasoft CEO Scott Davis [...]

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