storytelling

Insomnia, cure

January 27, 2009

Sid Adelman tells me that years ago he let his then-brother-in-law, an insomniac, read a chapter of his book on data warehousing. The guy fell asleep.

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There’s always a food angle, even in text analytics

November 11, 2008

Text analytics was one of those things I heard about every so often. Like so many terms in this business, the term comes out of a speaker’s mouth or PR person’s press release only to blow away. There’s no story, no context, nothing to chew on. Then came a press release at BI This Week [...]

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Stories that tell the bigger story

October 6, 2008

In a good example of “show, don’t tell,” Tableau Software’s weblog demonstrates the power of its product with a story: how rich, middle-income and poor voters compare in liberal, conservative and battleground states. The political story is awkward to tell in words, but it’s easy in pictures. Pictures that tell stories is what Tableau’s all [...]

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Breaking the snooze

April 10, 2008

A friend who’s deep in the financial applications world goes into a lot of sales presentations intending to buy something. But he complains to his wife later, “About 30 seconds into it, I just about couldn’t keep my eyes open.” Once in a while, though, some salesperson tells a story. Then it sticks. Then he [...]

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How one keynoter distracted everyone from breakfast

February 28, 2008

I was half asleep as the TDWI keynote warmed up early last Thursday morning. Bob Paladino is not a bad speaker, but at first the good scrambled eggs and coffee were better. Then he got into the Southwest Airlines story, and I looked up. The five guys at my table also looked up. They picked [...]

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