We’ve done a “shitty job” of the basics, he says. Too much metadata lacks adequate definitions and genealogy—resulting in distrust among business users—and testing and training are too often done poorly.

The most troublesome basic is the human factor. “The organizational and cultural issues will screw us every time,” he says. People who don’t like each other but have to work together, for example, will too often let their adversaries crash on the rocks at the organization’s expense.

For that, one banking executive Sid knew of found a solution. Five of his managers ran the ATM operation, and they hated each other. The executive one day announced that henceforth no one got bonuses if any of their metrics sank below acceptable levels. Suddenly, the five managers and their teams found harmony.

You may recall the spread that once honored us: chafing dishes full of scrambled eggs, sausages, bacon, potatoes, biscuits alongside gravy, crisp red seedless grapes and fans of sliced honeydew and cantaloupe. Also three kinds of muffins, cold cereal and hot cereal, too. All were continually refilled to encourage bountiful first and second helpings.

At this show, sadly, there are no hot chafing dishes, there is no melon, there is no cereal of any kind. There are just muffins and, far off to the side as if to retard consumption, a tray of bagels.

Though I cannot imagine why TDWI would risk everlasting shame in Chowhound or Yelp, I do know one thing. Muffins alone don’t cut it. Bring back the hot breakfast.

The other added, “They don’t get collaboration, and they don’t get visualization…The big vendors just can’t innovate fast enough for the market…The next generation of BI will come from a new generation of vendors.”

I just happened to witness this conversation, but the same thoughts seemed to be just under the surface for several other industry experts I’ve talked to here.

On Monday, I talked to one of those innovators. LucidEra CEO Ken Rudin uses an analogy for business intelligence I like: owning a car shouldn’t require fixing it yourself. He hopes that within the next five years, conferences like TDWI’s deemphasize the technology and instead discuss effective metrics.

His company’s offer is intriguing. Give LucidEra access to your data, and within 48 hours his people will deliver two things: a full analytic environment in which you can see your data anew, plus the BI equivalent of an EKG.

Earlier Monday, Howard Dresner said after his keynote that there’s a “vacuum” of innovation and it’ll be filled from the little vendors who’re now sprouting.

This afternoon, Mark Madsen presented “Clues to the Future of Business Intelligence” at the Executive Summit. (See his slides here.) Among other clues, he compared the clumsy map of Oakland crime—developed by the city for more than $300,000—with an intuitive, almost Google-like map developed by a developer in his spare time. (The city’s response was to ban his IP to stop the developer from collecting data.)

The iPhone, the Mac, Google, YouTube and others have shown users much better interfaces than BI vendors have been delivering. And they’ve allowed people to interact online.

That’s what users expect of their BI interface now. He says it’s what they’ll demand.

You’re now screaming at me: ask your concierge! I did. She sent me to Oceanaire, the Blue Point and several others. But all looked too slick and none smelled good.

Other readers are screaming different advice: look at Zagat, at TripAdvisor, at Google Earth! I did. The online reviews are all mixed—and which ones do I believe? What does the average rating really mean? The written reviews reflect mostly pretension and middle-class angst. Phrases like “they treated us like royalty” too often lead to evaluations like “cooked to perfection.”

This part of Web 2.0 doesn’t work. Nor did it work as Publishing 2.0, or whatever we might have called it back when Zagat ran on paper ballots and hardcopy. Hey, you clever people, create a reliable indicator for restaurant chemistry that I can compare with my own quantified preferences so I can predict my reaction.

I ended up at Candelas. No wait, no drunks, and no obsequious waiter. Just a nice place with delicious food.

For now, let’s not quibble about the meaning of radical, revolutionary, or button. Let’s not worry about the title of Nicholas’s post, “Sexy vs. experience,” stated as if the two don’t mix. Let’s not even consider the post he refers to, titled “Is it just sexy?” and written by L. Wayne Johnson, which supposedly disagrees with “Tableau is the new Apple” but doesn’t.

Let’s just ponder love of good, simple tools that free your mind.

Most tools are used and forgotten like bad movies. But every now and then, I hear of a tool that inspires trust, devotion and respect for its ability to take you where you want to go.

I’ve known people who’ve loved their old Volkswagens. These cars were easy to work on, and a guy could spend a whole Sunday afternoon fiddling with the engine. It made him feel competent even if everyone else told him he wasn’t.

A friend who once bicycled across Marin County and back every Sunday morning recalls her love for her bike. She knew exactly what it would do in any situation, and it made her feel safe and free.

I’ve loved a mechanical pencil because it was the right weight for my hand and let me forget it as I took notes.

I have also loved certain computer applications, such as Adobe Illustrator. True, it takes time to learn. But once I got its logic, its consistency made the rest simple, which freed me to try things on a whim. That ability to experiment with impunity is one of the best kinds of freedom.

I’m a beginner with the Tableau tool, so I can’t claim any affection for it of my own. But I see already that it has all the makings of a tool that I learn to rely on and, yes, love. Few of the many users I’ve listened to have used that word—it’s not really “professional”—but I recognize in their stories that same devotion and respect I’ve felt for well-designed, simple and responsive machines that speed you along to wherever you want to go.

Imagine it: an inexpensive piece of software that digests whatever data you feed it, that you can learn quickly, and that then helps you reveal the data’s story the way we all understand it best, visually. What you realize at a glance is often surprising, gut-wrenching or thrilling.

Is that radical? Others’ opinions may vary, but I think it is. You can take your choice of data-preparation machines. I’ll take Tableau.

]]> http://datadoodle.com/2008/07/28/love-of-good-simple-tools/feed/ http://datadoodle.com/2008/07/28/bi-haiku-from-the-uk/ http://datadoodle.com/2008/07/28/bi-haiku-from-the-uk/#comments Mon, 28 Jul 2008 07:30:55 +0000 TedC http://datadoodle.com/?p=100 ShareThis

In Monday’s keynote, Chabot couldn’t pace. The conference’s overflow crowd left little room for the tiny stage. His address had none of the self-conscious cool of a Jobs production and more reason and humor. This is a business crowd, not a consumer one, and he connected.

The world will be at Tableau’s doorstep soon enough—though I can’t quite understand why it’s not there yet. I suppose that most people have a hard time accepting a radically new product. Perhaps it’s like what happens among strangers at one of those round banquet tables. Do you remember how the conversation stumbles along with polite conversation until someone says something thoughtful? That’s a good time to refill your water glass, because nothing else will happen until people come out of shock.

There are more than enough stories going around to write the article due next week for BI This Week. If I had to boil down all the stories I’ve heard so far from users about Tableau software, it would go like this: We heard about it or found it somewhere, perhaps by chance. We had data to analyze, and someone said let’s try that visualization thing you have. Wow, in a day or so we had figured out something astounding about the data. We’ve been using it ever since.

It’s a company to watch.

I’ve found an exception. That voice didn’t even make a peep Sunday as the three-day Tableau Software user conference unfurled in Seattle. Last night at a reception at the Edgewater Inn overlooking Puget Sound on a rare sunny day, I listened to Tableau staff tell me about their visualization software. Not once did I feel that restless need for more air.

They’ve got something good, really good. The quick stories I heard, sometimes barely, in cocktail-party shorthand ring true: for example, the heavy-hitting analysts who’ve been combing through rows and columns suddenly find they have a lot more time to plumb the data; the anti-terror people who can examine not just a handful of factors at once but a dozen or more; the consultant who feels he’s “stealing” from clients who demand Excel-based solutions who would benefit much more from Tableau; the anti-fraud guy who bought the software on his credit card and within a few hours found something so alarming he had to alert his boss. Some of them will make it into my story for BI This Week.

The only bad pitches today were by the Seattle Mariners. Tableau took a few dozen attendees to the game, and the Indians won easily.

Talking to Jock Mackinlay, the Tableau director of visual analysis, was actually more fun. He looked at the bands of alternating shades of green left by the mower and said, “That’s an interesting pattern. It’s almost like a visualization.” That’s dedication speaking.

Then someone else took over who wasn’t so sweet, and somehow she got through to an editor who asked if I could deal with her.

Her winning ploy was email that promised a “surprising prediction” about the mid-market.

The hour for our chat arrived. After 10 minutes of get-to-know-you chatter, I tried to pull us onto the subject. I thoguht the prediction might gush forth, but he had nothing.

He hadn’t even read the email sent on his behalf. I had to read it to him.

Finally, he said something interesting. He said Microsoft would provide the BI mid-market with its version of a BI Google. It would be simple like Google and just as revolutionary.

Really?, I said. Are we talking about Microsoft? I’ve only seen it imitate. Can they innovate? Google has established a culture of innovation, and Microsoft has shown no sign of any.

Well, said the expert, obviously thinking as he spoke… if they can imitate they can imitate Google’s culture of innovation.

What’s a PR rep to do? Send the client to PR boot camp? Have a heart to heart chat? Tell the client to take his unworthy ass somewhere else? Or was this the PR rep’s failure? Hard to tell.

Jim Powell, the TDWI editorial director, said yes, we would have failed. Without a built-in channel for the back-and-forth of genuine collaboration, there would be little collaboration.

At first, I wasn’t so sure.

First, who’s to say that officials really would engage in collaboration—even with that built-in channel in place?

Dave Wells, who points out the importance of BI culture, would likely say that success in Gov 2.0 would depend on culture. If officials don’t buy in, no technology’s going to make it work.

Wikipedia, Jigsaw, and Facebook and others find success within self-selected groups. Those who don’t see their value simply don’t show up. What’s to force officials to pay attention?

Until now, the main way ordinary people became powerful was by concentrating their influence in groups. The Sierra Club, for example, has no formal authority. Yet its nearly one million dues-paying, letter-writing members have as a group earned respect and fear among lawmakers. That’s the same for the National Rifle Association and many other groups, too.

These groups make better use of the new flood of data than individuals can. Smart groups hire smart analysts and publish their results. Most individuals didn’t have that reach.

Then the mob would find a voice. The swirling masses would come to a consensus like astral dust coalescing into planets. Then the crowd would have gravity. Then officials would have to take notice whether they liked all this Web 2.0 stuff or not.

At least that’s how it looks to me today.