My latest at BI This Week: “What Shifting IT/Business Battle Lines Mean for BI’s Future”

April 9, 2012

Line-of-business analysts are advancing on IT’s old territory. Five thoughts on what it means for both parties. Read it here.

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Talking, talking, talking about big data

February 28, 2012

Hang out for a few days at an industry event and you’re doused in trends, hearsay, and preoccupations. It permeates your mind. Acquired phrases come out of your mouth, the hotel food starts tasting good, and at night your dreams may tell you more than you want to know about hot topics. Sometimes, I just [...]

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Simple tool, same old resistance

February 22, 2012

I’ve rarely heard resistance to BI expressed quite so well. A woman at an oil company said to Metrics Insights founder Marius Moscovici, “If someone wants to know something, they pick up a phone.” The hell with easy information delivery. Make them ask for it. I might understand what Marius witnessed if the woman were [...]

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Looking for Kool-Aid at the Tableau conference

November 21, 2011

It’s no secret that some people hear about Tableau’s passionate users and wonder what all the fuss is about. Back in June, in fact, one skeptical industry analyst tweeted to a Tableau fan, “Pal, you seem to have had a bit too much Tableau Kool-Aid.” Tableau users I know just shrug. People who say things [...]

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“Lost cats and BI,” my latest on Information Management

October 14, 2011

What the early days of desktop publishing may tell about today’s self-service BI. Read all about it in my latest column at Information Management.

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Conditions for the rise of analysts: my latest TDWI column

October 5, 2011

See my latest column in BI This Week (TDWI), “6 Conditions for the Rise of Business Analysts.” As they rise, analysts may end up ruining the neighborhood for both IT and business people.

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“Don’t call it BI” begins my new column on Information Management

September 30, 2011

“Don’t bother me with petty distinctions between BI, analytics and decision support. I want meaning, not tools for their own sake – and here I see glimmers.” Read it here. Twenty tweets the first day!

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What took so long for viz?

September 23, 2011

Visualized data seems as natural as eating and sleeping, doesn’t it? Yet the first economic time-series wasn’t plotted until 1786, according to our patriarch of viz Edward Tufte in his 1983 book Visual Display of Quantitative Information. What took so long? I suppose humanity really did suffer from lack of an Excel chart wizard. People [...]

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Survey’s closed, results coming

September 22, 2011

This afternoon, I finally closed the long-running survey of “those who analyze data.” The results are seeping in to Datadoodle headquarters. I’ll release them in stages over the next two months: first, highlights, then more highlights, and finally a preview report and a final report. I opened it in mid-February this year. It has 221 [...]

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Everybody talks about collaboration

September 7, 2011

Everyone’s talking about collaboration — but what culture and tools does it take to succeed? Six principles emerged from a discussion among experts at the Pacific Northwest BI Summit in July. Even among this moderate crowd, an old tension showed itself. BI has always had what I’ve thought of as “data police,” those who stress [...]

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