Dave Wells

Don’t weep for IT

March 29, 2011

Like some about-to-be-deposed Middle East dictators, some IT people fear the barbarians at the door that Dave Wells hints at. In a recent interview with Information Management editorial director Jim Ericson, Dave talked about the “storm” about to overwhelm IT departments. Then there are the reactions to that.

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How Lyza stole the show at TDWI Las Vegas

March 11, 2010

Lyzasoft wasn’t among the 38 exhibitors in TDWI’s Las Vegas exhibit hall. Lyzasoft sponsored no part of the lunch, and they hired no stage magician. But their buzz was the loudest I heard over the event’s five days. Others may have heard different buzz because buzz varies. Business intelligence elites gather every year at TDWI’s [...]

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BI terms that mean something

May 28, 2009

What a radical idea: break business intelligence down by the types of work to be done — financial intelligence, human-resources intelligence, risk intelligence, etc. — instead of by the technology — data warehousing, data integration, dashboards, etc. “If I put my feet in the shoes of a business person listening to someone pitching ‘business intelligence,’ [...]

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Just-in-time training at the desktop

May 26, 2009

There’s a new way to learn BI skills — at the desktop. eLearningCurve launched May 15. Former TDWI education director Dave Wells directs the program.

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Dave Wells’ prescription for the incurious

May 3, 2009

Former TDWI education director Dave Wells keeps running into users whose BI reports might as well be printed. These users simply accept the data as presented and don’t ask questions. That’s nothing new, of course. The difference is that Dave has a way to deal with it. I caught part of his session today at [...]

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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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Time for traditional BI vendors to “pass the baton”

February 17, 2009

The shouts from the back of the BI room seem to be getting louder. In various ways, they’re saying let Big BI die. Former TDWI education director Dave Wells, visual analytics critic Stephen Few, and Tableau Software CEO Christian Chabot are back there. Others, too. Last spring, Wells proposed a new, people-centric definition of business [...]

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Not just one tool alone anymore

December 4, 2008

This time of year it’s tempting to sit under a tree and wait for the apple to drop. Aha, a trend! But it’s better to go asking smart people what they think, and Dave Wells—former TDWI education director and now a consultant—is one of the smartest I know. He says the one-tool-fits-all scenario is going [...]

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Recession’s benefits for BI

October 23, 2008

A recession would benefit business intelligence, say two industry experts I talked to last week.

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Agile BI for a chilled economy

September 3, 2008

It’s called “agile BI,” and it goes like this: forget the big meetings, forget the planning, forget the budgeting. Just get someone from IT and someone from business together and make a prototype in a week. Dave Wells, an independent consultant after five and a half years as TDWI education director, reports that clients are [...]

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