I asked a San Francisco taxi driver I happened to sit next to about indicators he sees. I didn’t mean “low oil,” I meant big things. Whether the economy is still falling or not, for one.

Figure out how to collect tip data from cabbies and waiters and you’ve have a good early indicator of economic trends, I’ve always thought. But the cab driver, Richard Roe — also producer of a website on verbal defense tactics and a retired programmer — says no. Tips have been the same. Moods, too.

However, he has noticed one thing. People used to forget their cell phones all the time. With the recession, no lost cell phones.

Then last week someone left something for the first time in months: a shopping bag with a spiral-bound directory of antique stores.

Things could be looking up.

There are the hunkerers and the builders. Those are the two basic reactions to the recession that Jill Dychè observes. She’s a principal down at Baseline Consulting, and she reports seeing more builders.

The hunkerers “are using the economy as an excuse for a fair bit of inertia,” she emails. But the builders are using “the temporary lull” to ready themselves for the recovery. “Strategy” comes up a lot more these days.

One type of builder is revisiting infrastructure. For example, some want to re-platform their data warehouses, and others want to acquire master data management hubs. “When things get really busy again, they’re positioned to be out in front.”

A second type of builder she sees has better user functionality in mind. For example, one specialty retailer has decided to improve analytics and to make users more self-sufficient. “We’ve been helping them load new data into the data warehouse and to build in more ability to drill down.”

Naturally, many clients’ boom-time issues remain. One is the temptation to choose newer, faster and cheaper tools without having prepared the data. But that’s for a post next week.

This is one in a series of posts on the recession and BI.

What have you observed of the recession’s effects on BI? Tell me here.

KnowledgeSync automates the kind of routine tasks that skilled staff disdain: issuing simple invoices, inquiry followups, low-inventory alerts, etc. It’s a BI specialty that cuts cost fast. VP of sales and marketing Don Farber says that, considering the economy, he’s pleased with just a five- to seven-percent dip in sales this year.

The benefits are resonating well this year, he reports. Where companies might have had 50 leads in the pipeline during good times, they might have just 15 now. “You might have been able to miss one before,” he says, “but you can’t afford to miss any now.”

This is one in a series of posts on the recession and BI.

What have you observed of the recession’s effects on BI? Tell me here.

Members of the “large government organization” my secret source addressed on Thursday are sure of one thing: One day, someone with authority is going to walk in and demand records, complete records, on where how they used the Troubled Asset Relief Program money. These visitors will ask to see where money went and how it got there. And right now.

Such new, rigorous expectations arising in today’s recession will benefit the business intelligence industry, he says. He’s one of the brains at a large tech vendor that sells a well-known BI platform.

“The group today were using language I’ve never heard them use before,” he says. Before, sharing data was was blocked for foolish reasons. “That inertia’s been given a kick in the teeth.”

Expectations have changed within government and outside, he says based on first-hand observations. “Requirements are becoming more stringent and more personal. There’s no more ‘the dog ate my homework.’”

“A lot of people are looking at change,” he says, “and BI is an agent of change.” He imagines what must go on now at General Motors. Projects that would have invited ridicule may now be considered.

This is one in a series of posts on the recession and BI.

What have you observed of the recession’s effects on BI? Tell me here.

Everybody’s talking about the recession, but that’s just theory at the buffet line. There, mini-recessions come and go. One day it’s not-too-bad pork loin, and the next day it’s lukewarm hot dogs.

Those hot dogs, served for lunch last Monday at Sage Summit in Denver, came on the slowest day. My last nourishment was from Southwest peanuts hours before. So I took not one but two hot dogs, but then found just mustard, catsup and relish. That’s a downturn.

Things picked up on Tuesday. Shoppers arrived. For lunch, some kind of tasty chicken. Several department heads who came by on Monday returned with good questions. Upturn.

On the flight home, I had peanuts again—with a full can of orange juice. Upturn before the descent.

This week it’s turkey, and then around we go again.

It’s hard to see through the smoke as our financial house burns down, I know. But what I’ve noticed is more interesting: the first signs of rebuilding.

This month, three experts I read—visual analytics expert Stephen Few, Competing on Analytics author Tom Davenport and digital-media economy specialist Umair Haque—all seem to have knit recent blog posts with the same thread: honest value in business and the economy.

“The macro crisis isn’t really a financial crisis, an economic crisis, or a solvency crisis,” writes Haque. “It’s an institutional crisis: the economic institutions of capitalism are in shock.”

Perhaps it’s the shock of having been conned. One of the three levels of transformation he suggests is the return of authentic value.

Authentic, long-run value isn’t created through arbitrage or gamesmanship — what we too often confuse strategy for. Games of off-balance sheet accounting, currency hedging, capital structuring, so-called labor arbitrage — where corporations simply shift to the lowest-cost, or most poorly regulated, sources of manpower — don’t create value. They just shift it around. Corporations who play this game of economic musical chairs are in for a rude awakening – because the music just stopped. And so they must rediscover the simple fact that value creation flows from making economic activities not just profitable in the short- run — but meaningful over the long-run.

Davenport lets some air out of “fluffy” social networking. He asks, “How can we really be producing value if we’re all sitting around blogging and Facebook-friending each other?”

All this fluffiness will be hard to maintain in our next period. He writes that “it wouldn’t be a bad outcome if the current crisis led to a more diligent, industrious economic climate.”

Few takes us down to products. He argues for honest value in business intelligence software. He often confronts badly designed dashboards—adorned with eye candy and other silliness—and urges those who listen to educate customers, not pander to them. The response is too often that, yes, we know, but it sells so there’s nothing we can do. Ah, promiscuity as a business strategy!

Any business that measures its success by current sales revenues or profits without regard for the effectiveness of their products will go for the silly stuff every time. I could argue that this is a poor business model because it’s short-sighted and doomed to fail, eventually resulting in declining revenues, but what’s the point? Businesses built on this model lack the foresight to appreciate the greater intelligence of long-term planning around products and services that effectively address the real needs of people. I believe the root problem that belies such business practices is not strategic short-sightedness or a myopic focus on sales—these are symptoms of a deeper, more fundamental problem. I believe that it’s wrong to build a business on self-interest alone.

Enough with this promiscuity. He adds, “Things that don’t work should not be sold—period. That’s good business.”

If the next president and Congress take Davenport’s advice and nurture big importers, high tech would surely be one of the first picks. How devastating, though, if Indian and Chinese entrepreneurs took advantage of an easy opening and overtook the U.S. even there.

I happened to read Few, Haque and Davenport. But I’ll bet they’re among many others these days arguing for a return to honest value and good business.

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

Former TDWI education director Dave Wells sees new, leaner BI practices emerging. That will start with companies insisting that they do more BI with less money. “Decision makers will ask for speedier responses from BI teams while they keep team sizes the same. It’ll be uncomfortable, but it’s healthy.”

Doing more with less will make BI teams more focused and efficient. “The problem with BI today is that it has gone the way of all IT things: centralized, slow, expensive, and inefficient.” Only good can come from greater agility, faster delivery, and adoption of tools that remove the need for anyone between a business person and the data can only be good.

A data architect at a leading tech vendor who asked for anonymity foresees a new crop of data-friendly executives. Traditionally, “business people have pushed away the IT stuff,” he told me. “It’s not fun for them. Why muddy the water when IT doesn’t even support what we need? The IT guys get to play with toys and be smart and on top.” Organizations keep measuring old, irrelevant stuff, he said, and data quality problems get swept under the rug. All that leads to “BI that’s not believed.” The new people, he believes, will be more analysis savvy.

Those newly empowered, analysis-savvy executives probably have the same appetite for the big, expensive solutions, several experts predicted. Instead, decision makers will move to smaller tools. One person advocated “getting beyond Cognos and Business Objects” and move toward smaller tools like Polyvista and Tableau.

Last January, I surveyed BI consultants to see what the season’s recession was doing to BI. Things were going fine, most reported. This week I’m following up with them on the Panic of ’08.

Those who look at how things are say the outlook is mixed: big projects already under way will continue, while smaller ones will stop.

Those who look at how things could be say the outlook is bright: BI is critical to more organizations than ever before.

“It’ll be an enormous shot in the arm,” said one data architect at a big, big vendor. Banks, for example, will find new fondness in their hearts for BI. It will be their new compass for navigating a new world of regulation.

Closer to D.C, another data man also sees a bonanza, though his optimism is measured. Mark Albala, president of the recently formed InSight Partners, said, “It’s not a BI issue it’s a trustworty information issue and BI is part of the puzzle.” More on that soon.

If there’s one reliable sign that a recession is coming, it’s when the experts say they see none coming. I’ve survived four. “Oh, maybe a slowdown, yes…” they say. Now, in today’s New York Times, Charles Duhigg argues that what’s unlikely is a “full blown depression.” Quoth Duhigg:

Why? Because so many of them have spent so much time studying the Great Depression and trying to figure out how to react more effectively if things turn really bad again.

Would that be the same kind of study France and Britain did after World War I to avoid World War II? The kind General Motors did to sustain its dominance over the pre-hybrid Toyota?

Quick, buy gold!

Really, to infer from this that a depression is likely could be just as silly as the people who take official denials about Martian spaceships as proof that they really exist.

I don’t infer anything. I just don’t remember hearing the D word during past recessions.

BI was made for turbulent times, wasn’t it? At least the handful of consultants think so whom I talked to this week for my TDWI article. Unlike at the gloomy economic forum in Davos, these guys have not a shred of fear among them.

BI leader Claudia Imhoff warns, “The glory days are gone,” you need BI to aim well at the right customers and products. Esteemed consultant and author Sid Adelman says, “Companies with good BI are going to kill the competition.” Jill Dyche, also a well-known consultant, tells a story about a medical-supply company that’s using BI to trump the competition. Others report similar things.

How does this season compare with the past recession? Tom Quintal at the LoganBritton consulting group in Boston says it’s unlike 2001. Then some client or other called up every day to cancel or curtail. This time, not one has.

Frankly, though, all that optimism may be great, but it’s not so much fun to write the rah-rah-rah. A story that’s all good news lacks salt.

One senior ETL architect whom I can’t name is the most fun. What troubles him is not BI’s value. It’s that the “big guys” don’t buy into it.

Just having good data doesn’t necessarily lead to good decisions. He says, “Take Enron. They knew the facts.”

I’m filing the story with the editor late Saturday, and it comes out late Tuesday Tuesday, February 5. If you have anything to add, please do. Either submit a comment or use the contact form.