Posted in muses on Sep 25th, 2008
In the 32 days since the end of TDWI’s San Diego conference, one phrase has come to my mind repeatedly: “The soft stuff is always the important stuff,” uttered by Wayne Eckerson, director of TDWI Research. He was summing up a panel discussion, but the insight applies so broadly he could have used it for [...]
Posted in BI industry on Aug 20th, 2008
I’ve heard some BI leaders this week complain of stalled innovation by the vendors. But Sid Adelman says, “I think the tools are fine… We’ve handed a Stradivarius to a kid after a couple of lessons and we wonder why the violin doesn’t sound so good.”
We’ve done a “shitty job” of the basics, he says. [...]
Posted in events on Aug 20th, 2008
Do the TDWI San Diego organizers think we’re on a diet? Are attendees and exhibitors no longer paying full fare? I try, but I can’t quite forgive the elimination of hot breakfast.
You may recall the spread that once honored us: chafing dishes full of scrambled eggs, sausages, bacon, potatoes, biscuits alongside gravy, crisp red seedless [...]
Posted in BI industry on Aug 19th, 2008
Two BI leaders walk into the Sunday night reception at the TDWI conference in San Diego. Each is as eminent as you get in BI, and they hadn’t seen each other in months. After hello, they got into what’s more important to them than the free food. One says, “Business Objects and Cognos just don’t [...]
Posted in indicators on Aug 18th, 2008
Several hundred practioners of the many aspects of business intelligence are gathering here in San Diego for this week’s TDWI conference. They know how to clean data, enable fast searches, design insight-accelerating tools and other wonders—and yet no one yet has a reliable metric to score restaurants. We still have to go out and sniff.