San Diego

Data lurking in the elevator

May 27, 2009

The TDWI San Diego conference opens in just 10 weeks, and some people are already thinking about who they hope to avoid. “We’re sure not going to hide out in a stairway,” one promises but has no other strategy so far. Speculation about who’d win should it come down to a good old bar fight, [...]

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Heard at TDWI: “The soft stuff is the important stuff”

September 25, 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 [...]

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Don’t blame the BI tools

August 20, 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 [...]

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Not by muffins alone

August 20, 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 [...]

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Better than free food at TDWI San Diego

August 19, 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 [...]

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The nose still knows better than Web 2.0

August 18, 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.

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