Don’t call me “non-technical”
When I’ve referred to “non-technical” users, I’ve always meant just about anyone working far away IT. Well, based on research by Lyzasoft’s CEO Scott Davis, I think I’d better be careful with that definition. My concern is not for IT people. It’s for the “quants” in finance, marketing, accounting and operations who may not write [...]
Predicting BI trends and saying you’re sorry
We forget most failed predictions quickly. If you make a bad one, you just say “let’s move on,” and you’re as good as moved on. But sometimes you meet the kind of guy I say hello to near my office—the kind professional forecasters hope they never meet.
How bad BI could dampen innovation
We all know BI’s ostensible price tag: the software, the hardware and the peopleware. But a new essay by Paul Graham, author of Hackers and Painters, programmer and venture capitalist, suggests that poorly managed BI might have yet another cost: the cost of thwarting creativity and zeal. In business, we try to control what we [...]
My latest: “BI Careers: Knowing Technology Isn’t Enough”
My article in today’s BI This Week. BI veterans give tech workers advice on getting ahead in the industry without burning out first.
Joke about the business-IT gulf
The San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll, one of the paper’s bright lights, relayed a joke from a reader in his column today. This should sound familiar to anyone who’s looked across the gulf between a corporation’s business side and its IT side.
Tech as a career is a “dead end”
The business intelligence author Tony Politano said this morning that technology as a career is a “dead end.” When I heard him say it, I knew it was my lead for next week’s story in BI This Week on BI careers.
