The story from Dave Wells, former TDWI education director, is that Seattle University’s big cheeses—all Jesuits—met to talk about the university’s new BI project. Dave said the provost had been listening throughout, and at the end endorsed the project. “I appreciate that we all pray,” said the provost. “But at times we might need help from the data.”
It could be porn
What’s a spam filter to do? Netezza just wanted to tell the world about Helzberg Diamonds choosing the Netezza Performance Server appliance. Netezza’s writer must have put diamonds together with enterprise data warehouse. Voilà, “rock hard” EDW, and the email blast lifts off! Instant spam.
Pay no attention to that little product behind the jargon
A trade pub dear to my heart praised the healthy “buzz” at February’s TDWI conference. Yeah, but some of it sounded an ungrounded circuit.
So much jargon, so little meaning. Kevin Brown of Tableau Software and I were talking about it. He said, “Marketing should be simple.” For example, “if you don’t give the price out front, you’re hiding something.” I say the same goes for jargon-encrusted features and benefits.