Wayne Eckerson, BI explainer, jumps to TechTarget

One of the business intelligence industry’s best explainers, Wayne Eckerson, is leaving TDWI for TechTarget. For the everyday BI expert, it’s good gossip. — But for those still on the learning curve, it’s a cue to switch channels.

“It’s true,” he told me this morning about the rumors, “I’m departing the big TDWI in the sky for other pastures.” This week’s rumors were only the latest; I heard the first wave back in early 2009 that he was looking to jump the fence.

The new pasture, as of November 15, will be as director of research at TechTarget with BeyeNETWORK co-founder Ron Powell. On the side, Wayne will also run a consulting firm, BI Leader Consulting.

For him, it’s a leap. He’s been associated with TDWI since 1995, employed there since 1998. He leaves his marks everywhere: director of TDWI Research, creator of the Executive Summit, for a while director of education. See the long history in his blog post.

For us, it’s a moment to pause in appreciation. Few others I know of can explain basic BI concepts as well. Some of his long roots are in newspapering, and they showed its value in his book, Performance Dashboards: Measuring, Monitoring, and Managing Your Business (Wiley; 2005). It was the first book I ever read on business intelligence and a valuable primer. Without it, I couldn’t have penetrated most of the books, blogs, and articles I found later.

His jump happens to coincide, by the way, with the release of his book’s second edition — still on sale, at least as of Thursday afternoon, at the TDWI Bookstore.