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Learning from earthquake relief to design BI tools

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You might say I’m crazy to see any connection between some big IT deployments and typical responses to big natural disasters — but that’s what I see. It fits a recurring theme across many disciplines of big interventions versus smaller, more humane and often more effective effort.

Yesterday on the PRI program The World, Associated Press reporter Jonathan Katz, author of The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster, talked about what he saw in Haiti.

There was one mistake that was made over and over in Haiti: The people of Haiti were looked at as being bystanders, as obstacles or as security threats.

… Read the rest “Learning from earthquake relief to design BI tools”

Data surfing with big data

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The usual big-data story leaves out crucial bits. We hear about the “what” — big, huge data of all kinds. We hear about the “when” — now and coming soon. We hear about the “how” — Hadoop with helpers. But we almost never hear about the “who” and the “why.” Who’s bothering to analyze all this data, and why?

No dashboard, just an ironing board

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As if to renounce one more convention of business, a Berkeley-area businessperson I know couldn’t find data, so he went out and got some of his own. He had to evaluate market areas.

For three days, he stood by an ironing board with a map on top in front of the Cheese Board in Berkeley’s Gourmet Ghetto. Each customer coming in or out got handed two stick-on dots, red to mark home and blue to mark work. His map quickly revealed patterns and commute routes.

It was easy. “Everybody’s curious,” said Terry Baird, who had made a career of cooperative/collective food retailing.… Read the rest “No dashboard, just an ironing board”