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What goes on at the Weasku Inn

May 25, 2012 by Ted Cuzzillo

If you’re out for networking in the BI industry and keeping score in sheer numbers, you still attend TDWI or Strata. But to go deep with smaller numbers, you try to get into the tiny Pacific Northwest BI Summit, held every July in remote southern Oregon. There’s room for about two dozen people, including press.

It sprang from publicity consultant Scott Humphrey’s file of clients and friends 11 years ago. Then year after year, almost all of his attendees returned. Once you have a seat, you don’t give it up. It’s turned into the BI industry’s Bohemian Grove.

Still a “tool” by any other name

April 20, 2012 by Ted Cuzzillo

A marketing manager I know stopped me in mid sentence. He didn’t want me to call his business intelligence product a “tool.”

Why? “It sounds small,” he said. But it is small, I pointed out. It’s smaller than many others in its space. It’s downloaded in under a minute and unpacks itself on a desktop in a few minutes.

But he waved that rationale away as if it were a fly, and I should have known. Marketing people, like the parents of gladiators, prefer their progeny to be perceived as big. Bigness casts dark shadows over competitors and conceals weakness. Industry insiders give big competitors good odds.… Read the rest “Still a “tool” by any other name”

Simple tool, same old resistance

February 22, 2012 by Ted Cuzzillo

I’ve rarely heard resistance to BI expressed quite so well.

A woman at an oil company said to Metrics Insights founder Marius Moscovici, “If someone wants to know something, they pick up a phone.”

The hell with easy information delivery. Make them ask for it.

I might understand what Marius witnessed if the woman were faced with any of the heavy hitters in business analytics. These things come encrusted with big promises, but big promises come with big upheaval. Data gets disturbed that some people wish would stay buried. They want to say, “Everything’s fine here. Go away.”

You can imagine why.… Read the rest “Simple tool, same old resistance”