Datadoodle

You are here: Home / Archives for fun

fun

What’s that tool? It’s a macguffin, sir

by

When, when will someone write a novel about business intelligence? I can see it now. Amazon will try to sell me From Here to Analysis, Data in the Afternoon, and Lolita, DBA.

But titles are easy. Writing the novel might be tough, since the author would have to run on sheer imagination. There’s no apparent intrigue. The BI crowd plays it safe. Forget sex. The BI crowd works too hard. Forget guns. The BI crowd shoots only bullet points.

In fact, the best strategy might be Alfred Hitchcock’s favorite: the macguffin. It’s a plot element, often ephemeral, that drives the main characters to do what they do regardless of the macguffin’s value. As the plot moves along, the macguffin fades into the background.

In BI, the most common mcguffin is technology — while the real issue is effective use of data in business decisions.

Remember “Psycho”? The woman steals money from her boss and flees. Her boss is sure to follow. We’re looking off in that direction when out of nowhere comes the shower scene. Holy crap! We never saw that one coming!

Hitchcock’s aim was fear, but McGuffins have other uses, too. In business intelligence, the macguffin creates comfort. In the BI plot, the shower scene is instead endless talk about technology, data quality, data this and data that. All the time, lurking in the culture, unexamined and feared, is classic business dysfunction. But leadership can’t fix it, so they go shopping.

What’s a novelist to do? Use it all. Study up on the technology for a week and interview people on the front lines. Then drape BI technology over a standard plot set in an enterprise.

Business people buy BI tools, and so they’ll buy the BI thriller.

Impress your colleagues with year-end predictions!

by

Why should the smart people have all the fun with year-end predictions? You can issue your own! At this time of year, even hopeless nitwits can seem smart.

Once you set up a blog — any free service will do — all you have to do is throw together your trends. Keep these easy-to-use techniques in mind.

• Re-use last year’s trends. Does anyone really believe that 2010’s trends sat down in December for a cosmo and never stood up again? You can safely predict that this year’s trends will be next year’s, too.

• Search in Google for your industry’s name and “trends.” Take notes, rewrite a little bit and, boom, you’re an expert.

• Water the evergreens. For 2009, someone predicted, “Data interpretation will become a significant challenge for new BI users.” Will become? Can you imagine fewer business people having trouble interpreting data no matter what year it is?

• Follow in the draft of top vendors. Competition cyclists know that the easiest place to ride is just inches behind another rider. See where Oracle, IBM say they’re going and point in that direction. If a gang of marketing departments push an idea, it’s guaranteed to find at least a few new customers.

• Quantifying is risky but, done cleverly, it adds credibility. Just make sure your numbers can’t be verified. One clever expert sees 15 chiefs of analytics being hired in 2011. Bingo! The mere presence of a number, any number, gives the feel of certainty. Even if someone wanted to count, how would they do it?

• It’s good to be vague, but better to be incomprehensible. Suppose your crystal ball shows video becoming a big deal in 2011 (as if it weren’t already). Don’t just write “video,” as one hapless analyst did. Instead, pile on enough mumbo jumbo to let readers feel smart for having understood anything at all. Those who’ve tried to read 50 or 100 words will tweet about your “great” predictions.

• Aim for the horizon. Don’t let yourself be bound by others’ definition of “year.” If your vision fails to come true in 2011, you’re just that much further ahead of your time.

Above all, you must enter to win. After the first weeks of January, normal standards set in. If you feel like a fraud, remember that last week’s predictions are like last night’s eggnog. All people remember is the party, and all your readers will remember is your name.