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Stephen Swoyer

BI Summit / Goin’ up north where the wind blows tall

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I’ve never figured out why one hard-thumping song by Tom Waits brings to my mind the annual Pacific Northwest BI and Analytics Summit. Yet it does, even now as I prepare for the six-hour drive up to Grants Pass, Oregon. It’s my sixth consecutive time, and the Summit’s sixteenth.

I start out the drive with “Goin’ Out West” on my mind. “I’m goin’ out west where the wind blows tall / ‘Cause Tony Franciosa used to date my ma.” By the time I arrive on the Weasku Inn’s big lawn, dig out a beer from the ice chest, and say hello to the nearest person, the song’s gone.… Read the rest “BI Summit / Goin’ up north where the wind blows tall”

“Tame” the data makers

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I’ve heard of “taming data.” But the week before last at Strata I heard it in a new context: taming behavior.

Taming data has been “nichy,” as fellow TDWI writer Steve Swoyer puts it. He says, “It doubtless explains the etymology of, for example, Tamr.”

But Swoyer pushes on from there, as Swoyer knows how to do.

[Notice the] consonance between to wrangle and to tame. Both are grounded in the same metaphorical frame. Both are grounded in the same metaphor. This pre-conscious framing/understanding of the issue is more interesting than the stupid terms.

Former IBM sales engineer Lamont Lockwood, now the “Integration Expert,” sees two definitions.… Read the rest ““Tame” the data makers”

Bohemian Grove a la BI

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The Bohemian Grove of the BI industry convenes for the fifteenth time in just three weeks. Naturally, you ask the obvious question: Are you serious? The Grove? A summit?

The answer begins with a fond recollection of the Grove. If you’ve never attended the Bohemian Grove yourself — I haven’t, though I’m sure I know someone who knows someone who’s waited on someone’s table who has — you may know of it as that century-old, mid-July pow-wow of leaders from big-iron industry, national politics, and old-time movie-making. Ronald Reagan slept there.

They ate, and they told stories, and they all went back to work a little more satisfied with the world as it was.… Read the rest “Bohemian Grove a la BI”