by Julius Campbell
I recently saw The Social Network. It was a fascinating look at the story of the founders of Facebook. I found it to be thoroughly entertaining and I recommend it if you haven’t seen it. It is truly amazing that the events in the movie took place such a short time ago given Facebook’s current [...]
I recently read a discussion from the CIOs.com: Chief Information Officer Network group on LinkedIn called What’s missing from Business Intelligence? (Please note you will need to have a LinkedIn account and be a member of this group to view the discussion for yourself) The conversation was kicked off with a claim that 54% of [...]
Do you consider the role of the CIO as focusing on creating value through technology, or first and foremost running an efficient IT shop? This is the question that was posed to a CIO discussion group on LinkedIn. The discussion was extremely lively and there were tons of insightful, intelligent responses favoring both sides of [...]
In a recent blog post, Andrew McAfee suggests a model for developing superior business processes may have been discovered in the world of chess. In 1997, IBM created a computer that was able to beat the world champion Garry Kasparov for the first time and it only cost them $10 million to do it! Today, [...]
I’ve recently been introduced to a useful tool that helps me make better decisions based on business strategy and value. The great thing about this tool is you don’t have to be a manager or executive in order to use it. People at every level of an organization make decisions in their day-to-day activities that [...]
As a database developer, I normally focus on data structures and code, and not on database administration. Recently, I worked on a small project where I had to take on the database administration role as well. As such, the project reached a point where I had to make a backup of the data mart I [...]
I don’t play golf, but I recently heard a golf-related anecdote I felt was worth sharing. Prior to taking his shot, an avid golfer pulls out a fancy (and no doubt expensive) GPS unit and proceeds to calculate the exact distance to the hole. “Hmm. Is this accurate?”, he says, and then searches for the [...]
Suppose you have a software development project that will take you one year to complete. What if you broke the work up into two projects of six months each? Which approach would be better? Would it make a difference? What if you broke the work up into four three-month projects? What about six two-month projects? [...]
After experiencing some success implementing lean “Six Sigma” practices on their own, a manufacturer of audio cassette tapes called in some outside help to take their process improvements to the next level. The consulting engineer was no stranger to this process and diligently went to work. He observed the operation, consulted with key staff, and [...]
image credit: CowGummy The first step in mastering anything is to get a firm grasp of what the thing is. For this reason, I felt it would be fitting to begin this blog, which primarily deals with data, with a few definitions related to data. Data What is this thing we call data? We deal [...]