SuccessfulWorkplace

What makes data analytics so interesting isn’t necessarily the volume of data, as an excellent example of data analysis showed on FastCompany this week, where they covered A Map of the Geographical Structure of Wikipedia by Olivier Beauchesne, a data scientist in Montreal. Beauchesne took geocoded articles from Wikipedia (meaning the writeup had a location […]

In 2012 the Senseable City Lab, part of MIT, conducted an experiment called Trash Track to see just what happens when someone takes out the trash. By attaching transmitters to over 3,000 pieces of rubbish they were able to track where that item went, whether they went to the correct recycling facility or not, and how far […]

We’ve all heard by now that data scientists are in short supply. According to the TIBCO Spotfire Trends and Outliers Blog, this isn’t a problem that’s going away any time soon: According to McKinsey Global Institute, the US could be facing a shortage of 190,000 people with analytical skills by 2018. McKinsey isn’t the only organization […]

The enormous amount of ink being spilled around Big Data often includes the phrase “amazing insights.” At the same time, there’s plenty being said about the need to know and respond to your customers in the timeframes that matter, aka customer loyalty management (CLM). While these ideas seem intuitive, too often, the ways we gain […]

Data visualization has an amazing ability to make the complex simple, and the latest tools can do much more than give everyone the same view of data. It’s only through visualization that we can take something as abstract as symbols and turn it into a physical image that has dimensions that our eyes can quickly […]

The single biggest challenge any organization faces in a world awash in data is the time it takes to make a decision. We can amass all of the data in the world, but if it doesn’t help to save a life, allocate resources better, fund the organization, or avoid a crisis, what good is it? […]

If we needed any more proof that analytics are eating the world, it was announced today that über-predictor Nate Silver will leave the NY Times for two new roles, one with ESPN (for sports) and ABC (for politics). Both are owned by Disney, who could clearly offer far more for Silver’s talents than a newspaper. […]

If you’ve missed it, analytics have been undergoing a shift for the last several years. Where before data was collated, cataloged and mined today it’s reacted upon in some sectors in real-time and in-stream. Technology is allowing us to harness big data and understand it in milliseconds but will this quest for speed be your […]

Day 2 of the Gartner Application Architecture, Development and Integration Conference in London and I can’t help but ask myself, “Does the combination of cloud, mobile, social and data usher in the eventual end of the stand alone application? There’s a frank reality that these four ‘movements’, called the Nexus of Forces by Gartner, intersect […]

Predictive analytics is big business now. Hand in hand with Big Data they represent one of the only ways to get to know your consumer market and understand how they’ll behave under conditions, respond to marketing and react to incentives. But the problem with all of this is that it’s a constant cat and mouse chase, consumers are […]

This week at Cloud Connect in Santa Clara, I had a chance to sit down with Alistair Croll, founder of Solve for Interesting. I had been vaguely aware of the site 23andMe that tests and individual’s spit to help customers, “learn valuable health & ancestry information.” Not only can they tell you which of 22 […]

David Bowie releases his new album, The Next Day, this week. I’ve not had a chance to listen to it yet but the title itself was provocative enough for this post. The disciplines of Big Data and real-time predictive analytics present organizations with the ability to understand behaviour at a relentless pace and also predict […]

Organizations are collecting more and more data every single minute of every day. It’s no secret that Facebook, for example, processes 2.5 billion pieces of content and over 500 terabytes of data each day, pulling in 2.7 billion Likes and 300 million photos per diem. Facebook also scans a whopping 105 terabytes of data each half […]

We hear all of the time about big data as a source of “key insights” but we hear less often about big data as something that truly changes how we live our lives. If you consider that big data involves high volumes, velocity and variety of data, you have to believe that information is coming […]