How BI and Data Analytics Professionals Used Twitter in July

Author:

Amanda Brandon
Spotfire Blogging Team

Author:

Amanda Brandon
Spotfire Blogging Team

Welcome to our monthly review of all things BI and data analytics on Twitter. This month things got a lot more social BI and collaborative BI than mobile BI. Read on for an epic data visualization, Tweets on how IT needs more BI and links to several highly Tweeted events.

Most ReTweeted

We have one award for ReTweets this month – a Spotfire blog post on collaborative BI.

• The popular post shined some light on collaborative BI and featured commentary from consultant Julie B. Hunt and independent analyst Mike Ferguson. 

Best Twitter Handles
This month’s Twitter handle awards resulted in a three-way tie – Andy Kirk (@visualisingdata) and Mark Johnstone (@epicgraphic). Kirk is the brains behind data visualization design company Visualising Data and offers up a nice review of the book Visualize This from Nathan Yau (@flowingdata), a PhD candidate in statistics and author of the popular Flowing Data blog.

Data Visualization of the Month

Johnstone, an SEO and social media consultant, shows us a truly epic graphic in his “data cake” graphic that shows the metaphoric flow of data to knowledge.

Best Avatar

@bi_experts is a BI news aggregator with a sense of humor.  Be sure to add them to your Twitter feed, so you don’t miss the headlines or a chuckle.

Twitter Chats/Events Galore

The BI and data analytics space has definitely found a use for Twitter – Tweet Jams, weekly #BI Wisdom chats and hashtagged events including #BBBT which is the Boulder BI Brain Trust founded by independent consultant Claudia Imhoff. Check out these conversations with Topsy, the Archivist and a new Twitter tool this month – TweetReports.com. (Note: Tomorrow we will have a similar roundup of the TDWI World in San Diego.)

The BI Wisdom chats for the past couple of weeks have been centered on collaborative and social BI. One of the resonating topics was on how IT needed BI. Howard Dresner, who founded the BI Wisdom weekly chat, raised this point with his statement, “I believe organizations would be well served if IT used BI themselves.”

More commentary on the collaborative and social BI matter:

Jaime Fitzgerald, a consultant who helps businesses turn data into dollars, ): “I think BI Analyst needs 2 be + functional than technical, we have to understand more about the biz to build more successful DW/BI.”

Dresner: “Collaboration is a far easier problem to address than analyzing social “data” IMHO.”

David Menninger, VP & research director Ventana Research for BI and analytics: “Re Q about CIO latitude: not a direct answer, but 65% of time IT analytics are funded by business not IT.” Read more on this here.

Corey Adams, a New Zealand-based BI practitioner: “BI and DW (data warehousing) go hand in hand… you can use a shoe as a hammer, but it’s not as good at the job.“

Another Interesting Conversation on Collaborative BI

Mike Lock, a senior research analyst on BI with Aberdeen Research, had a Twitter conversation with Spotfire’s Amy Groden on his blog post covering collaborative BI. He says that “even more value will come when people start to involve the ‘extended enterprise.’” Amy added, “email & portals still high on integration list.”

That’s a wrap, folks. Until next month, keep up the Tweets. And as always, here’s your convenient list:

@juliebhunt
@mikeferguson1
@visualisingdata
@epicgraphic
@flowingdata
@bi_experts
@ClaudiaImhoff
@howarddresner
@jaimefitzgerald
@dmenningervr
@oz_bob
@MLock_insights
@amorriso