How BI and Data Analytics Pros Used Twitter in December

It’s time for our last blast Twitter recap for BI and data analytics pros for 2011.

It’s time for our last blast Twitter recap for BI and data analytics pros for 2011. This month we are featuring a new Twitter account looking for data geek love, a fast-track to data scientist stardom, a few trends, a little wisdom and a little data oops to round out 2011. Let’s start with our awards.

Best Twitter Handle(s)

We have a tie for this award this month. @lifeisdata wins best Twitter handle (maybe of the year), but we do have an honorable mention. See why below. But first things first, doesn’t a Twitter account focused on the consumerization of data and how it’s improving the quality of life and human services around the world just make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside? This account needs followers and your tweets so long as they are worthy of the #lifeisdata hashtag according to their profile. We also loved their very first Tweet: “Top 10 Cities Using Data to Improve the Quality of Life – http://t.co/6jAIw6GN #LifeisData #analytics #datamining #Boston #London.”

While our honorable mention’s Twitter handle is simple (@dpatil), it’s his name and his job that are cool. Plus, he shared some cool info on how to become a data scientist in about 15 months. DJ Patil, the data scientist in residence at Greylock Partners (a venture capital firm behind companies such as LinkedIn, Pandora and Facebook) tweeted that it’s going to be easier to become a data scientist with the new master’s program in analytics starting at Northwestern University in September.

He’s been featured on our roundup before, but Ben Lorica (@bigdata), a senior researcher at O’Reilly Media, was worthy of a mention on our roundup this month for this Tweet: “Medicare Fraud is a huge problem, which can be solved/controlled by data analytics (ask financial services companies) http://t.co/NRF7Z1oI.” Plus, big data seems to be the trend du jour, so this is a must follow for everyone interested in the explosion of data.

Social BI Expectations for 2012

Dion Hinchcliffe, executive VP of strategy at Danchis Group and author of the upcoming book Social Business by Design, made some compelling points related to social business intelligence in his post on social business trends for 2012. He says that “getting to ROI means getting to the information that matters inside time windows that matter to make business decisions and guide strategic activity.” And he says to “expect capable analytics and business intelligence features to be added as central elements to virtually all social media tools.”

The Business Comes First in BI

The #BI Wisdom Twitter chat for the week of December 23 featured a couple of gems from real data analytics pros on how the actual business knowledge affects BI.

Our wise words start with Vala Afshar, chief customer officer for Enterasys Networks, a Siemens enterprise communications company: “Experience is the best teacher. Vertical specialization requires acquiring thought leadership from the field: customer engagements #BIWisdom.”

And more #BIWisdom comes from Gregory Lewandowki, manager of BI systems at Cisco with his little quip: “#BIWisdom experience in the biz is critical to understanding…remember…ice cream sales are not a predictor of weather.”

Data … Oops

Let’s round out our December recap with a Tweet from a previous Spotfire blog Twitter award winner – Karen Lopez, an independent analytics consultant with “Five Common Statistical Analysis Mistakes: http://t.co/g5XoaIQa < #data #oops.”

As always, here’s your list of top people and organizations to follow for the end of 2011:

@lifeisdata
@dhinchliffe
@dpatil
@biwisdom
@valaafshar
@lewandog
@datachick

Amanda Brandon
Spotfire Blogging Team