How BI & Data Analytics Pros Used Twitter in May

It’s time for a wrap. A Twitter wrap.

It’s time for a wrap. A Twitter wrap. Here’s your monthly guide to what you might have missed on Twitter in the geeky field of BI and data analytics in May.

We have a few awards, a gold rush and the impact of snoozing on big data projects. Let’s get started.

Best Twitter Handle – @brainpicker – I laughed out loud when I discovered this clever name. The person behind the brain picking is Maria Popova. She’s a writer for Wired UK, the Atlantic and other publications, but her brainchild is BrainPickings.org. She describes her blog as “the human-powered discovery engine for interestingness.”

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Gaming the Forecast

While her blog is cool, the reason she made our list is that her Twitter feed is full of data analytics-driven news. Well worth a follow. And her blog might just make you a bit smarter and more curious, which is the No. 1 skill needed in our industry and apparently the driver of Thomas Edison’s 1888 “things doing and to be done” list.

Best Twitter Photo

Larry Carvalho (@robustcloud) is a software consultant and speaker based in Ohio. He focuses on “removing the fog from cloud computing.” And he also has a pretty cool Twitter pic. His Twitter feed is full of insights from the many events he speaks at and attends. Worth a follow and his caricature is a gem.

Now on to some highlights from across the Twittersphere.

Data Journalism – An Emerging Field? 

The big guns in journalism are reporting on it and using it to fuel their online media properties. Just a few examples: The New York Times’ Visualization Lab; Forbes’ Data Driven section; and the BBC’s approach to giving readers data tools to dig deeper as reported in the open-source Data Journalism Handbook.

The handbook project is a project of the European Journalism Centre and you can find the project on Twitter @ddjournalism.

There’s Gold in the Analytics

May was the month of gold in analytics on Twitter. Just take a look at these Tweets – we hit pay dirt in our quest for the best nuggets of data analytics on Twitter:

@cioonline – Big Data Analytics Gold for the Call Center by @stephanieoverby – this article showcases the “gold value” in the data that enters organizations over the phone. This article also received the most ReTweets on Twitter, according to Topsy. It garnered got over 7,000 Tweets. That’s golden for our industry.

@BITechWatch – #analytics‬ in action: Data miners find there’s gold in them thar files – The Age http://bit.ly/J3bOLr – this article discusses the growing field of finding gold in the piles of big data. It’s a good overview of how companies are finding valuable insights in the data.

@brett2point0 – Does it take a “data scientist” to find gold in ‘dem ‘der #BigData hills?” http://ow.ly/bgHfs  #BI  #analytics  #MDM  #datamining – Thursday’s Spotfire blog post on whether it takes a scientist or a business person with data gold fever received some Twitter love. (Thanks, y’all says your humble writer.)

MIT Panel Say You Snooze, You Lose in Big Data Opps

Found this recap of the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium panel on the benefits and challenges of big data and analytics from Linda Tucci (@ltucci), senior news writer at SearchCIO. A few nuggets from her recap:

• Success in big data “stems from being able to identify patterns containing insights that might drive better business decisions.”
• Who is responsible for this analysis? Tucci writes, “It takes mathematically and technologically savvy people, to be sure, but also requires deep business knowledge.”
• Who should drive the analytics and big data operation? Interestingly, the panelists, which include Tom Davenport (@tdav), IT and management professor at Babson College; Shvetank Shah, executive director of Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Executive Board Co. (@CEB_Connect); and James Noga, CIO at Partners HealthCare System in Boston, say that the CIO should be involved, but that the data analytics projects should be business-led and functions of R&D.

The Follow List

It’s a wrap and to complete the package, here’s your convenient list of BI & data analytics pros to follow:

@brainpicker

@robustcloud

@ddjournalism

@cioonline

@BITechWatch

@brett2point0

@ltucci

@CEB_Connect

Amanda Brandon
Spotfire Blogging Team