Is it just me, or are we making some big mistakes in how we talk about big data? This crossed my mind (yet again) as I read Straight Talk About Big Data. The article starts with a suggestion for the CEO to get 5 questions answered from the executive team: Do we have a value-driven analytics strategy? Do we have the right ‘domain data’ to support our strategy? Where are we in our journey? Are we modelling the change personally?…
You’ve probably heard about ‘Big Data’ and ‘Predictive Analytics.’ These are the big buzz words floating around today. These terms sound very technical, futuristic even… and expensive. Perhaps you were informed that you need to start a project that incorporates these concepts, but you have no idea why or how you would embark on such a mission. Let me give you an example of why you should do just that. Most likely your company has customers. Hopefully the information about…
As mentioned in the previous post, last week I attended the Data Leadership Summit – http://www.datasummit.ca in Vancouver. It brought together a diverse audience to see speakers from different industries with different perspectives and experiences. In my opinion, there were two presentations which were particularly compelling. One was from real estate brokerage Redfin, the other from the online dating service Plentyoffish. I found it interesting that both shared many common themes. For instance, the level of exaggeration when one describing…
Predicting the future isn’t quite a mug’s game anymore. It was once the province of futurists who talked like evangelists and fortune-tellers who paradoxically could never seem to leverage their predictive abilities with a lottery ticket at their local convenience store. Today, lots of folks are into the prediction racket these days – “predictive analysis”, anyway, with an eerie degree of accuracy. It’s all thanks to Big Data – that ambiguous little term every vendor is using to sell their…
