It’s all about connections

I have not written in a while (not a great thing for a blog) but hopefully that will change beginning with this quick reflection on a post that has already been quoted multiple times. Tim Berners-Lee writes in Giant Global Graph:

People running Internet systems had to let their computer be used for forwarding other people’s packets, and connecting new applications they had no control over. People making web sites sometimes tried to legally prevent others from linking into the site, as they wanted complete control of the user experience, and they would not link out as they did not want people to escape. Until after a few months they realized how the web works. And the re-use kicked in. And the payoff started blowing people’s minds.Letting your data connect to other people’s data is a bit about letting go in that sense.

It is still not about giving to people data which they don’t have a right to. It is about letting it be connected to data from peer sites. It is about letting it be joined to data from other applications.

It is about getting excited about connections, rather than nervous.

Specifically, Tim speaks of the graph above the Net and the Web as providing the level of data connection that will usher in a new level of thinking.  Not about sites and destinations but about things.  Meanwhile, in the Enterprise we still have companies talking about the unified BI stack.  Are you kidding me?  Sure, unification does allow for simplification (or so it may seem) and some BI goals require it (for now) but it is time to get excited about connections and representations above the data noise and that sweet pie chart report.  This will allow for new power as data is easily linked and explored instead of constantly being re-positioned, re-organized and re-published to provide “simpler” access.

Tim goes on to say that being able to connect what a document is about instead of just connect documents themselves as a next step is “obvious, really“.  Well, I am not sure the elaborate trappings of data, systems and IT are allowing the obvious to take place. Where is the open, semantic integration of corporate information that allows for open information exchange? (One might quietly whisper services at this point or indexed feeds but I don’t think that gets it done and refuse to go off on a tangent here).

What I think is obvious, is that interconnected data and how people share and relate to that interconnection will define business intelligence in the years ahead.  The knowledge work that will be done in the context of relationships and visibility across department and organizational boundaries will be as simple as writing a message on a Facebook wall.  In fact, the ability to speak about the graph of an organization and focus on things like views of a transaction, views of a supplier interaction, views of a customer — instead of worrying about the application, the individual process or the report — will create the right framework for increasingly flexible and powerful organizations.

Even at Zua Scene, we see the instant power of what we call a simplified semantic layer around locations and things as granting instant collaboration across user communities by linking spreadsheets by what the rows are about — not just the sheets.  We see the power of creating a simple graph to represent vulnerable populations and disease outbreaks in improving global healthcare.  We are starting to explore how to look at the impact of knowing about a healthcare procedure as a thing with many sides (not bound by a system) with partners and clients. So, yes, we support the Graph and hope that the BI community learns it must support the Graph sooner rather than later to provide user the real visibility they need.

Randy Pausch Inspires

Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch has received recent attention for his last lecture.  His personal outlook and situation are enough to inspire by themselves, however, it’s his passion for connecting art and technology along with his specific desire to encourage women to engage in computer science that inspired me.  While I don’t know much about the Alice project yet the references to it lead to an understanding that it uses virtual worlds and storytelling to teach programming (among other things).

Essentially, you create an engaging environment and teach along the way.  Where learning and interaction appear to come naturally.  Without trying to diminish the real contributions of this line of thinking it would be nice to see systems that engage us each day in the workplace try to integrate such concepts.  Create simple environments that enable powerful outcomes without burdening the user.  It’s no longer enough to just automate processes or facilitate communication.  Systems should engage, drive and encourage learning and sharing (regardless the target audience and desired outcome).

An infield fly for mashups

Microsoft goes to beta with Popfly and I managed to create a bubble list of my FaceBook friends (after navigating the one time code minefield).  For my money, the spinning red cube still does not quite match the clean approach of Yahoo! Pipes.  What  .. IS ..  nice to see out of Microsoft, however, is some movement on the display front.  Of particular interest to me are display elements like the bar graph.  This smacks of business intelligence, no?

So, with Popfly does come an acknowledgment that visuals + data intersection makes the end result more interesting.  Maps are fun (we like them) and combined feeds as feeds are a necessary foundation but increasingly diverse visuals should drive increasing value.  It is certainly time to think beyond the “feed” as a great mashup source and outcome.  In fact, visual diversity is what is appealing to me about other approaches like the highly visual AlchemyPoint.  In fact, I will continue to stand in the box and take a few swings at strong visuals and mixed data streams and am happy to see that Microsoft is swinging away as well.  Batter up!

Zua Scene at CEDs Tech 2007 Conference

Zua Scene is happy to be involved with CEDs Tech 2007 Conference in Raleigh this week.  If you happen to be in the Chapel Hill area come say hi.  Plenty of details on the web here  …

Mashups still for developers only

On Lauren Cooney’s weblog she rights:

I’ve been talking to lots of folks lately about Enterprise 2.0 and mashups. Although many companies, such as Yahoo, Google, BEA, MSFT, and IBM are trying to bring these technologies to the masses, the tools and applications are still too sophisticated for a “regular” Web 2.0 user who is, say, familiar with Facebook or Twitter. Most users have to have some sort of development experience to actually use these tools to their full ability. For example, we still see folks at the marketing and sales levels struggling to use Pipes or Google Mashup Editor, as well as some of our own tools, to create mashups for enterprise (or even individual) use.

Well, I tried to comment on her blog instead but my comments were apparently so bad they kept getting marked as spam so my comment will go here instead…

I just wanted to agree with the fact that many of the mashup technologies are still a bit developer centric (but kudos to the work IBM is doing to try to break these barriers).  I think one of the challenges is that we ‘IT and enterprise 2.0 users’ are used to systems that cover a wide range of functions servicing LOB users and business analysts as Lauren categorized them (like ERP or large footprint data warehouses and heavy BI tools).  These same systems often dictate processes instead of allowing the user to be creative and vary the solution directly — one of the most powerful traits of Web 2.0 and mashing.

Perhaps, what is required is to create smaller solutions where thoughtful interface design and given problem spaces can drive valuable mashup solutions that do empower a user without trying to cover the waterfront?  Maybe these solutions still exist on the more ‘complicated’ frameworks but the user gains better control at the front-end of the conversation = more success and adption.  I may be off here but the simplicity of FaceBook applications lend to increased organic growth and even with the enterprise facing more complex issues perhaps there is a clue in the simplicity.

Or – as we believe at Zua Scene should semantics have a broader role in trying to fill the gap of the explicit type of mash decisions that a Pipes or a DAMIA require – reducing the burden on the user to know how things need to come together.  I think Intel’s Mash Maker helps us think along these lines.

Users, front and center please

In a comment exchange on a Bill Ives post regarding IBMs mashup moves I suggested that many of the current mashup tools still take us to a place where the developer is central in the conversation. In fact, shouldn’t the success of social media and Web 2.0 found in the often referenced of FaceBook, Wikipedia and blogoshpere inspire us to place the enterprise user right in the middle of the technology?

After considering Mr. Ives’ response,

“I agree that mashups do not directly put the user in the center. They are more of a developer short cut. However, by easing the developer’s burden, more time can be spent on user requirements and thus putting the user in the center. They also allow for business units to more easily develop their own applications”

I thought about my own experience with users and I am not sure they want more time spent on requirements (no matter how extreme the techniques). No, in the BI 2.0 world, knowledge management and corporate information worlds we need to push not only for easier to develop applications but continue the hunt for the elusive user developed application.

I feel that mashup technology done correctly will lead to a partial answer to user-developed applications and bring about self-service solutions like never before. Don’t get me wrong — my own 10+ years around start-ups and big shop IT leaves me painfully aware that certain tasks and solutions will always be the domain of experienced developers teaming with quality subject matter experts to arrive at powerful solutions. But it is clear, that much of the energy of crowdsourcing, the READ-WRITE web and web 2.0 should hit the enterprise as user directed, created and deployed application and content experiences.

It is with that thought I applauded Intel, as reported by Slashdot, on its work in the mashup world. Like Zua Scene, it appears the semantic bug has bitten Mash Maker (and then some) to continue to push self-service forward. As the demo shows legroom finding its way into an open flight search, airline enterprise users should just as easily be able to mix delayed flights with important traveler information and baggage handling systems to increase customer service and loyalty (and it should not require the development of a new customer service-baggage-traveler information system to do it).

Need totals, have services

One of the pillars of BI is aggregation. Totals (an aggregate) — every banded report has them. Often metrics are some variation of aggregation or set math. Give me my division numbers please! Services, however, are usually fine grained, transactional. Can they be aggregated? Should they?

How do you take a single service that returns the sales of an invoice line and get those division numbers? Can you? Are you forced to hide a proper aggregating expression behind a division total service? And if you do have to hide or pre-calculate the aggregation (can you say OLAP) is the ability of users to construct visual integrations (mashups) of these services of these special aggregate services on the fly really more useful than traditional approaches? (Good questions and unfortunately the complete answer probably won’t appear in the next paragraph)

I can say this, however. First, let’s take a service that returns a set of data — columns/rows — and assigns an awareness semantic to the specific columns of interest. Second, take a user with access to the service acting in a visualization who’s default actions which are separate from the service are to aggregate based on the semantic. Then you create the desired effect – totals. And all of this without the user necessarily having to make an explicit determination to sum a value and the service not having to resort to pre-aggregation of values. Does that really work? (And before you object I realize that this won’t work at a certain scale but lets give it a chance)

Well Google has a pretty good set of services around the spreadsheet. If you look at each column as an element and each sheet as a service then you end up with a nice set-based service. Throw an interesting element such as number in one of the columns. Define the service so that it tags the numeric column. Then as the user uses the service in a visual designed to return totals it can sum the properly tagged columns. If that spreadsheet is division sales then without the burden of significant definition we use the context and the content in concert to achieve the answer. My division totals!

That said — this thought is still in progress — and it is true that most “mashups” serving data are little more than portal views of discrete service responses and often focused on non-structured information (regardless of what the marketing slick says). And when people want a total – it is off to the meta-data layer and the banded report model or metric calculator.

Regardless, let’s look at the future a bit by considering one of my favorite sites Swivel for a moment. It is true that the last time I built a data set the definitions resembled some of the heft of a traditional data definition in your favorite BI tool. However, I can chart sales of tennis balls from one “data service” against sales of tennis rackets from another with little more than two defined sets and the desire to chart the results. Multiple users, delivering data and collaborating in mixed, complex visuals.

Need totals? (Not all the time and less then we probably have been conditioned to think) Have services? You may still be in business with a little context and a bit of glue driving resulting calculations.

Knowledge sharing meets BI

In a recent blog post by JP Rangaswami (confused of calcutta) entitled Facebook and the Enterprise: Part 5: Knowledge Management
JP writes:

“I believe there are three primary reasons why an enterprise would want to “manage its knowledge”:

One, to share learning, so that the same mistake is not made multiple times.

Two, to share learning, so that activities get sped up.

Three, to share learning, so that people are motivated to learn and to teach.

To share learning.

Knowledge management is not really about the content, it is about creating an environment where learning takes place. Maybe we spend too much time trying to create an environment where teaching takes place, rather than focus on the learning.

Since people want to learn by watching others, what we need to do is to improve the toolsets and the environment that allows people to watch others. It could be as simple as: What does my boss do? Whom does she talk to? What are her surfing habits like? Whom does she treat as high priority in terms of communications received? What applications does she use? Which ones does she not use? When she has a particular Ghost to deal with, which particular Ghostbuster does she call?”

“To share learning” by watching others is indeed an interesting point.  A point possibly lost on today’s BI community.  For business intelligence is “the enterprise place” to find information, right?  It is all about enhancing knowledge, right?  So maybe it is time to ask the BI community what does a user, viewing a report (or even searching for one in isolation) have to truly do with shared learning.

I recently received an e-mail inviting me to a web demo of a data visualization tool I really like (to remain nameless for this post).  It talked in the subject line about collaboration but in the end described a user performing a visual reporting task.  Maybe shipping it to a dashboard or PowerPoint demonstration.  I was a little disappointed.

If we are to truly “look over each other’s informational shoulders” should we not have the ability to publish our BI thoughts, pick freely from services (not always just those prepared in a universe or framework by an integration team) and mix in the thoughts of others?  In seeing other people’s thoughts on what is interesting, seeing them build information combinations and viewing important services through shared visualizations we can start (baby steps of course) “To share learning”.  Learning through others’ behaviors as they interact with information sources.

This is where the tried and true banded report sees its end?  (Or at least re-defines itself for what it is.)  So, yes it is good to have sliders, dimensions and drill-through views for exploration of questions — but frankly I would rather know what my experienced colleague knows and build from that basis rather then try to always discover my own result from a roll-up of my division’s sales history.  Maybe the point here is overstated but if the work on collaboration is going to move out of the Ambient BI labs of BusinessObjects and actually change user behavior maybe a few bold predictions such as the death of the banded report are not as crazy as they seem.

Mix your own BI

It is interesting to see the social networking and personalization gold rush in the consumer web.

• Pick your feeds, your widgets, your information. See any vendor of choice (iGoogle, Pageflakes, NetVibes and many more).
• The desire to publish to and learn from friends, communities or groups (Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Yelp!).
• And now, with an ocean of content vertical communities are now going to the next level (see Minti).

Break it all down and users are craving relevant information through self-organizing (or at least self-selected) information. And the pace of collaboration and discovery is not about to slow.

Now step back from all the activity of the consumer web for a moment and reflect on statements made as far back as 2005 by Don Tapscott: “What’s driving the change? Collaboration. Increasingly, computers and people can cooperate and intersect in richer ways across the Internet.”

So what does this have to do with the Enterprise — everything! As Irving Wladawsky-Berger cites in a recent blog entry from IBM’s Global Innovation Outlook, “…Rather than existing as static and fixed organizations, more enterprises could essentially become an aggregation of specialized entities with complementary interests — expanding, contracting and reconfiguring themselves in a way that best adapts to or even anticipates market dynamics.” So it is clear, not only is collaboration and access to situational information important it will be one of the key technical drivers to organizations that have to “reconfigure themselves” on the fly.

Traditional BI is simply not in a position to deliver this collaboration and configuration today. And while the user is moving to the center of many BI models it is in fact how groups of users participate in visualizing information together that will key flexible business processes moving forward.  I am not about to claim that Zua Scene has THE answer to the complexity of what is being discussed by Mr. Tapscott or Mr. Wladawsky-Berger.  However, simple steps are required (as well as big breakthroughs) to empower knowledge workers in highly collaborative and informative BI.   I believe that collaboration around semantically enhanced services and the pictures and data stories told through such collaboration will break-down the heavy handed techniques current at work in today’s business intelligence community and Zua Scene is committed to playing a role in this revolution.

So go ahead and imagine the possibilities when users can mix their own BI and simply search, connect and share information as it is needed, together.  It is happening now!

Community and BI

There is a lot to be said for all of the activity around social networks in the Web 2.0 world. In short, these networks allow individuals to publish and find information among friends and contacts. Recent work by Microsoft in SharePoint and BEA through AquaLogic demonstrate the desire to team community with content management for the enterprise. Is it merely the realm of portals where community and content merge?

Business intelligence can also take advantage of community networks. Instead of looking at dashboards by role, BI systems could provide users with the ability to collaborate with data services and each other in very visual ways. In theory, users could take sources of information published through BI and related architectures and combine them into visuals, alter and share them in community. The ranking, comment and combination of these services by individuals would further free information and assure the best content (and related reports/visuals) surfaces to assist business knowledge workers.

Sure, today’s BI can allow users to create reports without IT intervention (maybe) and see specific dashboards related to role and function but they still focus predominately on a single user exploring content. Even embedded BI (or BI 2.0) concentrates metrics in point processes.

Meanwhile, the contribution tools of social networks from blogging to exchanging messages on a friend’s wall (see FaceBook) are creating rich tapestries of information (a tapestry that BI attempts to create for the business user). So why not use these same concepts around data sources and informational services to produce viable business content through user relationships around information. This breaks the single user asking questions of a reporting system paradigm that often exists today and makes business intelligence a self-organized conversation.