History of Business Intelligence

This afternoon, I was looking for some good business intelligence use cases as i worked on a client presentation on integrating external news, financial data, social media and internal business data to create what i am calling a 'one-page' executive leadership view and I came across this video presentation on the 'History of Business Intelligence' by Nic Smith.

Nic is a senior marketing manager for business intelligence solutions at Microsoft and obviously has some killer presentation skills. Definitely worth the 10 minutes- including a couple of chuckles.

View more documents from Nic Smith.

Where did i start my search? Slideshare of course. A great resource of smart people, with excellent presentation skills that feel that sharing with the community is more beneficial then hording their knowledge. thanks folks.

Bit.ly on This

I have been using the URL shortener service bit.ly for a couple of months now and love it. bit.ly allows users to shorten, share, and track links (URLs). Reducing the URL length makes sharing easier when you are using Twitter or even sending links via email.

Aside from the convenience and usability issues it resolves, my favorite thing is being able to track the shortened links i publish. Great for seeing how many clicks i get from a Tweet post with a shortened URL but also for tracking who has clicked on the link i sent them. Recently i sent a shorten URL to a coworker, a couple days later in conversation i asked what they thought of the link i sent them, they answered that it was great. yes. i believe it that is, that is why i sent it to you. but not that you actually read it. nope according to my bit.ly tracker you never clicked on it. oops.


Image|Flickr|Janrito Karamazov

Speaking at eComXpo Free Virtual Show This Week

This Thursday at 11:20EST, i will be conducting a session with Jonathan Kranz on day two of eComXpo which is virtual show for "e-commerce and affiliate marketers that addresses the latest trends and issues in marketing for retailers, affiliates and networks". [registration is free so join us!]

The title of our session is "Now You’re Cooking: How A Dow Jones eBook Boosted Brand And Tripled Lead-Gen Expectations" which is a case study of the ebook i published last June with Dow Jones titled "The Taxonomy Folksonomy Cookbook: Finding the Right Recipe for Organizing Enterprise Metadata".

Jonathan was instrumental in the copy writing and concept design of that ebook as well as the most recent one "The Conversational Corporation: How Social Media is Changing the Enterprise" that i cowrote with Robert Scoble, Shel Israel and Greg Merkle. Jonathan is spectacular to work with and in this session he will share with the audience some of the tips that he shared with us as we were putting together and publishing our own successful ebooks.

The session summary from the conference agenda reads as follows:

If content is king on the Web, then what’s the royal road to online success? For Dow Jones, the secret was an ebook strategy that positioned them for leadership--and resulted in three times the number of downloads and leads than they had expected. Co-hosts Jonathan Kranz, author of Writing Copy for Dummies, and Daniela Barbosa, Business Development Manager for Dow Jones’ Synaptica, share their insights on:

• How a traditional company is reinventing its content/copy through ebooks
• Uncovering opportunities for competitive distinction through thought-leadership
• How to leverage expertise to build brand, generate leads and lubricate the sales process pipeline
• The crucial power of killer graphics — why ebooks are more than mere whitepapers
• Promotional power — leveraging Web ads, social media, webinars, personal appearances and more to accelerate success

I am really looking forward to conducting this session with Jonathan, he certainly has a lot to share with everyone based on what he has learned over the years in producing projects for various types of clients and we will be sharing some real stories that came out of the two ebooks i have written over the last year. 'See' you there!

Siri, a Virtual Personal Assistant

Ever so often i see an iPhone application that makes me want to go off and buy one (i am still on Blackberry because it is the work standard). I have an iTouch in which i test and play with applications, etc. but since it requires wifi it is limited as to the universal use for applications.

I got to see the 2nd public demo of Siri, a Virtual Personal Assistance at the Semantic Technologies conference a couple weeks back that i have been mentioning to a lot of folks. I just found the slide deck that Tom Gruber used as well as the keynote video which is worth a view if you want to see what the future holds for us in regards to connected information retrieval and delivery.

During the presentation Tom Gruber outlines what it takes to put an application like the Siri Virtual Personal Assistant together and why the time is right for Siri and others. The enabling conditions that he outlines include: [@minute 6:49]

• Location Awareness
• Time Awareness
• Task Awareness
• Conversational Interface
• Speech to Text
• Text to Intent (natural language processing)
  
• Dialog Flow
• Semantic Data
• Services APIS
• Task & Domain Models
• Access to Personal Information (data portability)

Video demo starts at about 8 minutes:


Interested in learning more? See additional coverage of Siri.

Making Money on Twitter US$1,441.62 per tweet

This morning i read that Dell Sold $3 Million in sales through Twitter an accomplishment that should be acknowledged and is import for other B2C businesses to admire and try to replicate. $3 million is a small amount to Dell but still relevant (about .5% of their annual revenue of $61M )- since they are just getting started with the medium . {CORRECTION-thanks to Sandro: revenues 61B not $61M, and thus this is only 0.005% (one part in 20,000) of their revenue.] They use other social media channels as well so based on the viral nature of Twitter into other channels (Facebook, blogs, Youtube etc.) it probably is a combination of the originating points of the promotion codes on Twitter spreading out.

But let's say that the average PC purchase is $800 bucks. Using that average (i made that up) through Twitter they acquired ~ 3,750 customers. Depending on their retention and loyalty rates, long term these consumer acquisitions can be even worth more.

So i checked out their Dell Twitter accounts, and there are multiple Twitter channels- 34 of them on the Dell on Twitter page and that is not counting other Dell 'employees', 'fans' and 'followers' that are not listed that retweet. Just looking at the 'Dell Offers on Twitter' category, there are 10 separate accounts. Between theses 10 twitter accounts as of this morning about a total of 2,081 tweets had been published across those 10 accounts- so if my math is correct, Dell netted about $1,441.62 per tweet. Not bad for 140 characters.


Image|Flickr|striatic

Rutgers Drops “Library” from Name of School

The Rutgers University Board of Governors approved a resolution April 2 removing the words “library studies” from the name of the School of Communication, Information, and Library Studies. Effective July 1, its name will be the School of Communication and Information. The school’s faculty had voted 30–10 in favor of the name change at a February 4 faculty meeting. - posted on ALA site


As a graduate of the MLIS (Master of Library and Information Science) program at the Rutgers School of Communication, Information and Library Studies(SCILS) i am disappointed by this change. The article states that one of the reasons was that people thought that it was solely a library school- that is not a problem of the library studies program but a product of the school not being to define why Library Studies is just as important as the Communications and Information part of the program and that Library studies requires specific skills sets that the marketplace needs.

Image|Flickr|ksscils598s08

Semantic Technologies Conference in San Jose, CA June 14-18th

Just like last year, I am very excited about the upcoming Semantic Technology Conference in San Jose on June 14th-18th. The program looks great and aside from attending many sessions and i am also going to be very busy!

Starting on Sunday, June 14, 2009 from 02:00 PM - 04:00 PM we kick-off with the Semantic Code Camp, an event that is free for non-conference attendees as well (register here).

On Monday, June 15th from 6:00-8:00pm, The DataPortability Project is hosting a DataPortability get-together. As an added bonus, when you register to attend this meetup, you will get access to Chris Saad’s conference session "It's Time for Social Media to Become Personal Media" which takes place prior to the meet-up (5:00pm-6:00pm). You will have access to the full conference and you will be able to also network with all the other attendees. You need to register to get access into the conference center for the session and get-together. (contact me with questions)

On Tuesday, June 16, 2009 from 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM , i am super excited about being on a panel moderated by Paul Miller titled "Semantifying Social Networks" with Nova Spivack, Stephen A. Leicht and Amit Sheth. (for this session you need to be a conference attendee, please see below)

Interested in attending the full conference? Use the DataPortability Discount code: ST9DP . It will give the user $200 off a “full event” or “conference only” registration fee and $100 off a “tutorial day only” fee.

For example: If you are also interested in attending a full Semantic Search Day on Wednesday. Use the code to get you $100 off the day price of $195- costing only $95!

Here is what i look like, come find me if you want to chat~ See you in San Jose!