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.


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.

Have you ever gotten a call from a recruiter at a certain massive company in Mountainview, CA and wondered out loud who does their own department recruiting because obviously the person on the other line had done no homework whatsoever in reviewing what you or the company you currently work at do? They probably didn't even 'google' your name. I have been on the other side and it is painful and honestly we have all been on the phone with recruiters so they aren't the only ones.

Especially in the technology world recruiting can be cut throat when bidding for the right candidate and the recruiter better be prepared to not only have done their homework on the candidate but also on the company they work at, and their competitors who may also be bidding for that worker especially for fancy college graduates.

eWeek's Joe Wilcox who covers Microsoft recorded this podcast with Ruth Van Dyke, Microsoft's Staffing Research & Competitive Intelligence manager, and Arthur Rassias, vice president of Dow Jones Enterprise Media Group Client Solutions, in which they discuss how the Microsoft implemented a rich content driven recruiting system using Dow Jones services. I happen to be the person that worked very closely with Ruth to gather the groups requirements and make recommendations for a multiple phases so I am particularly pleased with the outcome and happy that Microsoft is seeing benefits from the solution.

The full case study with additional details is available here.

Surface a 30 inch table top display is a new Microsoft product that provides interaction with digital content through natural gestures, touch and physical objects (for example you place your camera on the display and it wirelessly downloads your pictures!). I have posted before on multi-touch surfaces and many folks have been working on this technology for a while. More from Microsoft on their Surface site take a look at the Orgins section. Below is a video from WSJ.com of Bill Gates doing a demonstration of the features:



Back in January i was making dinner and watching Bill Gates CES keynote speech in which he demoed a kitchen environment that had touch features-basically a countertop that you can stream recipes and other type of information, like the size of the dough ball you should roll. I really wanted one then and i really really want one now:

One of the Microsoft bloggers i read frequently is Heather Hamilton, she is one of their Staffing Managers. Heather always has great posts on recruiting in today's world (especially some of the challenges or advantages that organizations like Microsoft recruiters have to deal with), trying to get a job at Microsoft and quite frequently some fairly funny shares like this video.

I was just catching up on her recent postings and found this one titled 'Vendors and conferences and flipping the funnel' that provides an example of how corporate bloggers are using their blogs. Heather posted that she was headed to a recruiting conference in San Diego and that in the days before the conference she was getting a lot of marketing and offers from vendors who were going to be at the conference exhibiting their products and services. Sound familiar?

So what makes that different? She knew she wouldn't have time to visit all the vendors and goes on to complain about the amount of noise around new technologies, products services etc. in the recruiting market. So just like any sane blogger who uses their blog as a communication tool, she left the following message on her blog: