We don’t tend to agree with Microsoft when it comes to data analysis and presentations. In fact, we’ve even been critical of them for misrepresenting data, excessive visual “flair”, missed opportunities to improve Excel, forgetting their power users, subpar presentation tools, and wasteful slide masters.

With all these past differences, I was a little surprised to find that we do share some common ground. Check out the comments (from an article in Internet News) by Peter Klein, CFO for Microsoft’s Business Division in describing the world of business intelligence:

“I’ve talked to a lot of customers about business intelligence and the one thing that they tell me is it’s really hard to use,” said Peter Klein, during at the Credit Suisse conference.

“‘I’m not getting the value out of the investment that I made,’” Klein said customers had complained. “‘I have invested a lot in my back-end systems, and today 10 percent or less of my employees actually touch it, or get access to the data. I’ve got six different BI solutions across multiple different departments, none of which talk to each other. And they’re hard to use, so I’ve got to send people to training for two weeks to learn how to use it.

Finally, we are speaking the same language. Now, I’m curious to see what they are going to do about it.

Trying stuff

Google is one of the few large companies that gets one fundamental rule of the Internet: Trying stuff is cheaper than deciding whether to try it.

Dunning-Kruger effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mistakes in Experimental Design and Interpretation

Taxonomy of ways to fail your experimental design.

The Problem With Presentations

Don't let presentation software keep you from getting your story across,

Webfoot's Mapeteria: Map Colouring

Want to make a choropleth thematic map (i.e. coloured based on your data) for Canadian provinces, U.S. states, or French départements?

The Econ 101 Management Method - Joel on Software

Instead of having smart people figure out how to train their frontline customer service workers to serve customers well and profitably, they make up metrics that sound good and let the low wage, high-turnover customer service people come up with their own.

The rise and fall of IT | Perspectives | CNET News.com

Scrap IT? A well-reasoned argument for scrapping the term "IT."

Gallery of Data Visualization

Summize - Summarized product reviews

A nice visualization for showing rankings.

The Extreme Presentation(tm) Blog: Choosing a good chart

We all know at least one GUI Jock. That one guy who knows how to, say, run a complex query on the content management system, or export data from the annoying sales database front-end or actually get new data into what qualifies as "the system" where you work. He is a master of tools that appear obscure, but are in fact just a pain in the neck. He is not writing firmware for the space shuttle; he is changing the background gradients in your marketing dashboard.

The GUI Jock is a paradoxical figure. Indispensable and yet undervalued, he owes his livelihood to the ferocity of the beast he tames. The sheer number and complexity of pull-down menus, check-boxes, obscure options, software bugs, and poor user interface choices created by an external software vendor. The GUI Jock conquers them all—he is a human compiler who receives requests in the loose and informal language of the outsider and compiles them to the standards demanded by expensive enterprise software.

But how did he find himself in this position? Ironically, he may have fallen into this unfortunate role by being good at a few ad hoc requests which he likely completed under the assumption that he would soon be moving on to more interesting work. But now he is stuck in a trap that he helped build and of which others are afraid. He is there to fall on the grenade that is lousy software, poor documentation, and bad process so the rest of the organization can go about its job without another hassle. The GUI Jock suffers so we do not.

What can be done?

In my experience the GUI Jock is usually not happy with his lot. If you know him you are probably aware that he can be a grouch and he has probably sighed in your presence more than once (if you don't know him, he might be you). But can we set him free?

A typical response is training. Grab a conference room for a few hours, set up a projector and show the junior staff just how to hold that chair while taming the beast known as the "InsiteDynaMetrix CollaboStream(tm)". The juniors sit and nod, happy to have such a big block of their day accounted for. In my experience, the success rate of this approach is woefully low. It can backfire, basically serving to train attendees to know who exactly the GUI Jock is and that they should funnel all relevant requests directly to his inbox.

To protect itself, the organization demands that the GUI Jock stay in his role. He is the only person who will save himself. He has a few options:

• Sucker a new employee into the role. New employees are eager to please and crave the recognition of value that comes with being a GUI Jock. They are also too naive to see the quicksand.
• Increase the friction for people who lean on him. Ask for forms to be filled out, demand detailed requirements, and delay in delivering results. With enough process, these people may decide to serve themselves.
• Apply to graduate school.