Fourteen thousand people looked on earlier this month as Tableau’s new CEO, Adam Selipsky plodded onto the stage. The stage was 10 times wider than at the first conference, an audience 70 times bigger — and a CEO not even a quarter as fiery as the first one. But he seems to be a good […]
conference
Handshake
There’s no video, and even memories may be sketchy of an historic few seconds in the exhibit hall of TDWI conference last week in San Diego. The word is that Steve Swoyer, prolific industry journalist and recent reporter at the Pacific Northwest BI Summit in July, displayed the Summit’s secret handshake. That one existed at […]
The value of small industry events
Any run-of-the-mill industry event calls itself a failure when just 24 attendees show up. An audience of that size tempts any keynote speaker to flee. The so-called “welcome” reception seems more like a wake for an unpopular deceased. Throughout, a deadly calm fills every room. Some events of that size, though, sparkle with life. Potential […]
Tableau rising
As Stephen Few delivered his keynote address at the recent Tableau customer conference in Seattle, he suddenly broke his rhythm to look at someone in the audience. “Is that Howard Dresner?” he wondered, surprised. It was. Howard is the man who as a Gartner analyst in 1989 revived the term “business intelligence,” and he’s one […]
A “Bart” just wants protection from the “Marges” and “Homers”
One of the pleas in Mark Madsen’s fascinating keynote at the TDWI conference in Las Vegas was to let the “Barts” work. The Barts are, of course, the Bart Simpsons among us, the sometimes nerdy rebels who actually come up with interesting analyses and other useful things. When the lights went up, a “Bart” was […]