This is an “ideas” post. One where I am trying to work out some ideas that have been bouncing around my head since this morning. Essentially, the past 10 years of data warehousing have been wrong. Wrong in the sense that the area of data warehousing has not adapted to newer technologies that would solve fundamental data warehousing issues and increase the opportunity for success. Data warehousing projects come in all shapes an sizes. The smaller they are and the more focused the problem they are trying to solve, typically the more successful they are. This is because data warehousing has many non-technical issues that cause it to fail including issues such as : failure of the business to listen & communicate and the failure of IT to listen & communicate, requirements change as fast as the business changes (and that’s pretty fast for many areas such as sales and marketing) as well as sponsorship, sustainable funding and short-term commitment mentalities. Many of these factors are mitigated by smaller projects. ...

The classic question we ask about marketing, or really any form of outreach, is given the effort I expend, what is my return. This Effort-Return question is at the heart of ROI, value proposition and the general, down-to-earth question of “Was it worth it?” That’s the essential question my clients have always asked me and I think that’s a big question that is being formed around the entire area of social media and BigData. Its clear that social media is here to stay. The idea that “people like us” create our own content is very powerful. It gives us voice, it gives us a communication platform and it gives us, essentially, power. The power of the consumer voice is amplified. ...

The May issue of HBR has an article on the learn startup model. Essentially, you need to prototype something, find clients quickly, get feedback and iterate again. The idea of “lean” is that you forgo deep planning and marketing that may not make sense since most plans change rapidly anyway. There is alot of truth in that. I’ve helped startups (even in my early college and grad-school days) and certainly it makes sense to try something and keep iterating. I found that to be true with writing, software, management consulting ideas and a variety of areas. ...

The Washington Post had an article that covered how hospital profits are increased when there are complications with surgery. I do not think that the health care system causes complications intentionally, but for me this links back to arguments made by Lawerence Lessig. His argument in his book “Republic Lost” is that the presence of money (profits), in the wrong location (complications related to surgery) causes us to think differently about the relationship between those that provide care and patients (givers and receivers). He believes that the mere presence of money causes us to change our trust relationship with other party. ...

The Washington Post’s Outlook section mentioned that twitter has become the first source of news ahead of the major networks and news organizations. While this is certainly true for many public events, such as the Boston Marathon bombing events, its probably more likely that twitter is the first source of news for certain news area segments. Public events and events where smartphones can operate such as public spaces or urban settings, twitter can be the first to report issues because the witnesses or even the participants can self-report. For other types of news, such as corporate internal news, certain types of business news and government news, finding stories and issues can take time and deeper digging–activities that are not so heavily aligned with twitter’s instant communication model. ...