11 Jun 2015
By Allen

SpotFire for Analytics

BI/DW Projects
SpotFire for Data Analytics I recently completed a rollout for a major energy company using SpotFire for data analytics from multiple data sources.  This is just a quick review of initial impressions.   My career in the corporate tower was short, but out of it came some great experience with a new tool in my data toolbox.  You can download a free trial here:  http://spotfire.tibco.com/   Pro's: Development environment is very easy to learn Learning portal has lots of great videos to get you started Great choices of visualizations Marking - this is a great feature to allow web users to…
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11 Jun 2015
By Allen
Got Agile?

Got Agile?

Uncategorized,
I recently had the privilege of working with a great team which had an Agile Coach and a Certified Scrum Master from SolutionsIQ. Doing Business Intelligence (BI) projects with Agile takes a complete change of attitude and habits for those of us like me who spent the last decade doing waterfall based data warehousing and BI. Here are a few things I learned from a recent project: 1. You can always learn more. The SolutionsIQ team provided great training to our developers, product owners and stakeholders. Some were receptive while others fought it all the way. Their team provided additional…
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12 May 2015
By Allen

Giving Back

Cognos
From previous posts, you know I believe in giving back to community. Last week my wife had an aunt pass away who had suffered with MS for many years. This week I learned that one of my client companies has a team in the Central Oklahoma MS Walk. I'll be donating and I invite you to join me here: http://walkoke.nationalmssociety.org/site/TR/Walk/OKEWalkEvents?team_id=437146&pg=team&fr_id=25519   Thank you.
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28 Apr 2015
By Allen
Want to Be a SQL BI Consultant?

Want to Be a SQL BI Consultant?

Business, Downloads, Featured, , ,
  At the February meeting of the OKC SQL User Group, I presented a session on what it takes to become a consultant. After having done consulting for 8 years, I've learned a few things the hard way and still made a good go of it. Here is that presentation for download. [download id="870"]   This download does not constitute any legal or accounting advice.  By downloading you assume all risk for yourself getting into business, after all, that is part of being an entrepreneur. Best wishes in all your endeavors. Allen
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19 Dec 2014
By Allen

Appreciation Dinner at Vast

Uncategorized
We had a wonderful evening with clients and advisory board members at Vast this evening. Thank you to all who made this a great year. Thank you to Denise for putting together the dinner. High resolution copies of tonight can be picked up on the Facebook photo gallery. Post by Cognitive Information.
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26 Nov 2014
By Allen

Book: Hadoop, The Definitive Guide (O’Reilly)

Uncategorized
This book gave me the tools I needed to get started with Hadoop.  The author uses easy to understand language to describe a very compicated set of tools.   The example code is easy to download and get started right away. I was working 3 IT projects, fixing stuff at home, starting a new job, trying to stay fit and thought I needed something to do in my spare time so I'll learn Hadoop. This book came to our OKC SQL User Group as part of O'Reilly's user group outreach, but it deserves a review so I read it. I read…
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21 Nov 2014
By Allen

My Board Experience at The Alternative Board (TAB)

Uncategorized
About two years ago I was invited to visit a Business Owner Advisory board, hosted by Art Miller at The Alternative Board (TAB). These meetings are where owners who don't have a full board agree to meet monthly for half a day with each member bringing one business problem or goal to discuss with the group.  Everything shared in the group good or bad remains confidential, like Vegas in a good way. The members are not in competition with each other and the goal is not referrals like some other groups. The goal is to learn from the commonalities between…
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20 Oct 2014
By Allen

My Intro to SQLFamily

Uncategorized, ,
By trade, I'm a Cognos BI developer that jumped the fence to MS SQL BI a few years ago. My first encounter with SQLfamily was at SQL Saturday #63, April 2, 2011 in Dallas, Texas. First SQL Saturdays and SQL Rally I came to a SQL Saturay #63 pre-con to learn more about the BI stack.  There, I met Sri and learned about the North Texas User Group.  I didn't know anyone in town or in SQL, so after the pre-con Sri Sridharan and the NTSUG people welcomed me into their group, invited me to dinner, invited me to volunteer…
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