We’ve got a special #FF post for you today – a recap of the Tweetfest that was around the MIT CIO Symposium on Wednesday of this week. Read on for the “he said, she said” details (on data analytics, CIOs and mobile BI) and a great list of people to follow.
The Leader Board (according to The Archivist, a tool to save and share Tweets)
- Iron Mountain, an information management firm – 9.31%
- MIT CIO Symposium , the event organizer – 7.93%
- Larry Hawes, an analyst and consultant at Dow Brook Advisory Services – 6.90%
- David Wihl, CEO of SoftArtisans – 5.86%
- Nick Carrier, a Capgemini consultant – 5.17%
- Julie Boughn, acting deputy director of operations for the CMS Innovation Center at the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare 4.83%
- Merritt Maxim, a product marketing manager for CA Technologies – 4.83%
- Kingsley Idehen, founder and CEO of OpenLink Software – 4.14%
- DanWoodsCITO, a researcher who writes on IT for CITO Research and Forbes.com -4.14%
- ECIOForum– Enterprise CIO Forum, a community of CIOs and IT leaders – 4.14%
Note: This tool ranks users by percentage of Tweets, not the number. To see the full visualization, visit our Archive.
Awards
- Honorable Mention: Spotfire’s own Brett Stupakevich had 2.07% of the Tweets.
- Best Twitter Handle: The Dodge Retort – a blog from tech journalist John Dodge.
- Data Visualizations: It was a tie between the data behind this hashtag and Nick Carrier (see No. 5 above): “#MITCDB using fMRI to study the brain’s activity during buying decisions is what I would expect from MIT. Really cool. twitpic.com/4zozcf.”
Spotfire Presents
Spotfire’s COO and SVP Rock Gnatovich spoke at the event as part of the Enterprise Analytics – Business Values track. The topic of conversation centered on how data analytics tools allow companies to predict and experiment with data to find insights and causalities.
The Role of the CIO & BI
The most Tweeted topic – the role of the CIO – was conveniently defined by the release of a CIO study from IBM on Tuesday of this week.
In a press release from IBM, we learned that four out of five CIOs or 83 percent see BI and analytics as “top priorities for the businesses and they seek ways to act upon the growing amounts of data now at their disposal.”
This technology was named a competitive differentiator over the next three to five years among all CIOs surveyed. For 95 percent of the CIOs in South America (except Brazil) and Canada, it is the differentiator.
And if you look at the Twitter responses to the CIO Symposium, you’ll gather the sentiment that CIOs are business execs with a background in technology.
Popular Tweets on the matter:
- John Dodge: “CIOs have to think like CEOs and behave that way:” David Castellani, sr. managing dir., CEO, NY Life retirement services.”
- Larry Hawes: “I’ve heard the word “learning” uttered by several speakers already today. How often have you heard that term associated with CIOs?”
Cloud & Mobile BI is Key
According to the IBM study, “as mobile applications that support business productivity and new market opportunities continue to grow, mobile computing and mobility solutions are now see by 74 percent of CIOs as a game-changer for their businesses.”
The most ReTweeted post was related to this topic. McKinsey & Company Technology Consultants, said that the “key to convincing execs value of analytics [was to] place data on an iPad.” McKinsey & Company also Tweeted out an interesting link on their new study regarding the economic impact of “big data.”
This leads nicely into the next big topic at the MIT CIO Symposium – what to do with all the data. But before we move along, here are a few of the popular tweets on the matter of #cloud and #mobile BI:
- Dan Woods: “You must get self-service right to gain max value from private cloud adoption.”
- MITCIOSymposium: “Mobile + Cloud presents huge opportunity – Access to data on the go. New relationship building on the ground.”
Handling the Virtual Piles of Data
One of the issues the Enterprise Analytics panel addressed was what to do with all of the data coming at us from departments, social networks, transactions and everywhere else. In a recent Wall Street Journal blog article on the causes of today’s “data tsunami,” Gnatovich said that “the amount of data that’s trying to be combined from a variety of sources is all machine-driven. But, ultimately it’s got to be the human that interacts with that, interprets that then is able to make the decision and drive the action.”
The way this will interaction and decision making will happen is through better visualization and interactivity on all types of devices.
Gnatovich told this story in greater detail in Wednesday’s panel discussion. He said we need to combine “the data scientist and storyteller to create better analytics.”
Popular Tweets on the matter:
- ECIOForum: “More digital information was produced in 2009 than all info since beginning of time. M. Hopkins, EIC Sloan Mgt Review.”
- Eileen Glovsky (a government IT professional): “#Spotfire COO says analytics either results in an Aha! Or an Oh NO! #mitcio.”
The No. 1 Sentiment in BI is Frustration
Gnatovich said that this is the call heard round the world about business intelligence projects.
Why? It might have something to do with these two nuggets straight from Gnatovich’s mouth, “forcing analytics to go through IT imposes a curiosity tax” and “most customers are frustrated with analytics – rebellion of biz users.”
The DodgeRetort, a tech blog by journalist John Dodge, was the first to Tweet this truth. It was followed up by a fervent Tweet from David Wihl (mentioned in the list above) that explained the business user rebellion as BI tools “need so much improvement.”
More popular Tweets on the matter:
- Jim Ericson (Information Management editorial director) “#mitcio Survey @MIT says orgs overall rate themselves 4.5 on a 10 scale in analytic proficiency.”
- The takeaway of this event is summed up rather nicely by our own Rock Gnatovich as Tweeted by Spotfire’s Brett2point0: “Human interaction is crucial to driving action w/#analytics.”
The Full #FF List
@IronMountain
@lehawes
@davidwihl
@nrcarrier
@julieboughn
@merrittmaxim
@kidehen
@mck_biztech
@danwoodsCITO
@MITCIOSymposium
@ECIOForum
@eglovsky
@TheDodgeRetort
@jimericson
Amanda Brandon
Spotfire Blogging Team
