I'm at the McCarran Airport, waiting for a flight to Chicago; snow delays as usual. I have just begun to settle down after an exciting week at TDWI. The conference overall has been a great success. I was amazed at the networking that was happening at the conference, between attendees. The Executive Summit was a great crowd of BI sponsors and owners, who participated in all the sessions and workshops. On the last day, The Arizone State University BI team blew all of us with their "pervasive BI" deployment. Hats off to them for the efforts, someday soon, I will feature an article on them in the channel.

Apart from the executive summit, I had briefings with all the vendors and will post entries next week. We conducted night schools at TDWI on Text Analytics and Mining, DW Performance Tuning and other topics (which I taught) and also had Curt Monash and two other experts present at the night schoo. All of these were well attended and recevied by the audience. The feedback from the audience will help TDWI put new courses in a blend with current courses for BI.

There were two keynotes one on Monday from Executives at CISCO and the other today bi Claudia Imhoff and Colin White. Both the keynotes were insightful and practical.

BEyeNetwork has podcasts and entries from the event at the main page, if you are interested in exploring.

In the first article of the year, to be posted in the next two weeks, I will be discussing DW and BI Trends.

Till then, keep visitng and your comments are welcome.

If you need a specific topic to be discussed ot written about, please leave a comment.

In the economic state we are in today, companies still need to get business moving. To keep your core competencies going, start by leveraging your BI investments. The value of BI has not been recognized or realized by companies to the extent possible.  
 
How many companies have gone from "i need a system like this" to " i know how to use a system like this?". how does once leverage the current investment? the answer is a simple one, but a complex process. One needs to start by moving to standardize the BI message in the company, get the current BI system a company wide adoption, improve the measurement process of BI effectiveness and thus leverage the investment. As you start gaining efficiencies, you will start opening more doors for BI.
 
If you are interested in learning more on the "Alignment and Agility", please check the upcoming TDWI BI Executive Summit in Las Vegas. There is a wealth of executive training and discussion that is available.