ISA is filled with great people – hardworking overachievers.  We have a consultant feedback program where the “coaches” go and talk to some of the personnel. I am lucky enough to be a coach and get a chance to talk in depth with a few of our consultants. The results are eye opening. 

Nathan Rawling, one of the consultants, is a hotshot Business Intelligence/Data Integration senior developer by day and a law student by night.  I cannot imagine how he does it given the client satisfaction and project success he has achieved.  Apart from his day job and night school, Nathan has found time to write a three part series for the TDWI organization http://www.tdwi.org/News/display.aspx?ID=8956.  Data warehousing on a shoestring is worth a read if you can find time.

Adrian Pocovnicu is a  Business Intelligence / Data Integration Project Lead who has a penchant for learning new software packages while pursuing his doctorate in Romania.  Some of the current software includes Cognos Data Manager, Cognos 8 Buisiness Intrelligence, Oracle DB and the next to be learned this year includes Oracle Warehouse Builder, Informatica and IBM Datastage.   His clients love his work and dedication.  He will be going to Romania this fall to defend his doctoral thesis on Compressed Multimedia data bases. Good luck to the future Dr. Pocovnicu.  Maybe it will be on you tube! 

 I’d like to go on but I can’t find the time …

My kids got me a Sony Playstation 3 for my birthday (I think there was an alterior motive here as I rarely play video games).  The high definition graphics  are amazing on a big screen TV.  The kids and friends spend hours fighting and racing each other.  Much to my surprise, the PS3 can surf the web and give slide shows of my digital pictures in high definition.  There is something fun about writing a blog on a giant tv.  Look how bold this text is …  

I need a gadget intervention. 

During the course of my duties, I visit a wide array of clients and prospects.  The topics generally center on data integration and delivering business value.  Knowing the difficulties and traps surrounding spreadsheets as data sources, I generally recommend abandoning spreadsheets in favor of a more consistently formatted feed like a .csv file with known headings or source directly from other databases.  For years, this recommendation has been very well received and produced excellent results.  In the last 3 weeks, I’ve had several clients insist on spreadsheets as data sources so I’ve backed off my position and reviewed our client base and software offerings.   What I’ve found is the land of unstructured data as a data source has become a reality.  There are a wide variety of tools available from Informatica, Oracle and Microsoft .  There is also a wealth of instruction available at TDWI, DMReview and vendor sites.  Maybe spreadsheets as a data source is not such a bad idea.