BI Book - Packt Publishing reaches 1000 IT titles

Dear friends, 
The last two months was a big challenge for me. Working at one of the best BI companies of the world (BI4ALL) is not an easy task! But everything is running fine and it’s really amazing working with wonderful colleagues as I have at BI4ALL. But the reason for this email is to spread a marketing message from the Packt Publishing who gave me all the conditions and support to write an amazing SSIS book with my friend Reza Rad. 

Birmingham-based IT publisher Packt Publishing is about to publish its 1000th title. Packt books are renowned among developers for being uniquely practical and focused. Packt books cover highly specific tools and technologies which IT professionals might not expect to see a high quality book on. Packt would like you to join them in celebrating this milestone with a surprise gift – to get involved you just need to have already registered, or sign up for a free Packt account before 30th September 2012. Packt published their first book in April 2004. One of the most prolific and fastest growing tech book publishers in the world, they now have books on everything from web development to web graphics, e-learning to e-commerce, IT architecture to games, and app development. Packt supports many of the Open Source projects covered by its books through a project royalty donation, which has contributed over £300,000 to Open Source projects up to now. As part of the celebration Packt is allocating $30,000 to share between projects and authors in a genuinely unique way, soon to be disclosed on their website. 

Dave Maclean, founder of Packt Publishing explains, “At Packt we set out 8 years ago to bring practical, up to date and easy to use technical books to the specialist tools and technologies that had been largely overlooked by IT publishers. Today, I am really proud that with our authors and partners we have been able to make useful books available on over 1000 topics and make our contribution to the development community.” 

For more information about Packt, the kind of books they publish, and to sign-up for a free account before the 30th of September, 2012, please visit their website: www.PacktPub.com 

BI Challenge – Moving to BI4ALL

This week I’ve started a new challenge in my life: I moved to BI4ALL (www.bi4all.pt). BI4ALL is a specialized company on Business Intelligence and Corporate Governance and was identified by Microsoft and IBM as a company with more experience in developing Business Intelligence solutions in the Portuguese market. It has for some years a reference for me in BI, not only by the quality of the solutions developed, but also the quality of people who work here (about 60) that I had the privilege of socialize over the last years.

The BI4ALL with more than 10 years has the headquarters in Lisbon and is investing heavily in Porto, where it already has a customer base that represents 10% of the company and a Research Center for Business Intelligence Mobile Solutions (over a year). The purpose of BI4ALL will be to continue the growing on this amazing world of Business Intelligence and give the Portuguese companies a competitive advantage over its competitors. This blog has more than 5 years and I will continue to share my insights and news on this amazing field!

Pedro

PDC10 - Developers, Developers and Developers

This event is mainly interesting for developers. Although I think that could be also interesting for those in several other areas like BI that have some free time. I suggest you to view the key note and sessions live streaming, to be inside the latest technologies. Those taking computer classes on web development will benefit from the new ideas that will be presented in this event

"Since 1991, the PDC has been the epicenter of Microsoft’s biggest platform announcements. This year will be no exception. Leading-edge developers and architects will gather in Redmond this October to hear firsthand from Microsoft’s leaders about the next generation of Microsoft developer technologies. Those taking computer classes on web development will benefit from the new ideas that will be presented in this event

The PDC isn’t just about content and sessions – it’s an opportunity for you to get hands-on access to the latest technologies, have your questions answered by the people who conceived and built the technologies and plan the features and architecture to support your business goals. If you’re a developer, architect or technology leader involved in making strategic technology decisions for your company or organization, you can’t afford to miss the PDC

This year’s groundbreaking PDC event will include live streaming of the keynotes, as well as concurrent live streaming of sessions. If you can’t join the live stream, you can still watch the video on-demand, or download all the content within 24 hours of live recording. The online event is free; no registration is required to join the live or on-demand stream"

BI Blog - Three Years Blogging - Thank You!

Starts to be a routine add a post to commemorate the anniversary of this blog. :-) It’s a project created 3 years ago with great passion and dedication, and therefore remains alive for this long time. This is the place where I described some of my many stories, tips, news and even some personal moments/events.

For those who thought three years ago that the blog was more like a joke, today maybe are surprised. It has over 100 posts on various subjects related to Business Intelligence… But I do not cross my arms and I'm already preparing something to further improve this blog, not only in design but also related to the content. The promised remote BI sessions mentioned in a previous post, will really start soon…

Naturally these three years of life are due also to the thousands of visitors who passed through this blog, from the simple readers, to those who placed questions or requested some opinions/feedback. I know that many of those visitors have yet unanswered questions due to my immense workload during the last year… nevertheless I’ll try to answer soon.

A special thank to a person that is the huge driver of BI in Portugal and is undoubtedly my main reference… the teacher Maria José Trigueiros. She’s not physically with us anymore, but for sure, she’s seeing what we are doing here.

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This place will continue to be a meeting point for all those persons that have the same passion as me for Business Intelligence. Some more technical post’s continue to be published on BIResort community that I’m co-founder.

THANK YOU ALL

Pedro

BI Guest Corner – Technology vs Information

Last week I was browsing for some contents on the web and I found a very interesting blog and post from Sofia Neto. I asked her permission to publish a very interesting and short post about technology and information… take a look:

“The technological revolution occurring in organizations since the mass use of Information Technology does not always achieved the expected results.

Several projects find themselves reduced to failure, since many managers and employees consider the systems complicated to implement and understand.

According to Davenport, the "fascination with technology has made us forget the main purpose of information: information." In fact, you don’t need sophisticated technological equipment, complete and powerful programs, if the user is not interested in information that these computers process and make it easier to access.

This brings us immediately to the urgency of the study of the users information behavior and understanding of their information needs. But also, for the struggle between "Technology and Information” for the podium of the importance.

In this battle, Davenport shows that only when the information (creation of users) they will leave information systems truly efficient. "Information and knowledge are essentially human creations, and will never be able to manage them if we do not take into account that people play in this scenario, a key role."
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This post was kindly contributed by Sofia Neto, who is a Portuguese Information Manager and writes about Information Management and Information Management Systems at her blog