BI Conference - TechDays 2010 - After my session

Finally I have some time to describe what I experienced last week during the TechDays Portugal conferences. Today I’m writing my post nrº100 and could not do it better describing this fantastic experience

The facilities
The day before my session I went to see the event facilities and aclimatize myself to the room where I would present my session. There were many people working for this event, and it is important that everyone had the notion that organizing such an event is not easy. It requires lot of human labour and a lot of dedication, mainly from persons like Luis Martins, João Bilhim and Leonor (Microsoft) and several other amazing dedicated persons

The people
I met many people and also spoke with people who normally only contact via the Web. Is indeed a very interesting event, where people share knowledge and opinions that for sure is more important than if the lunch is good or bad! Jorge Paulino, Ricardo Peres, André Lage, Rodrigo Pinto, MVP guys, Jorge Moura, Nuno Batalha, Tiago Rente, and a lot of enthusiastic professionals

The Session
Most people, certainly should not have a notion that it was my first public session with so many people... and also, that a year ago never came into my head be presenting a session at TechDays. It was a very difficult challenge trying to pass a message on Data Mining for almost 300 people, mainly because the profiles of the audience was very diverse ... feedback received varied between easy and very difficult session contents. Thanks to all the persons that attended to my session. Well… if you're curious take a look into presentation below:

TechDays 2010 DAT202

I hope you enjoy it... I can translate to english if needed.

BI Conference - TechDays 2010 - Before my session

Dear friends,
There are only a few hours before presenting my session at TechDays. It will be a great challenge for me where I hope I can transmit the message I purposed to.

I don’t know yet, how many people will be watching my session, could be from 40 to 500 attendees… and for that reason I cannot measure right now the pression level that I’ll have today… :-)

There’ll be a lot of interesting sessions almost made by portuguese professionals…It’ll be a prove, that here in Portugal we have lot of expertise professionals.

I am sure that next year there will be lot of new speakers that are just watching this year. Mainly the master and pós-graduation BI Students… are your there!?!! :-)

Well… I'll leave now and I’ll wish a good luck to myself and a very good TechDays to all you. :-) I’ll be back after the event...

Pedro

BI MVP - My time has come!

My time has come!
Today I received the email from Microsoft with MVP award!
This award it’s the recognition of all my effort, passion and dedication to this amazing world of Business Intelligence. I know that I have lot a work to do and even more responsibility to follow Microsoft and community expectations.

Now, I cannot forget to thank all the persons that once again, helped me to achieve this award. I want to thank primarily to my princess Joana that is always by my side and to my family. Some special thanks to all direct and indirect support:

- To the all visitors of this blog (sorry for the late answers!)
- To the pos-graduation students on BI from Universidade Portucalense (Porto)
- To the master graduation students on BI from ISCTE (Lisboa)
- To Dra. Filomena Lopes for all the trust placed on me during last year
- To Dr. Orlando Belo for all support in my dissertation in the last years
- To Dra. Maria José Trigueiros for all the magic words (I'm wait a quickly recover!)
- To all those persons that believed in me, even more than myself!

Despite the award, I guarantee that I'll keep the same personality and I’ll remain my independence and always be watching to what all BI vendors and BI consultants are doing. I’m with Microsoft because I’ll believe in their strategy and If you want to join me in this adventure, I think you’ll not be disappointed. Unlike many other BI vendors, Microsoft remains near the community and always present. In my case, I want to thank to João Bilhim that is an amazing person that always encouraged me, to be inside this amazing world of Business Intelligence. Microsoft has few years in the BI market and for that reason is not yet the number one, but the first position is too close. If you want to join this adventure don’t lose the event with Donald Farmer next 16 April here in Portugal (just send me an email)

Regards,

Pedro

Yes we can!...see Donald Farmer in Portugal!

For many years I have been following Donald Farmer work in Business Intelligence, mainly in Data Mining. Now and thanks to Microsoft Portugal we can see and make some questions to him in the first person.

"What do medieval archaeology, fish farming, Southwestern University of Chongqing and Microsoft Business Intelligence have in common? If you know, you should tell Donald Farmer, because he has been deeply involved in all of them at various times. Donald has worked in the Microsoft Business Intelligence team for 8 years covering many subject areas: data integration, information quality, metadata intelligence, master data management, OLAP, predictive analytics and self-service BI. He is a well-known speaker at Microsoft and other industry events, and the author of several books and articles" [Source: SQLBits]

In the scope of the Business Intelligence community (www.BIResort.net) Donald Farmer will come to Portugal for a meeting/session at Microsoft Auditorium on April 16, 2010 from 18h to 20h.

The session topic will be focused on Self-Service BI (Power Pivot) followed by some questions and answers. It’ll be a mix between public/private and all the attendees should have an invitation.

If you want to be on this FREE event, just send an email to BIResort@gmail.com

(Limited seats)

BI Conference - TechDays 2010 Portugal

Sorry for not writing for so many weeks, but last month was very hard to me… not only the weekly work as BI Consultant but also the work as invited teacher at Universidade Portucalense on a Business Intelligence pos-graduation. Additionally I was working on the event preparation which brings me to blog today: the TechDays 2010

Microsoft Portugal will organize the TechDays 2010 event next April (20/21/22) at Lisbon (Oeiras). For the first time, in spite of attending the event, I’ll be presenting a session on Data Mining with SQL 2008 R2… that I’m sure that will be a huge challenge for me.

My session description:
“The volume of business data grows exponentially and the technology made the world evolve rapidly. Bad decisions may be the result of the world be evolving more rapidly than the decision maker’s capability to analyze these data.

This session is intended to establish a first contact with multidimensional data structures (OLAP) and to recognize and to derive the exponential importance of knowledge discovery in databases through the data mining models in SQL Server 2008 R2”

Check my session link here

There is still a month for the event and there are more than 1200 participants confirmed. If you are near Portugal you cannot miss this!

Regards, Pedro.

BI Conference - Predictive Analytics World

Business Analytics is a subset of a Business Intelligence framework, even if some players like SAS, started changing their strategy killing Business Intelligence term and starting a new one: Business Analytics… Why companies like SAS with a flag of Innovations are always creating new concepts and creating more confusion on adding new buzzwords!? Are they creating new way to resolve problems? Are they creating new products!? Of course not… I’ll publish soon an article about this subject and about all the controversy this position has created on the web.

The main purpose of this post it’s to write about the Predictive analytic world conference. This conference will take place on February 16-17 at San Francisco and unfortunately, and again, I’ll not be present on the event because once again it’ll be held in USA and I’m little far in Portugal… maybe during this year I’ll go to other event for my PhD research.

“Predictive Analytics World is the business-focused event for predictive analytics professionals, managers and commercial practitioners. This conference delivers case studies, expertise and resources to achieve.

Predictive Analytics World focuses on concrete examples of deployed predictive analytics. Hear from the horse's mouth precisely how Fortune 500 analytics competitors and other top practitioners deploy predictive modelling, and what kind of business impact it delivers”

But never forget one thing… the future will never be like the past. Although of course it’s worth trying, and planning should be done based on facts and less on intuition. Read the Black Swan book, a good overview of how successful predictive models can be.

Use the following discount code to get 15% off a two day Conference pass:

Code: PEDRO010
(workshops are not included)

BI Books - My Suggestions...

Following the request of many families :-), today I’m writing about my favorite books. In particular those I have read, those I'm reading right now, and those I’ll read soon relating to Business Intelligence world.

I have dozens or even hundreds of scanned or digital books, but there is nothing better and more motivating, than reading a book in the traditional format. All the books I have scanned into my computer, I never read them even after the print... the motivation is not the same and for that reason I always preferred to buy. The prices in Amazon website are cheap and even more, if you choose Amazon partner's stores. (In the images below you have each respective price attached)

The following books relate to the concept of Business Intelligence in general and how it fits with all its subsystems. The strategy, the processes, the people/knowledge and also something about the technological component. For those who follow the world certification in BI (CBIP), these books are essential for the examination in "Business Analytics":

              

The following books show the way to implement a successful Data Warehousing project. They were written by one of the greatest evangelists of Data Warehousing... (Ralph Kimball). These books focus on the dimensional modeling applied to multiple business scenarios and a complete life cycle that DW projects should follow. For those who follow the global certification in BI (CBIP), these books are essential for the examination of "Data Warehouse":

              

I also suggest more technical books which are more focused on Microsoft BI tools. These WROX books are very well structured, very easy to read and very helpful to understand better and fast. I’ll highlight the following books:

              

The following books are books very too simple and clearly explaining more deeply on what is behind this fantastic world of Data Mining:

              

Future purchases...
              

Currently Reading...
I am currently reading a book that promises to be very interesting. Not only by the positive feedback it has received, but also the important contribution of the author in TDWI/CBIP resources, that I’m always followed with great interest.

Keep tuned to this post because I'll be updating it with all the books I'm reading and some that have not put here yet! I hope I’ve helped you selecting your next book.

Regards, 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."
“
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

BI Recognition - Sharepoint MVP award

Dear friends,
Today I’ll dedicate this post to a friend that recently achieved a MVP Sharepoint Award. MVP is an award that Microsoft gives to all those special persons that help people that are constantly helping people on specific subjects. Maybe someday it’ll be my turn… but for now, I just want to congratulate André for his accomplishment. I deal very well with the success of all my friends, mainly those like André and Jorge Paulino, that are always sharing knowledge with communities. I truly believe that Portuguese guys have a lot of knowledge to share with the world, despite most portuguese people think the opposite (portuguese people in most cases think that what is being done in Portugal is always bad… but persons like me, André Lage (MVP), Jorge Paulino (MVP) and several hundreds of portuguese people are fighting against them)

Andre has a similar life history to mine… he took his IT degree on “Universidade Portucalense” some years ago (like me) and moved away from his city (from Oporto to Lisbon like me) looking for better challenges.

Andre in the first person after receiving this award:
“
First: Recognition
Second: never give up.
Third: To assist, in every sense of the word
Four: do not make the title as a goal, but a mission
Fifth: As Microsoft says "Your Potential. Our Passion"
“
Andre has 30 years old, born in Porto (Portugal) and took his Information Management degree on “Universidade Portucalense” between 1999 and 2004. He’s a System Architect, Technical Leader and Consultant on SharePoint Corporate Portals in Sybase, SBS Portugal, with international focus. Andre has an extensive curriculum where his major steps are the support to several Sharepoint communities, the Codeplex Community contributions, speaker on Sharepoint 2010 webcasts and the contribution to BI Resort community and this MVP award. Check is blog here.

I hope to refer several other friends in future posts!

Regards, Pedro.

BI Dissertation – Master degree done!

Finally I got my master degree on Decision Support Systems/ Business Intelligence. It was almost 2 years and half and finally I defended my dissertation yesterday. I want to thank all those people who always encouraged me to “fight” for this and special thanks to my supervised Dr. Orlando Belo (Universidade do Minho – Portugal), Steve Vanstone (Bonds University – Australia) and Dr. Chong (Chinese University of Hong Kong – China). (Check out the previous post I wrote about the dissertation here)

Check below the abstract of my dissertation that I’m thinking to translate to English for sending to all those people around the world that gave me feedback about their works and some support to my dissertation.

Abstract
"In the current economic environment, the value of information is increasingly important in the habits and customs of each citizen. Prices per barrel of oil, Euribor rates, equity indexes, inflation rate, among others, arrive everyday at our homes through the media. Their study is increasingly important, especially by the need to identify their impact on our daily quotidian.

The application of Data Mining (DM) techniques, in an attempt to predict the movement of the stock market, has never been a very well accepted, mainly by economists and the academic world. It is an area of high complexity, and the fact that it involves money, mean that their research, especially successful, is not made public. However, these techniques exist, and are increasingly used not only in financial markets, but also in practically all other activity sectors.

This dissertation begins by making an approach to the complex world of the stock market, in an attempt to demystify it a little. Subsequently, based on investment rules normally applied by practitioners, it’s presented a model of an artificial neural network, which provides in a daily basis, the decision to buy, hold or sell a particular asset, supported by a decision support system to monitor and analyze the evolution of the made decisions."

Keywords: Decision Support Systems, Data Mining, Knowledge Discovery in Data, Business Intelligence, ETL, Data Warehousing

I also added some screenshots of dissertation presentation I made yesterday… if you’ll be curious about the data mining model results, just tell me and I will translate all slides.


I hope you enjoy this. Regards,
Pedro.