The performance ideas blog

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  • The start of a new romance? Google+

    Less than six weeks ago I was lucky to get an invitation to Google+ . While I have not had too much time to play around with it, I do have to admit that I have a serious crush on this tool. Here are some early impressions:

    • Clean interface: Google+ looks awesome. It is pretty basic but that makes it beautiful. The design allows you to focus on the important stuff – the content.

    Google+ Review

    • Circles make sense: Circles allow you to group your followers into different groups (Circles). I have circles for business stuff, photography, friends etc.. You can simply drag and drop people to arrange your circles. Once you have setup the Circles you can then use them to control the flow of your content: a cool new photo ebook should only go out to my photo circle. The latest business analytics story goes out to my business circle. Circles is so much easier to use than lists on Facebook or Twitter.  This makes Google+ much better suited for combining business with pleasure than Facebook or Twitter.

    Google+

    • Posting stuff: Very simple and easy. Just like Facebook or Twitter. Along with posting stuff, you also determine that Circle that your content should go out to.

      Share your content: You determine the Circles!
    • Slick iPhone app: The app is clean, looks great and works well. A bit cleaner than Facebook’s app.
    • Excellent traffic: A lot of people are already posting top content. Seth Godin, Robert Scoble, Tim O’Reilly, Guy Kawasaki. I prefer following those guys on Google+ over Twitter. The interface makes more sense.
    So far so good. But here is the question I am struggling with: How many additional networks do we want to maintain? I am active on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and StumbleUpon. Living and working in Germany also requires me to be on Xing. Arrgh. And now there is Google+. Do I want to give up one or two networks? Personally, I have not yet figured out a good strategy.
    Summary: Google+ is a bit of a perfect mix between Twitter and Facebook: Much more versatile than Twitter. Just about as powerful as Facebook. A bit cleaner than Facebook. Circles allow you to use Google+ in a way that is very similar to Twitter. This might make Google+ the best social network out there today. I do have a crush on it! But every relationship needs to grow and there is still lot’s to discover. Let’s see where this one will end up. I highly recommend giving it a try sooner than later.
    P.S.: Please let me know if you would like to have an invitation to join Google+. Drop me a note on Twitter via @cpapenfuss or send me a mail (christoph@performance-ideas.com)…..hmmm…you have to use Twitter to get on Google+….First come, first serve.

  • How to build offline management dashboards

    Old fashioned dashboard
    Modern dashboarding tools?

    A few months ago, I sat right next to a guy on a plane. Once we were up in the air, he pulled out a big stack of paper reports. He equipped himself with a ruler, a marker, a pencil and a calculator. All that on the tiny fold-down table in economy class. Didn’t look like fun. But to be fair, most planes still do not offer WIFI and we still have to get our work done. So, what is the alternative to paper reports? PDF is ok, but it is impossible to interact with the data. Excel is ok, too. But Excel is not secure and potentially too complicated. And none of these options are suited for building effective management dashboards.

     

    OFFLINE MANAGEMENT DASHBOARDS

    What can we do then? IBM introduced IBM Cognos Active Report with the latest Cognos 10 release. It basically allows report authors to develop interactive management dashboards and reporting applications for offline use. (more…)

  • Blog migration wordpress.com to wordpress.org – lessons learned

    You might have noticed a few changes on this site: new URL and new layout. Encouraged by a bunch of friends and readers, I finally decided to migrate this blog from wordpress.com to wordpress.org. In other words, Performance Ideas moved from a hosted to a self-hosted model. The tremendous feedback and support from you along with the fun this project has been, led me down this path. When I started this blog in November of 2010, I had no idea how much traffic this site would generate. It was more about capturing a few ideas here and there. Many thanks to all of you for reading the posts and providing comments via this blog, Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.

    WHAT HAS CHANGED?

    Not all that much on the surface. There is a new layout that will hopefully make it easier and more fun for you to follow the blog. Also, I am implementing better social media integration, analytics etc to enhance the overall experience. The URL is different as well. It is and easier to remember (nine characters less):

    In case you have subscribed via email, you will have to sign-up again (sorry!!!). The old site will re-direct to the new site for a while.

    WHY?

    Running a blog in a hosted environment like wordpress.com or Blogger is really easy. But after a while, I found that the hosted environment is very restrictive. The possibilities to customize the blog are limited. You are pretty much dependent on the platform that you choose.

    More options on the self-hosted blog

    Think about the Facebook Like button: wordpress.com only added that feature about 2 months ago. The same is true for statistics: the ability to understand what works and why is also limited. If you are thinking about starting a serious blog, I would therefore recommend to consider a self-hosted model sooner than later. However, I do have to say that I was very happy with wordpress.com.

    LESSONS LEARNED

    The blog migration from wordpress.com to wordpress.org was a lot easier than I expected. It actually did not take that long. If it wasn’t for a few issues I had with my host, I could have completed the migration within an hour. Yes, it is that easy. But the devil is always in the details. And that’s where I spent a few hours fine-tuning the new site. Here are some of the lessons learned:

    • Get some help: My good friends @lermann and @wiemann have a lot of experience with WordPress.org, web development and blogging. It was extremely helpful to receive their input before and during the migration. It’s all about the team!
    • Effort: Establishing the blog in a self-hosted environment requires a lot more effort than I had anticipated. You will have to research and install a bunch of plug-ins to do ‘simple things’ like commentaries, ratings etc.. Getting the basics back up and running did take some time. Also, the on-going maintenance will require some effort here and there. But that’s part of the fun.
    • Pay: A self-hosted blog costs money: hosting space, templates, plug-ins, books etc.. I am also paying to re-route my old blog to the new one. The Euros quickly added up. You might want to anticipate this before jumping ship.
    • Migration tools: WordPress has an amazing export & import feature. All posts & comments were imported flawlessly. That process took less than 20 minutes to complete. I would highly recommend sticking to that.
    • Try: There are so many great WordPress templates. I spend some time customizing one that I initially liked. Later I found some other ones that looked much better. I therefore highly recommend downloading and trying a few before actually starting to put in the effort to customize everything.
    • Read: There are some great sites and ebooks that provide a ton of input. I highly recommend researching a few and scanning through these before actually starting the project. I especially found the migration pdf on www.blog-well.com helpful. The eBook ‘The WordPress Power Guide’ is a quick but effective read. If you are interested, I have some additional recommendations.

    COMING UP

    The initial blog migration is done. It’s been fun! But it’s not 100% done, yet. You can therefore expect additional changes in the next few months.

    Please let me know if you have any questions or feedback. When I get a chance, I will put a short white paper together that describes the entire migration process. Many thanks for your amazing support!

     

  • Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication

    Have you ever been to a giant buffet? Try to remember what it was like. We usually get excited when we see the various options and we ‘cruise the aisles’ to identify what we want. If you are like me, you have a hard time deciding and you end up wandering around taking a little bit of everything but nothing of anything. By the time you leave, you feel bloated and promise yourself to go easy next time. Chances are you won’t even remember what you ate.

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  • Why you need Many Eyes

    MANY EYES FOR VISUALIZATIONS

    Have you heard of Many Eyes? Strange name, huh? Well, Many Eyes is a pretty cool and simple service on the web that let’s you visualize and explore data. Need a quick word cloud of Steve Job’s last speech? Sure. Just go to Many Eyes and create it. Need a quick scatter plot of your hear rate and running pace? Just go to Many Eyes and create it there.

    IBM Many Eyes

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  • 8 ideas for delivering a better demo

    Demos are a critical part of every business analytics implementation. There are frequent occasions during any project where we have to show present tools & processes: At the beginning, we might show the new software to our users to educate them. Later on we might want to review a prototype and we need to solicit productive feedback based on the demo. Training sessions require us to teach the new process and tool while also obtaining buy-in from the business. Overall, I would argue that being able to deliver a great demo is a critical skill for every business analytics professional.

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  • A few thoughts about gauge charts

    Let me start by saying an obvious thing: Gauge charts do deserve some recognition. Actually, they deserve a medal – a medal for being the most controversial chart type in history.

    When I first saw a gauge chart, I was impressed. They looked pretty cool. Things changed when I got involved with my first BI project. A closer look revealed that these charts are actually pretty tough to look at. But let’s back up and start from the beginning.

    GAUGE CHART

    Gauge charts allow us to visualize data in a way that resembles a real-life speedometer needle or a regular gauge. They usually  display a single key measure. The outer scale of the gauge is often color-coded to provide additional performance context (green for good, red for bad). Below is a typical example:

    Gauge Charts
    Feels like driving a car?

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  • 7 reasons to get social

    Getting social at a Bavarian beergarden

    This past month, I did something I haven’t done in a long time: I did not travel. Being home also opened up the opportunity to hang out in some of the famous beergardens in Munich. In case you haven’t been to a beergarden – it’s kind of like a social network: You connect with friends and strangers, you share, you chat, you collect and you sometimes get spammed (mostly by drunk people). One of those evenings I met a few people from a former job. The entire group basically consisted of pretty successful guys in their mid  30s and 40s. One of them raised the topic of social networking.

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  • THINK YELLOW!

    The 2011 edition of the Tour de France is in its final week. No matter if you are a cycling fan or not, Le Tour continues to fascinate millions of people around the globe. Few people appreciate that it is actually one of the three largest sporting events in the world (behind the Olympics and the football world cup). Fewer people know why we get to watch this interesting show every year.

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  • Eagles and AQ Leaders

    This past weekend, my friend Bernhard took me to an amazing place in the Bavarian Alps. High up in the mountains above the famous town of Berchtesgaden you will find a small colony of actors. No, not your normal type of actor. Actually, birds of prey. Yes, there is a guy up there who works with eagles, owls and vultures. He cares for them and trains them for movie productions. And he opens up his small but amazing operation for people.

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