Need...More...Oxygen!

Oxygen is unquestionably my favorite element on the periodic chart. It's easy to remember, has great marketing appeal for all sorts of products (hey to Oxy-Clean), and is an important part of water, my favorite compound. So when someone tells me to go without it for my own good, I tend to be a little skeptical.

But that's exactly what happened today. After a really tough swim workout (okay, most swim workouts are tough for me, but today's was especially hard), our coach has the great idea to finish practice with "no-breathers." For you land-lovers, no-breathers are drills where you swim laps without breathing. You know, straining your muscles and organs, simultaneously depriving them of air. The guy in the lane with me thinks this is a great idea, but I'm pretty sure he's half fish.

Coach encourages us by saying "these will get easier the more you do" -- which I think is like saying "hitting yourself in the head with a hammer will hurt less once you crack your skull." But on about the 3rd lap, that's exactly what happened.

After 2 laps of flailing to the point of passing out, I figured out the secret: stop trying so hard. The goal remained the same, of course, to swim across the pool without a breath. But taking my standard brute-force approach to swimming didn't work. It required more finesse, more technique, and a slower pace. In doing so, I got more distance out of the oxygen I took in.

In a way, this is exactly what many of us face every day. Companies everywhere have cut staff. As managers and leaders, we're asked to produce the same results with less resources. Our employers aren't just asking us to do no-breathers, they're expecting it.

And while our natural response to this is to work harder, push harder, and power our way through it, it's not necessarily a path to success. To get to the other side, we have to do things differently, use our talents and minds in new ways, and achieve more with less. Just applying more effort isn't enough.

The moral of the story? The next time your boss, shareholders, board of directors, or employees ask more of you, just hold your breath until you turn blue. That'll show 'em.

2010: Resolutions

Resolutions can be hard to keep, so I took a look back at my resolutions from 2009, and realize that I actually did okay.

Now, for 2010:

• Correspond to connect: based on a fantastic post by Steve Rubel, I'll be upping my correspondence: particularly the one-to-many correspondence here. I had thought of a writing resolution, but Steve makes it sound so much more 21st century!
• Innovate: Chris O'Brien's blog post on the innovation bias at Sequoia was both funny and sad. While I know that attitude isn't universal in the industry, I fully admit I did my best innovating before age 30. Why that trend has declined in the past several years is probably the subject of another post. If I can prove Sequoia wrong in 2010, at least in my own mind, I'll gain a small slice of personal satisfaction.
• Discipline: Be exact about my training regimen, diet, finances, and work. Focus, and refocus, to get the most out of every minute of the day. Time is precious.
• Improve Every Day: Take a second, a minute, or an hour to make life a little better for at least one person every day. Because, everything else aside, that's what's really important. Right?

With that, I wish you all success in all of your goals, big and small, in 2010.

JMF

I really like a subtle feature of Tableau 5 that should greatly enhance the dashboard viewing experience.  

While navigating a date range may seem simple, it's not.  Dates are an example of how a single universal dimension needs to be sliced many different ways, depending on the context  and data set.  The simplicity of the dialogue in the example viz is what makes the dashboard powerful -- the viewer is presented categorized options for slicing in just a few clicks.

Good stuff.

Query Studio 8.4

The often overlooked Query Studio has been a simple little query tool that hasn't seen much visible change in the last few years. While new studios for Query continue to pop-up (Express Author, PowerPlay Studio, CAFE), Query Studio chugs along as a handy product to quickly build lists and crosstabs. Cognos developers have always replied on Query Studio as a way to verify Framework Manager models -- it's fast and reliable, and seeing the data immediately rather than having to execute is great.

As with every Cognos 8 release, there's not much new to report with Query Studio. Still, a few nuggets have come out of 8.4:

• Filter Usability: Query Studio users rejoice! You can now type in values when filtering a dimension. This means you can easily copy and paste from a list you may keep handy in Excel or a note. This long awaited feature has arrived. And there's more -- you can also now add a filter without adding a column to the query -- just right click on the data item.

• Lineage: Lineage is a new feature in all 8.4 Studios that traces the metadata through the package and datasources. It's really handy when testing a multi-layered model, and is a great advancement in Cognos 8.4. It's there, as you would expect, in Query Studio 8.4.

• Performance: Like all studios, performance has been improved each release. 8.4 is really snappy on my demo data sets, both relational and dimensional.

I've been digging into Cognos 8.4, so I'll recount some of my findings here, and in a bit more detail on my IBM blog.  If you're really interested beyond what you see, please feel free to drop me an email.

Report Studio Positioning

Report Studio was released as  the Cognos production report authoring tool with ReportNet in 2003 .  Report Studio, though, has evolved into a more robust power user tool that can be used by financial analysts, operations, or any line-of-business user who has a good sense for data and design.

Since it's web-based, Report Studio takes end user deployment complications out of play.  That is, of course, except for that annoying IE requirement (more on that later).  While that's not particularly important in my work, it is extremely important, and valuable, for rolling out the tool to a broad user community.  Unlike programming-based report writers, many professionals can benefit from reporting and analysis through Report Studio.

I think Report Studio, when implemented with a few value-added templates and customizations, can be used by the majority of end-users who would otherwise use Cognos query and analysis studios.  It also can, and will, be useful for IT professionals to create reports that are distributed to the masses via the web, email, or filesystem.  Its combination of rich functionality and author productivity is truly unique in the market.

For true "production" reporting, it's still good practice to move complex logic to ETL processing, or the database itself.   While possible, its not a practical tool for replacing reports built in structured programming languages (COBOL, SQR, etc.) that produce massive volumes of static content, such as billing statements or other structured forms.

With that said, on to some deeper thoughts about 8.4...

8.4: What I Like

I'm happy to report there's a lot of good in 8.4.  This isn't an exhaustive list of new features, just the ones I found particularly valuable in my work:

• Microcharts: Three cheers for microcharts!  As an ardent follower of design techniques by Stephen Few, I've found microcharts to be an excellent implementation of dashboard content.  I've already gleefully used micro-column and line charts in my development.  Microcharts are excellent for a variety of decision support, including trending by category and win/loss.  Maximum information in minimum real-estate.
• Conditional Formatting:  This was overhauled in 8.3, but it deserves mention for the interface, which is vastly improved over the conditional variable approach.  The usability of the metrics-style range is fantastic, as is the interface to quickly set the most important properties in a condition.  The whole experience is improved, and saves the author significant time.
• Master/Detail:  This also was improved in earlier releases, but it's easier, and more intuitive, than ever to create master/detail reports.  Master/detail reports are also snappier, which is important, since they a primary feature needed to build more complex logic into Cognos reports.
• Performance:  Report Studio really performs well, even on an underpowered laptop or virtual machine.  Since the interface isn't truly WYSIWYG, the improvements running reports to refine formatting is another great time saver for the author.
• Singletons:  While introduced in 8.3, they seem to perform better in 8.4.  Use them often to highlight certain results that warrant immediate attention in a strategic piece of screen real estate.
• Cognos Mashup Services:  For OEM partners only, CMS is an important enabler of reports to third party applications.  Really important, and really cool.  

Report Studio: Where it Should Go... 

I have a number of ideas, including Express Author, Usability, and Openess.  Questions?  Comments?  Bring 'em!

What kept me going in 2008

When reviewing the Crunchies, it made me think about the tech innovators that I use.  Which ones are so core to my work or life routine that, if they went away tomorrow, my routines and productivity would suffer?

Here's my list of "important stuff" that helped me make it through 2008:

• Twitter: I still love Twitter.  It's concept and simplicity are so refreshing.  More than following just friends, I'm finding it increasing valuable to follow media members, services, or companies I regularly use.  I hope these guys figure out a business model in 2009, because I know one is there, and I can't imagine it going away.
• Facebook: 2008 was a Facebook year.  The surprise: how well it keeps me connected to family (especially Julie's family).   My Facebook wish for 2009: a better UI.  I understand the need for adverstising (hey to Pete!), but the current design is a bit obtuse.
• Meebo: Simply the best innovation to come to IM since ICQ in the mid-90s.  Since I regularly use 3 IM providers (Google, Yahoo, Facebook), and I'm constantly switching computers, meebo has become my one source for IM.  My Meebo wish for 2009, a better mobile interface, and plenty of funding to keep going.
• Remember the Milk: Still the best personal productivity tool I've found on the Internet.  Where should RTM go?  Intelligently incorporating some different sources, like Evernote has done, would be a good start.  List and tag management interfaces could also use a refresher.
• Google Reader:  Google Reader is entrenched in my daily routine.  I start every work day in it, reviewing industry and client news and blogs.  The one thing it lacks is a network for collaboration -- what about a Digg acquisition in 2009?
• Google Docs:  For my personal and community projects, I don't know if I could get by without Google docs.  The ease of multi-user document collaboration and publishing is is outstanding. While I'm sure Google has added some great features in 2008, I really only need the basics in word processing and spreadsheets -- without having to send them around to different people for input.
• Google Calendar:  Because I'm burdened with the least intuitive calendering system imaginable at work, Lotus Notes, Google Calendar saves the day.  Thanks to Google Sync, I can use my Blackberry as an intermediary to sync my work and personal calendars.  Google's design team definitely got this one right.  Can someone at Lotus pay attention?
• StatSheet:  Okay, so maybe this is a productivity drain, but this combines so many of my vices: sports (college basketball), data, visualization, and social networking.  And I have a soft spot for bootstrapped start-ups that are thinking outside the box.  I'm rooting for these guys.

2009 ToDo:

What's a New Year without resolutions?  I admit, I used to dismiss the very notion of a resolution.  After all, why should you only commit once a year?  But the reality is we need to take inventory of our priorities periodically, and January 1st is convenient.

The 2009 rendition (for public consumption, anyway):

Read More Fiction:  Non-fiction makes you education.  But fiction makes you literate.  Weighty, topical books that pique my social conscious (the environment, justice, the economy) are important, but I need balance.  All suggestions welcome.

Mentor, mentor, mentor:  Increase time spent with my direct reports every week and discussing professional topics that go beyond execution.

Build my Cognos Vision:  2008 was about formulations of ideas.  2009 needs to build that into something demonstrable.

Focus Professional Blog:  2009 is the year of the Cognos-powered application.  Keep my blog focused.   

Diet:  Following the 5-meal principle, with at least 75g or protein every day.  Increased intake of vegetables and whole fruit, and eliminate processed foods except for weekly binges.

Be Religious About Heart-Rate Training 

2009 Races:  Stanford (improve 2008 time), UVAS (improve 2008 time), Alcatraz (TBD), Vineman 70.3 (under 5:25), Pacific Grove (under 2:30).

Here they are, documented for my own benefit.  Comments?  I'd love to hear them.