»Me, myself and BI«

Bissantz ponders


Friday, June 4th, 2010

Computers from Pandora

There are many reasons why the fans of analog media have nothing to fear in a digital world – aside from the fact that you can’t wrap a fish in an iPad. But the even our digital world will no longer be what it once was. Why? Because the iPad is so analog.

Friday, May 14th, 2010

Helmsman, leave your watch – Helmsman, help us adapt.

In BI, we often talk about steering and control. But who is actually steering – and what? Aren’t we just constantly adapting ourselves? Notes from a conversation about our understanding of management information.

Friday, April 23rd, 2010

The first sparklines in “Die Welt” – well, almost…

“Die Welt” recently made a first attempt to use sparklines. Shrunken graphics with dubious references and problematic scales, however, were the result. Too bad! The good news, however, is that the race for the first sparklines in a German newspaper is still on.

Friday, April 2nd, 2010

You can’t wrap a fish in an iPad

This is a digital plea for analog media. We don’t just need paper on Fridays. And paper has a long future ahead – and for much more than just wrapping fish.

Friday, March 12th, 2010

New ‘See’land, Part II

“Radical” is a word that has many different connotations – many of which are not exactly gentle. Today, we’ll use it again to describe the next necessary steps for management information. And we can learn what radical really means from the story of an old house.

Friday, February 19th, 2010

From Pixelland to Panoramaland

Monitors are not made of paper. But since real time and interactivity only exist in digital form, paper is much less tolerant than you might think. Our wish is to combine the advantages of both media forms.

Saturday, January 30th, 2010

New ‘See’land I

No one likes to get lost in a strange place. That’s why we pay extra attention to where we are headed. In fact, I learned a lot from traffic signs on a recent trip abroad.

Friday, January 8th, 2010

Void of color

Today’s topic is a practical self-help lesson. It is safer to fly than to visualize the safety of flying. Colors have a lot to do with that. What can we learn from this? We don’t have to color everything.

Friday, December 25th, 2009

One figurine, one person

Whether it’s Barbie and Ken, Madame Tussaud, Playmobil or even the ‘Männleinlaufen’ in Nuremburg – people as figurines are either fun or educational. But as we can see from the following examples and exceptions, the exact opposite usually holds true for data visualization.

Friday, December 11th, 2009

Knecht Rupprecht Murdoch

Handelsblatt and the Wall Street Journal Europe, which are affiliated through a mutual cooperation, have recently relaunched their publications. Unfortunately, both instances are not exactly good news for our information culture. We’ll explain why in part 1 of our two-part series.

Essays

Death to business charts!
Why business charts must die

Graphic tables
Lay back and control

Industrial reporting
Production-like efficiency for management reporting

Can we drive companies
like we do cars?

Against dashboards, speedometers and traffic lights in Controlling

Business Intelligence 2.0
modest, serious, sincere

Rediscovering slowness
Sparklines make us John Franklins in management information.

Good reporting is boring
Looking for excitement?
Try a night on the town instead.

Are sports fans smarter
than managers?

Management reports need to become more dense and dashboards more rare

The myth of data mining
Why men don't buy beer and diapers at the same time.

Numerical blindness?
I wouldn't see a doctor, if I were you.


DE