Small Data and VRM

Oct 17, 2012 by Jim Harris

At last week’s IDEAS 2012 closing panel discussion, moderated by Gavin Day, panelists Rich Murnane, Phil Simon, Joyce Norris-Montanari and I were asked to predict trends for 2013. In this blog post, I explain the prediction I made about Small Data and VRM.

What They Do With What They Know

Jul 24, 2012 by David Loshin

Presumably, the objective of collecting personal information about you is to “provide tailored content,” which translates into getting you better precision on results from your searches and (more importantly) delivering better customized ads to your desktop. The first aspect can be seen in comparing the results delivered to two different people conducting the same search with identical search terms – the results are probably going to be similar but not the same. The second aspect goes beyond what is delivered on the right side of the screen when you get your search results. Rather, the penetration of Google ad stuff is pervasive, especially when considering that Google owns ad content server companies that track cookies, etc. across a network of pages.

Fundamental Opportunity: Data Policies, Downstream Repurposing, and Derived Knowledge

Mar 27, 2012 by David Loshin

At the end of my last blog post, I posed a question about the potential failure to observe data policies for data items that are shared multiple times, or are shared outside of the administrative domain. In the interim between writing that last entry and this one, though, I shared my thoughts with a colleague, who pointed out that very often data that is supposed to be used for one purpose is used to infer new pieces of information and knowledge. But what happens if that new piece of knowledge is, by virtue of the inference, an exposure of protected information that was not inherent in any of the original data sets?

Dator on Breaking Bad, Matching, and Amazon.com

Mar 15, 2012 by Phil Simon

Greetings Earthlings:

I’ve been on your planet for a while now and I’m completely befuddled. I’ve bought products from many companies over your Internet, including the first season of the show Breaking Bad largely because Phil Simon won’t shut up about it.

On Apple and Customer Data

Dec 01, 2011 by Phil Simon

Data doesn’t really come to mind first when considering the historic legacy of Steve Jobs and Apple. Instead, people think of the following questions:

• Was Jobs gifted at recognizing design?
• Did he redefine industries?
• Did he rankle more than a few people both inside and outside of Apple?

Considering the Business Case for Multidentity Analysis – Part 2

Jul 05, 2011 by David Loshin

The last post considered a business justification for determining when a single entity is using multiple identities, and we came to the conclusion that traditional householding was the right approach for this type of analysis. In this post, though, I want to consider the business impacts associated with MD2s, in which multiple entities share a single identity.

Considering the Business Case for Multidentity Analysis – Part 1

Jun 28, 2011 by David Loshin

In 1993, this humorous cartoon appeared in New Yorker magazine. The caption has endured in my mind for these almost twenty years, and as someone who was worked in the area of identity resolution since 1995, I am biased into thinking that everyone should recognize this particular punch line. Yet most of the time when I say “On the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog,” people have no idea what I am talking about.

Defending the Data

Nov 18, 2010 by Phil Simon

For better or (mostly) worse, in my professional career, I have consistently found myself on projects suffering from a bevy of issues, many of which were related to data. By 2008, I had reached a tipping point: I was either going to write a book about IT project failures or see a shrink. I chose the former.

In other words, it’s rare that, as a consultant, I have the ability to influence the direction of an organization’s data management. I find myself these days in such a place. The details of my project aren’t particularly interesting to the average reader. For now, however, suffice it to say that I am building a little ETL tool that takes a bunch of data from a bunch of places, transforms it, and spits it out to a bunch of people. I’d give this about a 4 on my 1-10 scale for complexity. (Yes, I have had to build tools that scored a 14 on that same 1-10 scale before. Take me out for a beer sometime and I’ll tell you a story or two.)

Master Data Consolidation – Part 2

Aug 10, 2010 by David Loshin

In my previous post, I introduced the challenge of maintaining multiple views associated with a single entity playing multiple roles within an organization. Managing a single “customer” file or repository, without qualifying subtle role distinctions within that data set, may lead to subtle failures in the attempt to provide that comprehensive view of the organization’s interactions with each party in each business context. In fact, this exposes one of the pitfalls of master data consolidation: loss of knowledge through standardization.