Juice Analytics

Late nights, knashing of teeth, last minute revisions, and all of that pressure.  And that was just us preparing to launch the contest.

To all of you who submitted entries for the Strata Vizathlon Visualization Contest, we thank each and every one of you, and appreciate your tremendous efforts.

Along with the team at O’Reilly Media, we are proud to announce the winners of the 2011 Strata Vizathlon Contest.

Best in Show:

Eating Constraints by Dane Summers (submitted in “Dig In” Category)

Category Winner: Delicious Storylines

Do You Want to Eat This by Team Data Distillery (Anita Lillie, Kris Chan and Romy Misra)

Category Winners: Dig In

Interactive Food Analysis by Josh Tapley

Food Facts Exploration by Kyle Foreman

The “Best in Show” winner, Dane Summers, will be announced at the O’Reilly Strata NY Summit in New York, NY September 20 or 21, 2011.

Congratulations again to our winners, and thank you to everyone who participated. You can see all the entries at the Strata Vizathlon website.

P.S. Tickets are still available for the O’Reilly Strata NY Conference. You can receive a 30% discount if you register using the discount code “JUICE” on the registration page. (Note: The discount has increased to 30% since the original blog post.)

Our founder and CEO, Zach Gemignani, went on the road recently to speak to a group of Voice of the Customer (VOC) professionals and customer intelligence experts at the Allegiance Engage Summit in Park City, Utah.  (Thanks for taking one for the team, Zach.)

Zach’s overall objective was to demonstrate how attendees could gain clear, actionable insights from consumer data.  I’m told that Zach delivered his message about as well as he crafted the data visualizations he used to build it.  In fact, it is rumored that Zach was so engaging that he was compared to none other than Guy Kawasaki, who was also speaking at the Summit.  (Fellow Juicers made mention of head room issues following that comment.)

Allegiance Radio will be airing a podcast of an interview with Zach from the Engage Summit on June 7 at 3:30 p.m. EDT on www.blogtalkradio.com,  Join via VoIP, chat or via phone at (619) 996-1642.  www.blogtalkradio/allegiance/2011/06/07/allegiance-summit-an-interview-with-juice-analytics

You can go to their website anytime after that to review the interview in its entirety.  Following the podcast, we will post a copy of the interview here on our website, as well.

Following is a summary of key content from Zach’s presentation along with resources that may inspire you to get to know your consumer data better to gain insights to move your business forward.  If you have questions or comments, feel free to send them our way.

Know Your Audience

Consider and understand the context of your audience.  ”Actionable” has as much to do with the recipient as the information.  Is it something they have the power or the influence on which to act?

Know Your Tools

Whatever your tool is, it’s worth your while to get good at it.  This saves you time and frustration.

Choose the Right Data

The gourmet values data quality – the right metrics, the right context, presented effectively.  The gourmand, on the other hand, is more interested in quantity. A gourmand believes that more is better, in part because they aren’t sure what they’ll do with the data in the first place.  (See the entire “Data Gourmet” blog at www.juiceanalytics.com/writing/being-a-data-gourmet/

Focusing on just the right data is a concept perhaps best summarized by Amanda Cox. “Data isn’t like your kids.  You don’t have to pretend to love them equally.” – Amanda Cox, New York Times

Choosing the Right Chart

So, how do you choose the right chart?  This is the challenge. Work by taking the most important attributes of your data (based on the question you want to answer) — mapping to the visual elements that most effectively convey that information.

Resources include www.chartchooser.com, www.extremepresentation.com/design/charts and www.juiceanalytics.com/writing/chart-selection-art-and-science/

Tell a Story

You have choices about how data is presented.  Make your choices deliberately.  Consider your audience, their needs and the information.   Then tell a story that clearly resonates with them and compels them — inspires them —  into action.

We’ve had enough of the snow in Atlanta and D.C., so we’re off to warmer weather (for a few days, anyway)!

Please join us for the O’Reilly Strata “Making Data Work” Conference, February 1-3, 2011, taking place in beautiful Santa Clara, CA. (Can you say boondoggle?! Seriously — there’s a whole lot to gain from the entire conference which is why you’ll want to make as many of the sessions as you can, no matter how beautiful this place is!)

As a Juice fan, you qualify for a 25% discount on the registration fee for this event which will draw everyone from startups to Fortune 500 companies looking to learn more about “Turning Data into Decisions” — one of our favorite topics.

Zach Gemignani, founder of Juice Analytics, and Ken Hilburn, VP, Community Enablement, Juice Analytics, will be hosting the Tutorial, “Make People Fall in Love with Your Data: A Practical Tutorial for Data Visualization and UI Design” at 9:00 a.m. PST, Tuesday, February 2, 2011 in Mission City B1.

To register and receive the 25% Juice Fan discount, enter the code str11fsd. More information on the conference including other speakers, conference schedule and highlights is available at http://strataconf.com/strata2011. The Conference location, The Hyatt Regency Santa Clara, is booked for the event. However, accommodation information is available at the
Santa Clara Convention and Visitor’s Bureau. Feel free to reach out if you have questions, and we’ll steer you in the right direction.

We hope to see you in Santa Clara!

Visually,

Lisa

So, to recap, we kicked off our Viva Visualization Tour in Atlanta in July to an eager and anxious crowd. In Boston, we were met by heavy downpours (of rain, that is), and some very dedicated data visualization fans who braved the weather, as their drought ended when we arrived in the Boston area. We were glad to be of service–and to bring lots of data visualization know-how with us, as well.

Now, it’s your turn, D.C. September 16th, rain or shine, we’re ready to make an even bigger showing in the Capital city and home to Juice Analytics.

If you’re in the D.C. or surrounding areas, come meet Juice and learn about communicating better with data.

What you’ll have when you leave:

• visualization best practices training around information layout and workflow, information visualization, chart selection, and styling
• networking within the D.C. visualization community
• a full breakfast buffet
• opportunity to pick the Juice collective for tidbits of vizo-knowledge
• a few pieces of custom designed Juice schwag

What Juice gets out of this:

• a much needed visit to one of the country’s greatest cities
• a chance to meet D.C. folks who love making visual sense of data
• opportunity to talk about the stuff we’re excited about with people who are actually willing to listen (besides our moms)
• a big ol’ food bill

So, if this sounds like great fun to you (and who wouldn’t think so), register. We can’t wait to meet you.

Ok, back in July, we kicked off our Viva Visualization Tour in Atlanta and it was great! Now it’s Boston’s turn to show the folks down south how it’s done.

If you’re in Boston, come meet Juice and learn about communicating better with data.

What you’ll have when you leave:

• visualization best practices training around information layout and workflow, information visualization, chart selection, and styling
• networking within the Boston visualization community
• a full breakfast buffet
• opportunity to pick the Juice collective for tidbits of vizo-knowledge
• a few pieces of custom designed Juice schwag

What Juice gets out of this:

• a much needed visit to one of the country’s greatest cities
• a chance to meet Boston folks who love making visual sense of data
• opportunity to talk about the stuff we’re excited about with people who are actually willing to listen (besides our moms)
• a big ol’ food bill

So, if this sounds like great fun to you (and who wouldn’t think so), register. We don’t get to Boston much, so sign up now! We can’t wait to meet you.

And, for those of you who aren’t in the Boston area, we’re also planning a September meeting in D.C., so keep your eyes open.

What do Tableau fans and Juice fans have in common? Both sets of groupies can see Tableau and Juice together at the 2010 Tableau Customer Conference! That’s right, the great folks at Tableau have very generously offered the opportunity for Juice to speak at their annual conference.

This is going to be a great conference with speakers like Stephen Few, Garr Reynolds, and Stephen Dubner of Freakonomics fame. Four days of great principles and practices. If you haven’t registered yet, there are just a few spaces left, so get to it.

As you all know, Juice highly admires the huge advances that Tableau has made to democratize effective visual analysis and we believe Tableau is setting the new standard for packaged information analysis tools. As it turns out, Juice has fans at Tableau as well. So come join us at the Mutual Admiration Society meeting in Seattle at the end of August.

Oh yeah, if you’re going to be at the conference, don’t let us get out of there without introducing yourself!

Listen up, all you Juice fans who live in Atlanta. We’ve finally nailed down all the details for the get together we announced a few weeks ago. We’re calling it the Viva Visualization Tour.

What you’ll have when you leave:

• visualization best practices training around information layout and workflow,
• information visualization, chart selection, and styling
• networking within the Atlanta visualization community
• a full breakfast buffet like only Magianno’s can put on
• opportunity to pick the Juice collective for tidbits of vizo-knowledge
• a few pieces of custom designed Juice schwag

What Juice gets out of this:

• socializing with the people in our virtual and physical community who love making visual sense of data
• opportunity to talk about the stuff we’re excited about with people who are actually willing to listen (besides our moms)
• a big ol’ food bill
• the joy of seeing some of the most respected members of the Atlanta visualization community all in one room

If this sounds like great fun to you (and who wouldn’t think so), register. We do have limited space, so don’t wait.

And, for those of you who aren’t in the Atlanta area, we’re also planning an August meeting in D.C. and a September meeting in Boston, so keep your eyes open for those (as well as other potential cities).

One thing we really like doing here at Juice is meeting and talking with folks who are interested in the practical application of visualization techniques to make their jobs and businesses better. We know a lot of you out there feel the same. So, we’re planning meet-ups in three cities over the next few months — Atlanta, Washington, D.C. and Boston. In addition to giving those of you in these areas a chance to get together in one place at the same time, it will give us a great excuse to share some data visualization knowledge that we think will benefit you and enhance your skills.

Each Juice Tour event will start with a meet-and-greet followed by a presentation focused on some basic rules for effectively communicating data – where we will provide you with some easy-to-use principles that you will walk away with, leaving you to become far more proficient at presenting your data forward no matter who your audience.

Afterwards, you will have an opportunity to meet one-on-one with Juice in free mini-problem-solving sessions where we can talk specifically about your visualization problems and offer suggestions to help you work through them.

If you’re interested, register here and let us know your name, email and your location. We’d like to gauge your level of interest in the Juice Tour — starting with Atlanta, Washington, D.C. and Boston. If you’re not in these areas, but are interested in the Tour, please let us know that, as well. (If these go really well, who knows, maybe we’ll expand to include other cities, too.)

We look forward to hearing from you! (Oh, and did I mention, it’s free?)

Our friends at Tableau invited us to lead off a webinar about the broken bits of Business Intelligence and what is needed to fix it. With the provocative title “The Score: IT-centric BI — 5, Information Worker — 0″, we intend to hit blog-themes such as the plight of the noble but beaten-down analyst, the misplaced emphasis on bulky technology solutions, and the false deification of the Executive Dashboard.We’d love to have you stop by on March 22 at 2:00 ET. Go here to register.

The session abstract is below:

Empowering the “Everyday Data” Analyst

Like it or not, we’ve all become “everyday data” analysts during the last decade. We became document specialists and spreadsheet experts ten years before that. We have standard tools for creating documents, spreadsheets, and presentations right on our desktops. These applications are familiar and easy to use — even if we only use them infrequently. Why don’t we have the same for working with data?

Everyone agrees that we have plenty of data—it streams through our departments and across our desktops everyday. But despite the big, IT-centric BI solutions that exist in our organizations, it’s the tools and skills for investigating and making sense of “everyday data” that we’re missing. The people who have the most to gain from data analysis are often the least capable of doing so. Where’s the BI equivalent of Word or Visio?

Join Zach Gemignani, co-founder of Juice Analytics for this free web seminar. Based on his years of experience with analytics client engagements, you will hear him present the real-world struggle of “everyday data” analysts. You will learn:

• How the IT-centric view of BI should change
• How do we empower our “everyday data” analysts in our organizations
• What shifts in approach and technology are necessary for effectively working with data

Editor’s note: this post has been edited to sort the comments by time and to point to the recorded webcast.

This is the post that we updated live during Tom Davenport’s Competing on Analytics webcast on October 31. Once we get this out of our system, I promise we’ll close the week with a few killer Excel tips.

In the meantime, here’s some background reading.

10 Ways Not to Build an Analytics Based Business: “We disagree with quite a few of these points and even where we agree, we want add real-world nuance.” Includes a rather sharp discussion in the comments about the relative value of centralized vs. decentralized analytics.

Neil Raden on Competing on Analytics : Neil Raden, an experienced consultant, gives his perspective on centralization of analytics

Tom Davenport’s original Competing on Analytics Paper

—-

Commentary begins:

12:59 (Chris) Just got an email confirmation from the AMA 1 minute before the presentation. That’s “just in time.” Bad news. Meebo seems to not be working.

1:04: Apparently this is to be a book. Preorders available.

1:08: Niel Raden points out that Tom seems over his head on this topic. Feels true in the intro–”Things just seem different” Tom says. Can’t describe why.

1:09: Describing lots of “new” tools: conjoint analysis, CHAID, …. This feels more like one man’s personal journey into learning new analytic techniques rather than a change in industries.

1:12: (Zach) My take so far: none of this is news. we could probably find a presentation from 20 years ago making these points

1:13: Meebo’s back. (Chris) this historical review is killing me. I want to get to the more interesting issues of centralizing vs. decentralized analytics.

1:15: (Zach) If he was putting the spotlight on something that wasn’t well known and fully within the conventional wisdom, then I would appreciate his efforts

1:16: (Chris) “BestBuy shifts from ready-fire-aim to ready-aim-fire” on more initiatives. Of course, BestBuy didn’t call their previous strategy ready-fire-aim. I’d like to see ALL business writers be more careful with their word usements.

1:20: (Chris) Reviewing his list of top analytics competitors. The absolutely brutal counterargument to this list of companies is http://www.hiredbrains.com/Davenport_Rebuttal.htm. This shows “competing on analytics” companies have generally underperformed the market recently.

1:23: (Zach) This presentation is perfectly suited to a room through of wanna-be MBAs. It would give them a bunch of superficial anecdotes and catch-phrases. [ed. note: Zach has a MBA]

1:25: (Zach) I found a sentence I like: “Find your distinctive capability, and use analytics to support it”

1:27: (Zach/Chris): There’s a real problem with how the sample set of companies for Tom’s study is built. He’s starting with a very limited understanding of analytics, it’s a non-random sample (two of the teams are local sports teams he’s interested in), the sample is too small (only two companies are in “Stage 1″), self-reported data. Tom is far too willing to draw conclusions from this weak base.

1:33: (Chris): Talking about the need for hardware.

1:35: (Chris): From the presentation: Is your senior management committed? If yes, “go full steam ahead”, if no, “prove the value”. How do you measure commitment? Most everyone pays at least lip service to the need of using data for analytics

1:37: (Chris): “data dog”, mmm

1:38: (Jules): “If your organization prefers to make decisions by the gut…find a new CEO” ?!? It’s hard to get rid of problem employees at the lowest levels. How are you going to slot in a new CEO? [ed. note: Jules is our HR guy]

1:39: (Zach): well, Jules, if he/she doesn’t like analytics, I think that is all the ammunition you’ll need

1:40: (Chris): A ladder to heaven. Campaign management is considered “higher up” than event-based triggers. Bzzt. I think most experienced folks people would reverse those. Anyone disagree?

1:45: (Jules): This is a wonderful company where you can just tell IT to go and do the stuff you want. Do they knock it out over the weekend or are they that talented that they only work 35 hours a week? Marketing and IT have always traditionally been had a hard time seeing eye to eye.

1:46: (All): Some things he’s missing: IT challenges, getting culture-wide buy in, using the right tools, getting tools into the hands of decision-makers,

1:46: (Chris): An absolutely brutal slide appears. A X-Y graph with NO LABELS whatsoever. This is madeupware. Timestamp in the presentation: 49:18.

1:46: (Zach): last two slides are a disaster, a black hole of information

1:47: (Jules): Don’t ghostwrite charts, Tom.

1:50: (Chris): Skeleton mouse?

1:53: (Chris): Q&A time. Where are these questions coming from? Wait-a-sec: I thought this was realtime?

1:56: (Zach): “no offense to any PhDs out there, but if you were cultivating your analytical skills you probably weren’t developing your social skills” (paraphrase of Tom Davenport) Ohhhhhhh, snap!

1:58: (Jules): Do you think Anna is a bot? [ed. note: Double snap!]

1:59: (Chris): And we’re clear. Thanks guys.

1:59: (Jules): Interesting. I downloaded the wrf file and it’s timestamped Oct 25 at 5:06pm.

2:10: (Zach): Why do we have to be live when he isn’t?