I have a low tolerance for stupidity and waste. For this reason, I oppose unnecessary bureaucracy whenever possible. For instance, when a potential client asks me to review and sign a lengthy contract before accepting their invitation to teach a course or speak at an event—typically a one to three day engagement—I tell them “No thanks, I’ll pass.” Experience has taught me that, in addition to the time it takes to read the contract, revisions are always required. One size fits all service contracts, usually written for long-term software development engagements, don’t fit the work that I do. There are always terms that I cannot accept, which lead to lengthy negotiations. Terms typically state that I must grant to the client sole ownership of my intellectual property (for example, my course materials), require that I purchase several types of insurance (for example, millions of dollars in liability coverage, which doesn’t apply to my work), and demand that I discount the work to match the lowest price that I’ve ever charged another client, which would result in a charge of $0, because I sometimes work for free. Only in rare circumstances when terms are necessarily complex do I require a formal contract for my services, and even then the contract rarely exceeds one page. Ordinarily, I state my terms and the scope of the work in a few sentences and the client affirms them in a single email exchange. That’s it. If the client seems apprehensive, I offer a complete money back guarantee in the event that they aren’t satisfied with my work, which eliminates their risk entirely. I’ve walked away from several lucrative opportunities because the client insisted on time-consuming bureaucratic nonsense for a simple engagement. In such cases, I always explain that, because the purpose of my work is to help them use information more efficiently and effectively for decision making, by participating in mindless bureaucracy I would support the very behavior that my work is designed to eliminate.

In many respects, senseless bureaucracy—unnecessary time, effort, and expense that is required to get things done—has increased with the rise of information technology. Given the fact that computers are supposed to save us time, which they can do in many ways, I find it intolerable that the opposite is often true. Have you ever noticed that with increasing reliance on technology, businesses provide decreasingly effective products and services, despite the fact that they talk about their commitment to customer service a great deal more? What once required a simple conversation with a person can now take a series of time-consuming, confusing, and often redundant interactions, mostly with machines. When those interactions don’t work, you can eventually get to a person who, through his reliance on machines to think for him, has lost all common sense.

One of my favorite examples occurred two years ago when my new phone service failed to be activated on the scheduled date. When I explained to the phone company’s customer support representative that a technician would need to come to my house to physically connect their system to the disconnected wires at my house—wires that I was holding in my hands at that very moment—she assured me that if I merely waited until 8:00 PM that evening, my phone would begin to work without any need for a technician to visit my home. When I questioned her confident assurance by explaining once again that the wires could not become magically connected without a technician, she responded with an edge of annoyance that she was an “expert.” Apparently not. Two days later a technician eventually came to my home to connect the wires.

My most painful and costly brush with mindless bureaucracy occurred last Friday, when I arrived in Edinburgh, Scotland, where I was scheduled to teach a course. Even though I have provided speaking, teaching, and consulting services in the United Kingdom many times over the last few years, including an engagement in London only three weeks ago, the UK Border agent at the Edinburgh airport informed me that I could not enter the country without a business visa. In a surrealistic moment of disbelief, I asked “Are you serious? Since when?” I then looked into two stone-cold eyes with no trace of humor and heard his angry words “Do I look like I’m joking?” Having learned through experience that persistence greased with diplomacy can often pave a path through seemingly intractable obstacles, I remained unshaken. Obviously, the Border Agency was not established to protect the borders from the likes of me or to rob its citizens of the useful and unique services that I provide. My confidence was shaken, however, when in an effort to find a solution I asked if there was someone else that I could speak to and he bristled with anger and spit out the words “What, I’m not good enough for you?” After waiting for five hours in detention, when I was formally denied access in writing and told that I would need a Tier 5 business visa to return (this is for temporary migrant workers), I was reminded that walls constructed by small-minded people and myopic bureaucracies are sometimes insurmountable.

The next morning, when I was preparing to board the flight that would return me to the United States, I learned from another border agent that my fate fell into the hands of the only agent who would turn me away under the circumstances. The result of this bureaucratic tragedy was more than inconvenience. The course in Edinburgh and the three-day workshop that would follow in London had to be cancelled. The 80 or so people who registered to attend were denied the benefits of my courses. The nonrefundable costs of their flights were forfeit. I and the organization that hosts my workshops in the UK lost a great deal in nonrefundable venue and travel costs as well as significant revenues. This happened because a border agent held tightly to his interpretation of UK immigration policy (misinterpretation, I believe) rather than its spirit, which was never meant to turn away people who bring valuable one-off educational services to the people of the UK, and certainly not to do so without warning them of the requirement in advance. Had I lied and said that I was visiting solely as a tourist or to attend a business meeting, I would have been welcomed warmly. Honesty and integrity, which are deeply rooted in my nature, are not always awarded their due. Friends tell me that I should just lie—that the stupid system invites deceit—but that doesn’t sit right with me.

I’m not asking for your sympathy. I live a charmed life. I get to do something that I love and am well compensated for the effort. Fate throws each of us a curve now and then, while it buries many who are less fortunate in a continuous onslaught of oppression. I’m writing this to raise awareness of the fact that our lives are increasingly being frittered away by senseless wastes of time and effort—many in the name of progress. Who doesn’t roll on the floor in agony at the thought of calling a customer or technical support line? Who doesn’t spend more of their time in meaningless activity today than they did before the advent of computers? Who doesn’t feel that they are in some ways less smart today than they would be without computers? Who doesn’t feel that their constant reliance on information technology has caused them to lose touch with the things that matter in life? Who doesn’t feel that relentless social networking has reduced the warmth of human connection?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a technologist by profession, but like the wisest of my colleagues, I have a love/hate relationship with machines. Machines are great when they do something useful and do it well; they do harm, however, when they perform poorly and complicate our lives unnecessarily. As I was making my way by taxi from the airport to the hotel for my one short night in Edinburgh prior to the forced exodus, I shared my story of woe with the driver. He told me of his own efforts to speak up against the loss of common sense in the modern world. We shared stories of frustration, which eased the pain a little. It was more comforting in that moment than he could ever imagine to be assured that I wasn’t alone. We all live our lives just one small-minded person away from travail. Many organizations have woven small-mindedness into the fabric of their operations in the form of senseless bureaucracy, over-reliance on machines, and a myopic quest for the bottom line. Common nonsense rather than common sense often rules the day. I doubt that good sense was ever the norm, but I believe that former generations more routinely relied on their own brains, developed deeper expertise, and exercised judgment rather than mindlessly memorized and followed procedures. Whether good sense was more common in the past or not, it’s definitely needed to meet the challenges of the present and future. I think that taxi driver was right: it’s time to speak up. If we don’t, the brightness of tomorrow will not exceed the dimness of our atrophying minds.

Take care,

Contrary to popular opinion, we do not yet live in the Information Age. At best, we live in the Data Age—a time when bits of data constantly zoom past our eyes and buzz past our ears, yet few of them inform us meaningfully and usefully. We’re spending millions to put all of that “Big Data” into “The Cloud” without first learning how to separate the signals from the noise. A storm cloud of our own making is already raining confusion down upon us.

Last week I gave a keynote presentation and taught a course at the Teradata Universe conference in Dublin, Ireland. At one point while wandering through the Dublin Convention Center I read the following banner:

This was one of many banners that were strategically placed throughout the convention center to promote the conference by highlighting the importance of information. Upon reading the words of FedEx CEO Fred Smith, I had an epiphany. I suddenly realized why my packages sometimes arrive damaged. The information about the package is as important as the package itself? Seriously? In our enthusiasm for information and information technology, let’s not lose perspective. Information is only important when it informs us meaningfully about something that actually exists in the world that has value. Information about my package is only important if it gets that package to me intact. The information derives its value from the package. Information has no value in and of itself.

We won’t be ready for a true information age until we learn to make sense of data. Being surround by an over abundance of facts (some true and some false) is not helpful. Until we can separate the signals (meaningful and useful truths) from the noise (meaningless and useless bits of data), all of those facts complicate our lives without benefit.

The problems that I help people resolve as they struggle to make better decisions in their organizations based on data are much like the problems that committed journalists struggle with when trying to speak truth to the public. On Sunday I watched an intelligent discourse between Bill Moyers and a fellow named Marty Kaplan, who currently works for the Lear Center. The interview was titled “Marty Kaplan on Big Money’s Effect on Big Media” (Bill Moyers Journal, PBS, April 27, 2012), which you can read in its entirety at BillMoyers.com.

I want to share excerpts from this interview, which I found particularly enlightening.

On the content of modern day journalism

Marty Kaplan: We, not long ago, did a study of the Los Angeles media market. We looked at every station airing news and every news broadcast they aired round the clock. And we put together a composite half hour of news. How much in that half hour was about transportation, education, law enforcement, ordinances, tax policy; everything involving locals, from city to county? The answer is, in a half hour, 22 seconds.

Bill Moyers: Twenty-two seconds devoted to what one would think are the serious issues of democracy, right?

Marty Kaplan: Yes. Whereas, in fact, there are three minutes about crime, and two and a half minutes about the ugliest dog contest, and two minutes about entertainment. There’s plenty of room for stuff that the stations believe will keep people from changing the dial.

Bill Moyers: So they will tell you, however, that they’re in the entertainment business. That they’re in the business to amuse the public, to entertain the public. And if they do these serious stories about the schools or about the highways or about this or that, the public tunes out.

Marty Kaplan: It’s one of the great lies about broadcasting now. There are consultants who go all around the country and they tell the general managers and the news directors, “It is only at your peril that you cover this stuff.” But one of the things that we do is, the Lear Center gives out the Walter Cronkite award for excellence in television political journalism every two years. And we get amazing entries from all over the country of stations large and small, of reporters under these horrendous odds, doing brilliant pieces and series of pieces, which prove that you can not only do these pieces on a limited budget, but you can still be the market leader.

It used to be that the news programs that aired, believe it or not, had news on them. They had investigative stories. But then somewhere in the 1980s, when 60 Minutes started making a profit, CBS put the news division inside the entertainment division. And then everyone followed suit. So ever since then, news has been a branch of entertainment and, infotainment, at best.

But there was a time in which the press, the print press, news on television and radio were speaking truth to power, people paid attention, and it made a difference. I don’t think the Watergate trials would have happened, the Senate hearings, had there not been the kind of commitment from the news to cover the news rather than cutting away to Aruba and a kidnapping.

Bill Moyers: What is the basic consequence of taking the news out of the journalism box and putting it over into the entertainment box?

Marty Kaplan: People are left on their own to fend for themselves. And the problem is that there’s not that much information out there, if you’re an ordinary citizen, that comes to you. You can ferret it out. But it oughtn’t be like that in a democracy. Education and journalism were supposed to, according to our founders, inform our public and to make democracy work.

We can’t do it unless we’re smart. And so the consequence is that we’re not smart. And you can see it in one study after another. Some Americans think that climate change is a hoax cooked up by scientists, that there’s no consensus about it. This kind of view could not survive in a news environment, which said, “This is true and that’s false.” Instead we have an environment in which you have special interest groups manipulating their way onto shows and playing the system, gaming the notion that he said she said is basically the way in which politics is now covered.

It’s all about combat. If every political issue is the combat between two polarized sides, then you get great television because people are throwing food at each other. And you have an audience that hasn’t a clue, at the end of the story, which is why you’ll hear, “Well, we’ll have to leave it there.” Well, thank you very much. Leave it there.

On objectivity in journalism

Bill Moyers: You have talked and written about “the straightjacket of objectivity.” Right? What is that?

Marty Kaplan: Well, the problem with telling the truth is that in this postmodern world, there’s not supposed to be something as truth anymore. So all you can do if you are a journalist is to say, “Some people say.” Maybe you can report a poll. Maybe you can quote somebody. But objectivity is only this phony notion of balance, rather than fact-checking.

There are some gallant and valiant efforts, like PolitiFact and Flackcheck.org that are trying to hold ads and news reports accountable. But by and large, that’s not what you’re getting. Instead the real straightjacket is entertainment. That’s what all these sources are being forced to be. Walter Lippmann in the 1920s had a concept called “spectator democracy” in which he said that the public was a herd that needed steering by the elites. Now he thought that people just didn’t have the capacity to understand all these complicated issues and had to delegate it to experts of various kinds.

But since then, the notion of spectator democracy has, I think, extended to include the need to divert the country from the master narrative, which is the influence and importance and imperviousness to accountability of large corporations and the increasing impotence of the public through its agency, the government, to do anything about it. So the more diversion and the more entertainment, the less news, the less you focus on that story, the better off it is.

We are programmed to love stories. That is in our genes. Our wiring says that when you say, “Once upon a time,” I am hooked. When you show me conflict between two people, I want to know who’s going to win. That’s how it’s always been. And it happens that politics is now the substance and television is now the medium in which to bedazzle us, to enthrall us, which means enslave us just as it has been all through human history.

On misleading political ads

Bill Moyers: Do you think these ads make us stupid?

Marty Kaplan: We start stupid. The brain is wired to be entertained. We don’t pay attention to the words. We pay attention to the pictures and the drama and the story. If it’s pretty, if it’s exciting, if it’s violent, if it’s fast, that’s where we are. So the fact that these mini dramas are being used to get us to vote for one person or another is just like what we all learned propaganda was used for and thought we learned our lessons from in World War II. They are propaganda. And propaganda is irresistible. If it were resistible, people wouldn’t do it.

Bill Moyers: Don’t you think most people are now jaundiced about these ads? They know it’s a con?

Marty Kaplan: People say they know it’s a con, just as they say that they are not being swayed by the ads for products that they see on television. If that were true, there would not be a multibillion dollar advertising industry. If that stuff didn’t work, that would not be on the air. So no matter what we say, no matter how clever we are, we are susceptible to it.

On the Internet as a source of information

Marty Kaplan: The problem is that the Internet is at best the Wild West, in which that kind of information competes with other stuff in this great bazaar. I mean, at this booth over here, you get some important investigative journalism. At that booth over there, you get Charlie Bit My Finger or whatever the YouTube hit of the month happens to be. And they’re all on equal footing.

Bill Moyers: How much bad information is too much, Marty? When does it start transforming our brain and our body politic?

Marty Kaplan: I think we’re there now. I think there is so much misinformation out there that on issue after issue, we have opinions but not facts. And we despair of ever being able to get to the bottom of it and despair of ever having a decision being based on what is accurate, true, and useful, rather than who has the most money to put up enough ads in order to sway the public debate.

On push vs. pull journalism

Marty Kaplan: Push journalism is the old days, which seem no longer to apply in the era of the Internet, in which an editor, a gatekeeper, says, “Here’s the package which you need to know.” All of that is ancient history now.

Instead, now, it’s all driven by what the consumer is pulling. And if the consumer says, “I want ice cream all the time.” And whether that ice cream is Lindsay Lohan, or the latest crime story, that’s what’s delivered. And as long as it’s being pulled, that’s what is being provided. So it’s quite possible that in the U.S., the calculation was made that the crisis in Europe and the head of Italy would not be a cover that one could use. But that pet friendships would be the sort of thing that would fly off the newsstand.

Bill Moyers: So the reader is determining what we get from the publication?

Marty Kaplan: On a minute by minute basis, stories that the reader’s interested in immediately go to the top of the home page. There are actually pieces of software that give editorial prominence to stuff that people by voting with their clickers have said is of interest to them. No one is there to intervene and say, “Wait a minute, that story is just too trivial to occupy more than this small spot below the fold.” Instead, the audience’s demand is what drives the placement and the importance of journalistic content.

On amusing ourselves to death

Bill Moyers: So George Orwell anticipated a state as big brother, hovering over us, watching us, keeping us under surveillance, taking care of our needs as long as we repaid them with utter loyalty. Aldous Huxley anticipated a Brave New World in which we were amusing ourselves to death. Who’s proving the most successful prophet? Huxley or Orwell?

Marty Kaplan: Well, I think Huxley is probably right, as Neil Postman [the sociologist] said in Amusing Ourselves to Death that “There’s no business but show business.” And we are all equally guilty, because it’s such fun to be entertained. So you don’t need big brother, because we already have big entertainment.

Bill Moyers: And the consequences of that?

Marty Kaplan: That we are as in Brave New World, always in some kind of stupor. We have continual partial attention to everything and tight critical attention on nothing.

The parallels between a journalist’s use of information to inform the public and our use of information to inform better decisions in our organizations are significant and intimate. The poor state of information sensemaking and display (bad graphics, for example) is in part due to a preference for infotainment. As long as decision makers prefer to be entertained by flashy graphics with circus colors rather than meaningfully informed by clear presentations of truth, our organizations will continue to function poorly and irresponsibly. Data warehousing and the business intelligence industry that grew out of it has been with us for 30 years. The stated objective has always been to enable better decisions based on data, but despite the huge data stores that we’ve amassed, to what degree has data-based decision making actually increased? Little, if at all. Business intelligence has made relatively few of us smarter and more than a few of us stupider. Most of us lack the data sensemaking skills that are required to use data effectively. Most of us are still encumbered by primitive and dysfunctional data sensemaking tools. And yes, most of us would rather be entertained than informed, living “in some kind of stupor.” Isn’t it time to wake up?

Take care,

Is the ability to think critically too much to expect of business intelligence (BI) professionals? How about BI professionals who support institutions of higher learning? Wouldn’t it be reasonable to expect high levels of critical thinking from them? Unfortunately, a recent experience has called this into question.

I’m currently in Austin, Texas where I’ll be teaching one of my public workshops this week. On Sunday, I taught a visual data analysis course here on the campus of the University of Texas at the annual conference of HEDW (Higher Education Data Warehousing). I cherish opportunities to support educational institutions. I believe in the power of education to improve the lives of individuals and to make the world a better place. I spent eight hours with 65 wonderful people who support decision making, mostly at universities, through the use of business intelligence technologies. You can imagine my shock and chagrin when in the evening I attended the opening keynote presentation that turned out to consist ultimately of a parlor show on par with psychic reading.

Mac Fulfer who worked for many years as an attorney, is now a face reader. What is face reading?

We all understand the importance of facial expression in communication. We know the meaning of a smile or a frown, but few realize that a face is a living record and personality profile rolled into one. Each face reflects in its structure and lines its owner’s personal history, mental attitudes, character traits, intimacy requirements, work ethic, personal preferences, and much more. A face can be read like a map that points the way to a deeper understanding of yourself and of every person you meet.

Here are a few examples of the insights that you can read in a person’s face:

And what does this have to do with business intelligence? An answer was provided when Mac Fulfer was introduced, which I’ll paraphrase:

Business intelligence is about reading data. Faces are just another form of data.

I hope that our reading of data is more trustworthy and meaningful than Fulfer’s reading of faces.

I approached the evening with an open mind, assuming that Fulfer and his content had been carefully vetted. I maintained an open mind for about 45 minutes, as Fulfer laid a foundation for face reading by citing research into the meanings of specific expressions, including the work of Paul Ekman that focuses on the meanings of facial micro-gestures, on whom the television series “Lie to Me” is roughly based. I was already familiar with most of this work, which I find interesting. As it turned out, however, the evidence that Fulfer presented had no bearing on his own work. Unlike Ekman, who has done years of painstaking research to identify the meanings of specific micro-gestures in the face that reveal people’s thoughts and feelings, Fulfer doesn’t look for micro-gestures and he isn’t particularly concerned with peoples thoughts and feelings in the moment. Instead, he believes that our personalities and characters are written on our faces through physical features, much as a phrenologist of the 19th century believed that one’s psychological attributes could be discerned by feeling the bumps on a person’s head. As our personalities change, Fulfer believes that our brains direct the physical characteristics of our faces to change accordingly. Square vs. pointy jaws, squinty vs. round open eyes, and so on are all clear reflections of our souls. To illustrate, he showed us photos of himself as a young boy with big outwardly extended ears (a sign of independence) and pointed out that as his personality changed later in life, his ears moved back to lie flat against his head.

It was interesting that so much time was used to establish a scientific foundation for face reading, despite its irrelevance to Fulfer’s own version of the craft, especially given the fact that he stated in the beginning that the credibility of his work had not as yet been scientifically confirmed. He was careful to put this admission, however, into context by stating that before Newton the laws of gravity were not established. I desperately wanted to point out that, unlike gravity, which we experience every moment of our lives (excluding astronauts) and know to exist even if we don’t understand the scientific explanation, the fact that a high forehead is a sign of intelligence is not evident. I also wanted to ask why his notion that facial characteristics reflect our personalities continues to lack confirmation after all these years when it would be so easy to test. For instance, how difficult would it be to measure the IQs of people and see if intelligence correlates with the height of their foreheads?

The true nature of Fulfer’s work became evident when he had a few volunteers come up to the stage to have their faces read. That’s when the parlor-trick quality of his brand of face reading became clear. Just like psychic readers, Fulfer used the exact phrases that they might utter, to describe the volunteers. They went something like this:

Your low-hanging ear lobes tell me that you don’t accept everything that you’re told. Although you’re polite about it, you need to see the evidence for yourself. Only then will you accept it.

Now, what BI professional (or anyone else for that matter) is going to respond: “No, you’re wrong, I’m completely gullible; I believe everything I’m told without question.” Yet, to accept Fulfer’s assessment based on the shape of one’s ears would require a great deal of gullibility. I suspect that Fulfer is well aware of the irony and finds it amusing.

I’m sure that I wasn’t the only person in the room that found Fulfer’s parlor show unconvincing. I’m surprised, however, that HEDW’s speaker selection committee didn’t suspect this in advance and vet his credentials carefully. The fact that Fulfer regularly entertains at birthday parties and bar mitzvah’s might have clued them in, but even BI professionals in positions of leadership sometimes do dumb things.

In fact, to tie this more closely to the subject matter of this blog, I’ve observed that BI professionals routinely make dumb decisions when they buy the patter of software salespeople who, like hucksters at a carnival, extol the wonders of shiny spinning pie charts and dashboard gauges to present data effectively. They want to believe it, because those flashy charts look so fun and impressive. Wanting to believe it, they set their critical faculties aside and write checks for huge sums of money. Why would we expect decision support professionals to know better? It’s not like it really matters—right?

Take care,

Earlier this year I was saddened to learn that Andreas Lipphardt, the co-founder and chief executive of the business intelligence software company BonaVista Systems, died tragically on January 27. With a team of never more than three or four people, BonaVista Systems made useful, affordable, effective, and desperately needed data visualization tools that functioned as add-ins to Excel. The company’s first and best-known product was MicroCharts, which added to Excel the ability to embed sparklines and bullet graphs into cells of a spreadsheet.

Andreas was the heart of BonaVista Systems. Following his death, the company has now ceased to exist. He was a good guy who untiringly dedicated his bright talent to the creation of tools that really worked. He was my friend. I will miss him greatly.

I first met Andreas when his submission to a data visualization competition that I judged in 2006 won the prize for best dashboard. He used an early version of MicroCharts to create his dashboard, which was the first product to incorporate bullet graphs. After this, we became acquainted, initially via email, and eventually in person on several occasions while collaborating on a project that resulted in a product named Chart Tamer. I fondly remember spending a cold winter day together in his apartment in Darmstadt, Germany, drinking coffee while sitting in front of his computer in the early days of that project. We met on other occasions as well, once nearby when Andreas and his loving partner were vacationing in San Francisco, and once in London.

I was always impressed by Andreas’ ability to do so much in such a short period of time with limited resources. I was also impressed with his perseverance when faced with seemingly insurmountable problems, which almost always resulted in an innovative solution. The flipside of these great qualities was the fact that he worked too hard. Now that Andreas’ young life has been cut short, I’m reminded of how precious life is and how important it is that we live it fully, which involves setting the work aside at times.

Andreas managed to make the world a better place through the products that he created, and for that we owe him our thanks. His dedication to excellence was rare. I’ve lost a friend and the world at large has lost someone who understood the potential of technology for good and did all he could to make that potential tangible.

Take care,

When you’re looking for reliable information—especially guidance—pay close attention to the sources. Experience has taught me to approach information with a skeptical eye and to always identify and scrutinize the source. This has become especially important since the advent of the Internet. The anonymity of the Web makes it easy for people to claim expertise or to feign objectivity that is lacking. Organizations often publish information that is tailored to serve their own interests, and their interests are often not ours. When you know the source and are aware of its motives and biases, you can take them into account. When sources are concealed, however, especially when they create the impression of independence and objectivity, you may trust them in error.

Did you know that several sources of information about business intelligence that appear independent and objective have hidden interests and affiliations? In most cases the objectivity of so-called independent organizations is compromised by the fact that they are funded through advertising and sponsorships from the very vendors that they are supposed to objectively evaluate. Sometimes, however, affiliations are more intentionally masked. For example, if you have an interest in dashboard design, you might have visited the website Dashboard Insight in search of advice and examples. Even if you didn’t expect the site to provide great expertise, you certainly expected it to be objective. Although many software vendors advertise on Dashboard Insight and the articles, papers, and examples that you’ll find there come from various sources (mostly vendors), if you tally the site’s content per vendor, I believe you’ll find that one in particular is more visible than you would expect based on its share of the market: Dundas Software. This isn’t an accident. Dashboard Insight is owned by Dundas Software. Unless you visit the site’s Privacy Statement page where this affiliation is mentioned, you would never know this.

I’ve visited Dashboard Insight myself many times over the years in search of dashboard examples. Until fairly recently, I did so without knowledge of Dundas’ involvement.

My first direct interaction with someone at Dashboard Insight occurred in 2010. On January 13 I received this introductory email from Steve Bogdon:

Good afternoon Stephen,

As you know, Dashboard Insight is a key resource for decision makers in the BI and data visualization industry.  We feature innovative articles, expert interviews, the latest news and much more – from all over the world.  There’s always room for a variety of views on any subject.

In February, Dashboard Insight will be taking a close look at “trends in BI and data visualization.”  As a highly regarded dashboard expert, I believe an article written by you commenting on recent data visualization trends (as well as where you think the industry is heading over the next year) would be an excellent addition to our venerable article library.

Would you be interested in writing this article for our readers?

By the way, when I started in this industry, almost 4 years ago, the first book I came across was “Information Dashboard Design” written by yourself.  This book was an excellent tool and provided a strong foundation for the next few years of continued learning.  Thank you.

Steve Bogdon
Dashboard Insight

I responded:

I appreciate the invitation to contribute to Dashboard Insight. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to write anything for February, because I’m booked solid for the next few months. My schedule tends to fill up well in advance.

I’m curious about what you’re doing. I’m aware of your site, of course, but haven’t examined what you do closely. Are you making an effort to improve dashboard technology and its use or merely to serve as a forum for dashboard related content and a venue for dashboard vendor advertising without making judgments about effectiveness? I ask, because I believe that sites such as yours have an opportunity, and even a responsibility, to nudge readers toward effective practices. This conflicts, however, with a model that accepts advertising from any vendor that’s willing to pay and accepts content regardless of merit. In the past, I’ve ceased working with so-called independent, vendor-agnostic BI publications and conferences because they were in fact influenced by advertisers to favor their products and to censor criticism of them. I hope you’re in a position to exercise leadership by selecting good content that doesn’t just seek to promote vendor interests and to turn away advertising from vendors whose products are ineffective. I think your readers would appreciate objective guidance that looks out for their interests.

(Note: In the interest of full disclosure, before Dashboard Insight originally launched its website I received an email from a colleague who mentioned it, including the fact that it was affiliated with Dundas Software. Much later, when I ran across the site on my own, my aging brain had lost track of this little fact and nothing that I found on the website reminded me.)

Bogdon’s reply contained the following information about Dashboard Insight:

As for what we are trying to do … we pride ourselves on being a completely free dashboard/BI resource destination for the community. Almost all of our articles are vendor neutral and are donated by people like yourself, the experts in this space. The dashboard examples shown on our site are generally not vendor neutral but are still a great resource for the community to get dashboard-development ideas. We encourage comments at the bottom of every article and dashboard page – this allows our audience to ask questions or perhaps make suggestions to the author. Dashboard Insight is visited regularly by students at business schools including Harvard, St. George and Pepperdine (I know one professor at Pepperdine talks about us in class and encourages his students to visit our site).

One project currently in the works that may be of interest to you is our new “getting started” section. We are launching a special menu system with the needs of the “beginner” user in mind. The goal of this project is to guide someone who may not even know what a dashboard is directly to the information they need. There will be no excessively technical articles found there, just basic getting started-type articles. For example, we will have sections like: “I have mountains of data, what should the next step be?” and “Will a dashboard help me?” A user can select one of these sections and a list of relevant vendor-neutral articles will then be available. This will be a very user-friendly interface. We are currently gathering a list of getting started topics and articles, perhaps you have some suggestions?

We generate our revenue by website advertising via banner ads and our business intelligence directory. This is a level playing field, as all advertisements are weighed equally and no special treatment has been offered to the vendors advertising with us. We even have a section in our directory for anyone in this space to list their company free of charge. All advertisements (both free and paid) are checked by myself to make sure they truly belong on Dashboard Insight. We have turned away many potential advertisers who did not fit in accordingly.

“Level playing field”? “No special treatment”? This email was a perfect opportunity for the Bogdon to reveal Dashboard Insight’s affiliation with Dundas. It should have been obvious that this affiliation would concern me.

Later that year, still not aware of the affiliation, when Bogdon asked if he could republish one of my articles on Dashboard Insight, I responded as follows:

I’m sorry to disappoint you—I really am—but I just can’t have my work featured alongside stuff like this:

He was unhappy with my stand.

Steve I really do not understand your concern with this. Almost all of our content is vendor neutral and published as a resource (learning tools) for this community. The example you have given below is not vendor neutral, no dashboard is as someone created it and expects credit for it. It does however give an example of a dashboard that our readers can learn from. Between you and me this would likely be one for the “what not to do category” but it is still an example. We use these as examples to draw our audience into the site from the search engines. Between these examples and the small amount of advertising (less than 30k per year) that funds this publication we are able to bring the remaining 90% of the articles that are vendor neutral to our audience. Like any business we need to keep the lights on. It is a little confusing that someone like you who lists himself as a leading expert in data visualization that helps organizations learn about this technology is unable to see good in the service we are providing to this community. Being so respected in this community has driven my audience to request your expertise and views on issues from time to time, it would have been nice to bring this to them.

I responded:

You’re reading something into my response that wasn’t intended. I did not say that you’re not providing a useful service. I said that I don’t want my work to be exhibited alongside examples of bad practices. To do otherwise would compromise the integrity of my work and cause confusion. People out there who rely on us for help deserve better. There’s enough confusion out there already.

About six months later I was contacted by Dashboard Insight again, this time by its new leader, Alexander (Sandy) Chiang.

There have been recent changes at Dashboard Insight and I thought this is an appropriate time to reconnect with you. I have been brought on as Research Director at DI and one of my mandates is to up the quality of the content. To accomplish this, I need to start being more critical in choosing the dashboards we feature. Going forward, the articles we post must be aligned with actual dashboard design and data visualization best practices. However, I still have to fulfill the rest of DI’s obligations on posting dashboards and articles for the month of June. After that, it’s a new Dashboard Insight.

I cannot remove content, but what I am going to do is make better content more visible. Suffice to say, there’s a lot that needs to be done and I think a great way to start this new direction is an interview with you. I think this interview will help you get your message to our audience and DI would benefit from information.

If you’re interested, I can send you a list of questions. You can take your time in responding, and once that’s done, we can post it on DI. I look forward to hearing from you.

I was encouraged by Sandy’s plans and agreed to do the interview, which was eventually published on the site. Just before publication, Sandy wrote the following:

Out of courtesy, I wanted to let you know that I will be reaching out to two vendors who you have felt in the past has done a good job at adhering to dashboard and data visualization best practices: TIBCO Spotfire and Tableau. I am NOT saying you are endorsing any of their products in this interview (as you don’t) nor have you suggested asking them for paid promotional activities. In addition, I do not plan on putting their ads anywhere in the actual interview text itself so it doesn’t take away from the intent of the interview. However, I will be pitching the idea of having their banner ads in the usual spots (top of the site and on the right side).

Even though Tableau and Spotfire are two of the relatively few vendors with data visualization products that I like, I discouraged sponsorship.

I would prefer it if no ads were visible in conjunction with the interview. If you can do this, I’d appreciate it.

You’re in a difficult position. By funding your site through vendor advertising, you open yourself to vendor influence. Even if you manage to resist this entirely, this possibility of vendor influence will always undermine the credibility of your site as long as you accept advertising from the very vendors whose work you are supposed to objectively critique. One of the reasons that I rarely write for websites other than my own is because I do not want advertising associated with my work.

Sandy wasn’t able to honor my request. Late in 2011, after he and I had a chance to meet when he attended my public workshop in San Francisco, Sandy asked if I would write an article for Dashboard Insight. Still wanting to support his efforts to improve the site, I initially agreed, but when Sandy raised the issue of vendor sponsorship again, I had second thoughts.

This matter of vendor sponsorship has prompted me to take a fresh look at your website, which has renewed old concerns of mine. Despite your good intentions, your site is still aligned with vendors to an uncomfortable degree. The home page alone made me cringe, with the Dundas ad featured so clearly at the top with its moving bubbles, which is an eyesore that conflicts with the principles of non-distraction that I teach. As I looked further, I found that most of your educational content was written by vendors and is designed to promote their products more than to teach useful principles and practices. Your site would be so much more useful to people if it were free of vendor content.

One of the reasons that I stopped writing for the B-Eye-Network several years ago was the fact that bad products were being promoted alongside my articles, which I couldn’t tolerate because it contributed to the confusion that was already rampant among people who were trying to implement dashboards and other forms of data visualization. I should have thought this through more carefully when you asked me to write a white paper for your site. Had you mentioned sponsorship when we first spoke about this, I would have never considered doing it. Now that this issue has been raised, I find myself in the uncomfortable position of needing to back away from our agreement. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but this decision feels right, given the circumstances. As long as your business model requires you to feature advertising and other content from the vendors, you cannot serve as an objective resource for your readers.

Sorry, my friend. I know that you want to do good work. Until you can find a way to distance yourself from the vendors whose products exhibit most of the ineffective dashboard practices that people struggle with, however, the usefulness of your work will be compromised.

A particular sentence in Sandy’s subsequent response caught my attention: “I do wish I could get away from vendor support but that’s the business model the powers that be have decided.” I wrote him back to ask: “Who are the ‘powers that be’? I assumed that you owned and ran Dashboard Insight independently.” When Sandy responded to my question is when I learned that Dashboard Insight was owned by Dundas Software and that he answered to them.

You can imagine my dismay and disappointment. I responded by encouraging Sandy to make this affiliation obvious on the website. He proposed this to Dundas’ management and afterwards told me that they would eventually follow my advice and make the affiliation known. That was in November of 2011. We corresponded about this several times since, and I could tell that Sandy was doing what he could. Here’s an excerpt from the last email that I received from Sandy earlier this month on March 8, 2012:

I will be leaving Dashboard Insight and tomorrow will be my final day. In the past, we spoke about your concern regarding Dashboard Insight’s non-disclosure of its affiliation with Dundas.

With that being said, Adam (who is CCed on this email) will be running Dashboard Insight going forward. He will address any PR related issues.

I’ll let Adam take over from here.

I haven’t heard from Adam. Perhaps, now that the cat is out of the bag, Dashboard Insight will itself clearly disclose on its website what I have revealed here. If so, visitors to the site who come in need of information will know the source and be able take its interests into account.

Take care,