Thursday, September 19, 2013

Curiosity + Technology + Passion = Amateur Discoveries

In his TCC13 Keynote Christian Chabot did an awesome job talking about how the great discoverers are jazz artists. They were able to combine logic with intuition and discover insights that changed the world.

While we are indebted to these geniuses for their contributions, there are examples of amateurs who have leveraged technology, curiosity and passion to make significant discoveries too.

Angela Micol, an armchair archaeologist using Google Maps has potentially discovered 2 lost Egyptian Pyramid complexes.

Donald Harden, a  California school teacher deciphered the Zodiac Killer's message (a 408 symbol cryptogram) over a weekend.

Mary Anning, made a number of important dinosaur fossil finds and changed our understanding of the history of the earth. She started out collecting sea shells.

Nate Silver, proved all the political pundits wrong by exactly predicting the 2012 elections.

William Herschel, a musician, dabbled in astronomy and discovered Uranus with a telescope he built himself. Astronomy is one field where you keep hearing about amateur discoveries. With the right technology, anyone with passion and curiosity can be an expert.

The point here is that every organization has an Angela Micol, a William Herschel or a Nate Silver. These are people that are curious and passionate about data discovery, but sadly their organizations do not provide them with the right technologies. The technologies they have access to, tend to be so complex and time consuming that they actually sap the passion and curiosity out of the employees. So much so that they end up getting frustrated with data.

Imagine if you could provide your people with a business intelligence tool that is simple and intuitive that anyone can learn quickly. A tool that makes your data come to life. A tool that your people can use to play with the data. A tool that helps your data tell a story. A tool that reignites that passion and curiosity in your people. A tool that can help your people see and understand data. That is the power of Tableau.


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