THE NORWEGIAN BI BAROMETER

The Norwegian BI barometer: A survey of BI maturity in the Norwegian market
Are Norwegian companies best in class when it comes to using information for management purposes? Or are they laggards compared to other countries, relying on gut feeling and experience? For the first time there will be a large scale survey of BI maturity in Norway. The survey will give an indication of the level of maturity in using BI in Norwegian companies. The survey will point out which areas are more mature, and which require more attention, both in total and divided by industry and company size. Is your company more or less mature than the industry average? Which areas are most and least mature? Get useful pointers for your own BI efforts at this presentation.

Click here to answer the survey. Your opinion counts!

TICKETS

GOBI2013 will be held in Oslo Spektrum June 10th 2013. When registering you get full access to the sessions, restaurants, cafes, expo and entertainment for the whole conference.

The web shop for conference tickets will ease the job of managing your tickets. Through the web shop you can buy any number of tickets and assign them to co-workers and/or friends who shall attend the conference. Each individual attendee is responsible for updating his or her contact information. When required information has been registered, the ticket will be sent directly to the attendee. Tickets are sent as a PDF containing a QR code on e-mail. Attendees must bring the QR code for registration at the conference site on June 10th. A conference pass will be created and handed out at registration.

Price: 5.900 NOK (EarlyBird, until 15.04.2013)

Price: 6.900 NOK (LateBird after 15.04.2013)

Tickets for GOBI2013 are administrated by Macsimum Event AS

Buy your GOBI2013 ticket here.

Post Conference Seminar with Cindi Howson and Wayne Eckerson

Want to get the most out of the gurus while they’re in Oslo? Would you like to have a deep-dive seminar with BOTH keynote speakers? Attend the GOBI post-conference seminar on June 11th.

Price: 3.900 NOK (Without valid GOBI pass)

Price: 2.900 NOK (With valid GOBI pass from June 10th)

Buy your GOBI2013 Post Conference ticket here.

Questions about tickets? Contact: webshop.gobi@eventsystems.no

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CONTACT US

For questions about the conference, please do not hesitate to contact us.

General questions: info@gurusofbi.com

Phone +47 982 16 400.  Att: Lars Rinnan.

Questions regarding the program:  info@gurusofbi.com

Questions about partnership at GOBI2013: info@gurusofbi.com

Questions about tickets and Webshop: webshop.gobi@eventsystems.no

Other practical questions: info@gurusofbi.com

Phone +47 975 22 172. Att: Anette Aass Flølo

Strategy is important, but it is the execution that counts!

 Jan Johansson, VP Nordic branch of the Palladium Group

You’ve developed a brilliant strategy that promises impressive results—leaps in profitability, unprecedented workforce productivity, increased efficiencies, major inroads into your competitors’ market share, or improved mission outcomes. But can you execute that strategy—put it into action through the right day-to-day processes, operations, and technologies?

90% of organizations fail at execution. That’s because they lack a comprehensive, disciplined system for managing the implementation of their strategy.

This session describes how to make strategy execution a long-term core competency in your organization—no matter what its industry, where it operates, or whether it’s a corporation, not-for-profit entity, or government agency.

Check out this presentation at the Gurus Of BI (GOBI) conference on June 1oth: www.gurusofbi.no

Post-conference seminar with Wayne Eckerson and Cindi Howson

Want to get the most out of the gurus while they’re in Oslo? Would you like to have a deep-dive seminar with BOTH keynote speakers? Attend the GOBI post-conference seminar on June 11th.

Secrets of Analytical Leaders: Insights from Information Insiders Wayne Eckerson, Principal, BI Leader Consulting

How do you bridge the worlds of business and technology? How do you harness data for business gain? How do you deliver value from BI and analytical initiatives? Based on Wayne’s book, “Secrets of Analytical Leaders: Insights from Information Insiders,” this session will unveil the secrets to success of top BI and analytical leaders from companies such as Zynga, Netflix, US Xpress, Nokia, Capital One, Kelley Blue Book and Blue KC, among others. The session will cover both the “soft stuff” of people, processes, and projects and the “hard stuff” of architecture, tools, and data required to create and sustain a successful BI and analytics program.

You Will Learn:

• How to organize a BI and analytics team for optimal performance

• How to deliver value quickly and earn credibility among business sponsors

• How to translate insights into business impact

• How to create and deploy analytical models

• How to create an agile data warehouse

BI Market Update and How to Choose a Visual Data Discovery Tool Cindi Howson, founder of BI Scorecard

As the face for the data warehouse, the BI tool is the most visible component to business users. BI tools continue to evolve to be more appealing, to reach new classes of users, and to speed the time to insight. At this session, BI tools expert Cindi Howson will offer strategies for managing your BI tool portfolio. She will highlight recent trends, the state of the market, differences in core modules, with a focus for selecting and deploying the right tool for the right user. The second half of the seminar provides an evaluation framework for evaluating dashboards and visual data discovery tools.

You Will Learn:

• State of the BI tools market and key trends

• State of BI standardization, motivations and challenges

• User segments, use cases, and tool positioning

• Differences in core modules

• Dashboard and visual data discovery use cases

• Strengths and weaknesses of leading products

The post-conference seminar is open for both GOBI-participants and others. Attend both GOBI main event and post-conference seminar and get discounts.

The post-conference seminar will take place at Dronning Eufemias gate 16, Bjørvika (Visma-bygget), on June 11th.

Agenda:

0800-0830: Registration
0830-1200: Wayne Eckerson: Secrets of Analytical Leaders: Insights from Information Insiders
1200-1230: Lunch
1300-1630: Cindi Howson: BI Market Update and How to Choose a Visual Data Discovery Tool

TICKETS AVAILABLE SOON!

Check out GOBI website www.gurusofbi.no for tickets.

Cool BI: Emerging Trends and Innovations in BI

AV

CINDI HOWSON

 – 22. MAI 2013

0

Cindi Howson, founder of BI Scorecard

It’s hard to be innovative when your BI team is deluged with fixes, fighting fires, and basic data requests.  Yet to move from reactive, report-focused development to break through BI demands innovative BI teams and technologies.
In this keynote, Cindi Howson, founder of BI Scorecard and author ofSuccessful Business Intelligence: Secrets to Making BI a Killer App, highlights:

• Being proactive when there’s no time or budget for innovation
• Evangelizing BI in a culture resistant to change
• Prioritizing innovations that will provide the biggest value
• The trends most disruptive to BI including mobile, social, visual data discovery, big data, and cloud.

Check out this ketnote presentation at the Gurus Of BI (GOBI) conference on June 1oth: www.gurusofbi.no

BI-konferansen GOBI

BI-konferansen GOBI arrangeres for første gang i Oslo Spektrum den 10. juni i år. Dette vil være den største og mest omfattende BI-konferansen som noen gang er arrangert i Norge. Store navn som Wayne Eckerson, Cindi Howson, Donald Farmer, Timo Elliott og Marc Teerlink er på talerlisten.  Flere nye navn offentliggjøres kontinuerlig.

Over 25 partnere skal bidra til at dette blir det mest interessante eventet innen BI i Norge i 2013. Microsoft, IBM og SAP er gullsponsorer og vil etablere egne spor med talere relatert til sin teknologi.  I tillegg vil en programkomite fastlegge øvrige områder og talere etter at frist for «Call for Abstracts» utgår 15. April.  Agendaen vil bli noe du aldri har sett maken til på norske BI konferanser.

Dette arrangementet bør du ikke gå glipp av – her vil du bli inspirert, lære noe nytt, og møte og utveksle erfaringer med store deler av Norges BI-miljø!  Flying Culinary Circus står for mat på ulike restaurant stands hele dagen, hvor man kan mingle rundt og plukke fritt så mange godbiter man ønsker seg.

På kvelden blir det Flying Culinary Circus Show, konsert og mat, drikke og moro!

For mer informasjon og påmelding sjekk ut http://www.gurusofbi.no/

Du kan følge GOBI på Linkedin (allerede 400 medlemmer!), Facebook og Twitter.

My life in Norway: Pursuing the dream (part I)

Before I start telling my dream story, it would be better to say who am I in few lines:

Born and raised in Macedonia, spent 4-5 years in Kosova and then migrated first time in Norway. My family was one of the few interested in science, specially in math, where my father was a math professor and most of my uncles studied math or engineering. I inherited the love to science and math, continued developing my self focused in math by becoming one the best in local, national and international competition of both math and physics (kind of applied mathematics).
Studied computer technology at University of Prishtina and 3 year in row won the University scholarship.

Studied with International professors from Concordia University; Vienna Institute of Technology and Institute Jean Lui Vives.

Even physically in Kosova, my dream was just to move to a more prospered countries to pursue my dream of being a great scientist. I have heard of UK, US and the big american dream, but never thought of Norway....

I moved in Norway some years ago and then I come back May 2010, pursuing my dream for a better career. I never thought that this will the time when the Revolution of my life started. I will never forget the time when I was sitting home and got a call that was actually a job opportunity to work in Norway, to work for one the best companies in the World, Nordic Choice Hotels. I answered with BIG YES and came to the first interview. It was all by the plan, the first interview was successful. Waited in Oslo for a couple of days, where I got invitation for the second round which was decisive. One day after that, I got the call of my career, saying the your job opportunity is now a job offer. Without hesitating I said YES and that was the biggest "yes" of my life, because what happened after proved this conclusion. Still not understanding in what wonderful world I was stepping in.

After signing the contract and some official paper work I started to work in June/July. I was thrilling to start with my new company and bring the successful project of Business Intelligence into live.I had time read and understand the business concept and strategy of Nordic Choice Hotels, so I was ready to dive in directly to the solution.

One of the biggest highlights of my career here is meeting the owner of Nordic Choice Hotels and bunch of other business around Norway, Mr. Petter A. Stordalen. His ability to give energy at any time in the company was special. You could feel his absence or his presence without seeing him at all.


Me and Petter Stordalen at Garden Party

During the time being at Choice, I had the opportunity to meet other important people as well, so I learned a lot from them.

Me and my department made great efforts on creating the best BI solution for the company in a given condition and situation. So we excelled by creating this solution presented in the video:



But things came to an end, sometimes without our willing, so in April I had to change my job and pursue my professional dream at Nextbridge AS. 

Why Nextbridge AS?

NextBridge is an IT-consultancy dedicated solely to business intelligence (BI). The company encompasses more than 100 years of collective experience in this field. Our services span most areas of the BI field; from DWH to reporting, from scorecards and dashboards to data mining and statistical analysis, from BI Competency Centers to maturity analysis. 
NextBridge assists the largest and most demanding clients in improving their managerial information. Our client segment is Norwegian Top 500 accounts and include Sparebank1, SG Finans, Gjensidige, BNBank, Helse Nord and NorgesEnergi . NextBridge consultants are bilingual, and speak both business and IT. Our mission is ”Bridging business and IT at the next level”. Our vision is to be the reference in the field of BI.

The blog post is public, I would not share too much of the details, so I will just jump to give a introduction of my professional profile:

""
I am an IT professional with focus on Business and Data Analytic, prefer to call myself Data Scientist. I have in depth experience using and implementing business intelligence/data analysis tools with greatest strength in the Microsoft SQL Server / Business Intelligence Studio SSIS, SSAS, SSRS. I have designed, developed, tested, debugged, and documented Analysis and Reporting processes for enterprise wide data warehouse implementations using the SQL Server / BI Suite. I also have designed/modeled OLAP cubes using SSAS and developed them using MS SQL BIDS SSAS and MDX. Served as an implementation team member where I translated source mapping documents and reporting requirements into dimensional data models. Strong ability to work closely with business and technical teams to understand, document, design and code SSAS, MDX, DMX, DAX abd ETL processes, along with the ability to effectively interact with all levels of an organization. Additional BI tool experience includes ProClarity, Microsoft Performance Point, MS Office Excel and MS SharePoint.
""

Professional highlights:

1. Worked for Capgemini Norway AS

2. Worked for Nordic Choice Hotels AS

3. Working for Nextbridge AS


Academic Honors:

MIT Honor Code Certificate: CS and Programming (04.06.2013)

Harvard University Honor Code Certificate: Computer Science (15.04.2013)

Princeton University Honor Code Certificate:  Analytic Combinatorics (10.07.2013)

Stanford University Honor Code Certificate: Mathematical Thinking,, Cryptography (06.05.2013)

The University of California At Berkeley Honor Code Certificate: Descriptive Statistics

IIT University Honor Code Certificate: Web Intelligence and Big Data (02.06.2013)

Wesleyan University: Passion Driven Statistics (20.05.2013)

MCTS 70-448: Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 Business Intelligence Development and Maintenance

Career Highlights:

1. Over Nine years of experience in the field of Information Technology, System Analysis and Design, Data
    warehousing, Business Intelligence and Data Science in general

2. Experienced in implementing / managing large scale complex projects involving multiple stakeholders and
    leading and directing multiple project teams

3. Track record of delivering customer focused, well planned, quality products on time, while adapting to
    shifting and conflicting demands and priorities.

4. Experience in Data warehouse / Business Intelligence developments, implementation and operation setup

5. Expertise in Data Modeling, Data Analytics and Predictive Analytics SSAS, MDX and DMX

6. Strong Knowledge in Data warehouse, Data Extraction, Transformation, and Loading ETL

7. Excellent track record in developing and maintaining enterprise wide web based report systems and portals in Finance, Enterprise wide solutions and BI and Strategy Systems

8. Best new employee for 2011 of Nordic Choice Hotels AS


Achievments:

1. First place in reagional math competitions in 2 years in a row

2. First place in Physics competition in a Balkaniada (Balkan Olympics in Theoretical Physics)

3. First place in fast math competition in International Kangourou Competition

4. First place in Norway in Microsoft Virtual Academy (Microsoft Business Intelligence)

Research Work:

1. Riccati Differential Equation solution (published in printed version Research Journal)

2. “Everything” comes from “Nothing”: The Intelligent Universe, published IJSER 10 October edition

3. Personal Finance Intelligence; published in IJSER 8 August 2012 edition

4. Predictive Analytics vs. Data Mining (Is DMX dead already?) in Silicon India

Next you will read: Life in Norway: Living the dream (part II), STAY TUNED!