As I progress through a deeper experience (and hopefully a greater understanding) of not-so-big-data, I've come to realize that Ye Olde Blogge needs a bit of a tech refresh. Nothing really out of my comfort zone, but a few changes to make that old, familiar sweater feel more comfortable in 2013. Therefore, I've made a few minor changes to the look, and updated the title- which now more closely aligns with my philosophy on data.
I'd like to take a few steps back and try to explain why #notsobigdata is vitally important, possibly even more than Big Data or Megatrends. By the way, I did not read John Naisbitt's Megatrends, but I do remember seeing it in bookstores (does anyone remember bookstores?)
#notsobigdata, though, is both important and timely. It does not necessarily appeal to larger corporate consumers, but rather to ordinary folks, SOHOs and SMBs... a whole lotta acronyms that identify data producers and consumers... folks that, if they knew how to gather or interpret data, could possibly compete more successfully with the big players in their respective industries, or budget money better.
My #notsobigdata is focused on insurance and entertainment at this particular moment. Insurance and entertainment may seem like strange bedfellows to the casual observer, but have you ever considered how much media you have purchased in the past year? Have you ever considered how you would replace it should something catastrophic happen? In other words, if you have a collection of media that is stolen or destroyed, how would you recoup that loss?
The "cloud" is a consideration, I suppose. You could store all of the data about your collection(s) there. The problem I have with the cloud is that its hardly private- and this is true of all of your web-based email as well. I've never been really comfortable with posting all sorts of photos on the internet, which is the primary reason I don't post many pictures- and the ones that I do post are generally not of persons. I also take steps to control PII (personally identifiable information)- which is why nicknames are often used in this blog.
Not to belabor the point, as I've mentioned this at least a few times- the biggest problem I have with data is actually entering it into the tables or worksheets (I'm currently using both Excel and Access for this project). It's not that I mind doing it, it's just that I'm not particularly quick (~30 wpm). And, I don't have enough data in some of the tables yet to justify making some nice-looking front-end which could speed the data entry process. I do see a future for dashboards, though, and possibly some sort of map-like application. Alas, those things are the toys which may be in the database of my future- but for now, I have to be content with building my as yet to be glorious database one cell at a time.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
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