At the end of 2008 the US Army sent a letter to the relatives of about 7000 soldiers who had fallen victim in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead of addressing the letters with the right salutation, all letters started with “Dear John Doe:”. Continue reading ‘It is all in the name’
Monthly Archives: January 2009
The language barrier
Language is the main means through which people communicate. Ironically, it is also the main means through which people fail to communicate.
This problem exists both in an intranational as in an international context.
We do not understand each other although we speak -or think that we speak- the same language or we do not understand each other because we do not speak the same language. In the former case we increasingly have to deal with specific terminology or jargon (think of our diversified business community). In the latter case, we of course have to take into account that there are a great many different languages in the world. Continue reading ‘The language barrier’
The names they are a-changin’
Recently, a Frisian municipality decided to use Frisian names for the localities and streets, in stead of their Dutch versions. (Frisian is a language that is spoken in the province Friesland, in the north of the Netherlands.)
In some cases, this means only a little change in the street type; so for example, ‘Van Sytzamaweg’ is changed to ‘Van Sytzamawei’. In other cases the resemblance is only knowledgeable for people who know both Dutch and Frisian: ‘Spreeuwenstraat’ is changed to ‘Protterstrjitte’.
Language preference issues like this form one of the reasons why streets or localities get a new name. There are also some other situations: sometimes people give a street a new name because they want to remember someone; sometimes it is the reverse: they want to forget the person who was in the old name. Continue reading ‘The names they are a-changin’’
Data Value: it’s how you approach your customer – search for the ultimate data entry form
The graph on the left has been my eye opener. One of our customers showed me the graph and explained that there has been a significant drop in failures or non-validated entries in their customer portal. The number of wrong entries reduced significantly after they updated the data entry form. The cause for that drop is that they seriously looked at their entry screens. The old screens were very obvious for their own employees, but hardly usable for their – or selections of their – customers. It sounds obvious, there is nothing new in it, but it is still the case in many data entry forms, in a lot of customer entry portals. Continue reading ‘Data Value: it’s how you approach your customer – search for the ultimate data entry form’
WOA – SOA is not a disease anymore!
Number 7 in Gartner’s top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2009 is Web Oriented Architecture. With Data Value in your mind you could argue that this might be a typo and that we would expect here SOA – Service Oriented Architecture.
The term SOA is introduced already many years ago by Roy Schulte and Yefim Natis - also from Gartner. And even at the time of the introduction of SOA one could start a dispute about the differences between SOA and CBD – Component Based Development. And there are similarities between that dispute and the dispute between WOA and SOA. My take on it is that already from the beginning of ICT or software engineering one is trying to conquer complexity and still remain the benefits of flexibility or agility. The more the technology becomes mature, the more we are able to tackle this paradox. Continue reading ‘WOA – SOA is not a disease anymore!’
Enrich your contact data by your contacts
This blog is about enrichment of data value, how easy do you want to have it. And in such a way that you don’t need to do it yourself but that your contacts themselves will provide you the enriched information.
Number 6 in Gartner’s top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2009 is all about Social software and networks. Their focus is mainly on the benefits of using the growing virtual social networks for commercial reasons. For Data Value I see 2 observations:
- The data value within and accross social networks. Within because it becomes harder and harder to find the right person, e.g. LinkedIn and search on Henk de Ruiter you will see actual multiple entries for the same person, and … no wonder you will find actually the same person via the ID Henk deRuiter. The cause for these duplications are as for any other datasource. Users (the actual individuals) didn’t know how to use the system (e.g., make a new ID per company that you worked for) or the systems cannot handle the linguistical and cultural challenges of the world. Since a couple of years we see more and more of these networks in coopetition. Where the networks ‘smartly’ use the ID – firstname + lastname – to collect personal and network information. This is not always correct. The challenge is even more in the synchronization, nobody changes things on all networks and everybody trusts that ‘the systems’ will do the right synchronizations. Initiatives of OpenSocial can help in this area.
Continue reading ‘Enrich your contact data by your contacts’