Interactive Data Visualization

Join me for a mobility microforum at SAPPHIRE NOW next week!

Ryan Goodman — Tue, 08 May 2012 22:04:00 +0000

I am very excited next week to join Wei Wang for a Micro forum titled “Take Your Business on the Road with Mobile BI.” There, I will be answering business or technology questions about the latest technology standards and platforms and apps. There are many and the exciting things I am seeing from SAP and the SAP ecosystem within the business analytics space.

I heard today that they actually scheduled a second session due to popularity so make sure you get it on your agenda quick!

SESSION DETAILS
view details on SAPPHIRE NOW and ASUG Annual Conference Web page

Monday, 02:00 p.m. – 02:45 p.m @ Analytics Microforum BA321

Tuesday, 05:00 p.m. – 05:45 p.m @ Analytics Microforum BA319

Description

This discussion focuses on how to empower your mobile workforce with the latest full-featured dashboard, including on-the-spot statistics with augment-reality technology. Explore the challenges in and benefits of deploying mobile business intelligence (BI).

Campus:

Analytics Campus

SAP Content Category:

Business Intelligence; Business Intelligence; Business Intelligence; Ecosystem and Channels

Shifting Focus From Dashboards to Apps

Ryan Goodman — Fri, 04 May 2012 07:07:53 +0000

If you have been wondering why things have been quiet on my blog, it is because I have been in the trenches with my team grinding out the remaining pieces of GMaps Mobile. This week, we finally loaded up its permanent resting place, GMapsMobile.com along with a short whitepaper I wrote entitled “Enterprise Mobile Apps State of Mind.”

With a most of the hard work out of the way, my team and I now get to build on top of our brand new platform all of mobile location intelligence ideas that were impossible to accomplish within Xcelsius. As a long time Xcelsius evangelist, it has been a liberating process re-programming my brain to think in today’s web standards for design and development. However, I still use Xcelsius one way or another on a weekly basis as Centigon Solutions continuously expands our GMaps Plugin customer base. Given the continued thriving community and Xcelsius success stories, that will not change anytime soon. In fact, immediately after our GMaps Mobile launch we have the next version of GMaps Plugin for SAP Dashboards ready to go, so I am still all-in on continued innovation for Xcelsius.

Now, my time is split where 70% is focused on modern web technologies like HTML5 via our new mobility / cloud offerings. The other 30% is still focused on SAP Dashboards related business, which I am still very passionate about. As we all make this transition together over the next 3-4 years, you will also see more original content on my blog about my experiences using these new technologies to solve existing and new problems.

It should be an interesting ride!

HTML5 Used as Marketing Babel Instead of Technology Value?

Ryan Goodman — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 18:52:24 +0000

I have been following the adoption of HTML5 for a few years when my organization took the plunge in converting our Flash expertise over to the latest open web standards. It has been a painful and eye opening experience, though we picked up a lot of knowledge along the way. During this time, I have noticed several products or demonstrations where HTML5 was a key selling point. The first problem I have with HTML5 as a selling point is most enterprise organizations can’t use HTML5 powered applications on the desktop because of browser compatibility. The second problem I have is some of these applications touted as HTML5 either don’t even use HTML5 at all, or use an obscure feature that has nothing to do with core functionality.

Am I getting caught in semantics?

HTML5 is simply a markup language for web content. The mention of HTML5 does typically encapsulate a host of other technologies like CSS and JavaScript. In short HTML5 takes web applications out of the stone ages but it is most importantly a step forward to provide a new layer of semantics to web content. While HTML5 and accompanying standards make web application development more powerful, it is not quite yet a value proposition for develop once deploy everywhere, and should not be taken seriously unless we are talking about mobile applications.

Why? HTML5 is generally supported across most mobile browsers, but the desktop is an absolute nightmare. Waving an HTML5 wand over an existing software solution, specifically Flash, does nothing for us in the enterprise today unless the intent is mobile integration.

The following chart is a warning to both software vendors and customers who think they are ready for HTML5 on the desktop.

Data from Net Market Share, image by Ars Technica

The small sliver with the #10 is the only version of IE that I feel comfortable using with a modern HTML5 enabled application, though IE 9 does provide a level of support for HTML5. While I personally stopped using Internet Explorer years ago, most enterprises rely on IE as the standard browser.

Is HTML5 worth getting excited about yet?

HTML5 is absolutely something to be excited about because it is an open standard and provides a mechanism to maximize the browser into something much more powerful. The results will allow web applications can behave more like native applications, which you can experience on recent browsers or mobile phones. I think marketing organizations have gotten a little overly excited about HTML5, which is why the name itself no longer refers to a mark up language standard but now a technology buzzword synonymous with being the replacement for Flash.

What do you think..?

Webinar Alert: Advanced Techniques to Design Xcelsius Dashboards Like the Gurus

Ryan Goodman — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 16:05:36 +0000

For those of you who joined me during BI2012 in Vegas a few weeks ago, I promised a follow up session to present the second half of my advanced Xcelsius development presentation. The guys at WISPubs set it up for this week, so I look forward this coming Thursday.

Thursday, March 22, 2012 1:00 PM – 1:45 PM EDT

https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/366715382

WISPubs 2012

Ryan Goodman — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 04:30:35 +0000

This last week, I was at WISPubs BI2012 conference for a few days and presenting a topic: ”Advanced Techniques to Design an Xcelsius Dashboard Like the Gurus”

Unfortunately, while the content was fantastic I had a series of presentation blunders. Two hours of content in a one hour slot is doable with editing… However i didn’t know I only had one hour until the end. I committed to the group a free webinar where I will present the second half. I am still working out the details, so one way or another we will get something setup this week.

For those of you who attended, I do once again apologize for not having my ducks in a row.

Now we all get to look forward to SAPPHIRE NOW and ASUG Annual Conference in May!

Connecting at BI2012 in Vegas Next Week

Ryan Goodman — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 16:33:26 +0000

If you are planning to be at the BI2012 event next week and want to meet up I will be on-hand Tuesday and Thursday. On Thursday morning, I will conduct an advanced workshop on dashboard design where I will address all of the hard questions that new and advanced developers have.

EVENT INFO

Here is a Podcast I recorded with Scott from WISPubs to introduce one of the topics I will discuss: Dashboard Data Overload… Sounds exciting!!
LISTEN TO PODCAST

Hope to see you there!

New Facebook Profile

Ryan Goodman — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 07:11:06 +0000

Today, I created a new Facebook profile that I wanted to share with the community, which will be a permanent channel for collaborating with the community. As you may also notice, you can comment on this blog using your Facebook account, and I will now reply directly from Facebook. The results should make this blog a more social and engaging experience for everyone.

http://facebook.com/interactivevisualization

How will you work smarter in 2012?

Ryan Goodman — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:37:12 +0000

This year I wanted to maximize my time and work smarter, so I can invest my time on more important tasks.. like blogging! As a technologist, I am a firm believer that anything that can be digitalized, should be. Anyone who works with me knows that I am constantly trying to figure out ways to automate and simplify redundant tasks.

A few weeks ago, I added a couple of new products to increase our productivity:

1. Shoeboxed- Hours of organizing receipts are gone for ever. When I get a email receipt, I simply forward it to my address or when Kinkos gives me a printed receipt, I take a picture with it using the Shoeboxed App. Everything is digitalized and converted. At any time I can print out a neatly organized PDF with all of my receipt images. In addition, they have an email-to-mail service that will save me a drive to the UPS store… brilliant!

2. ScheduleOnce.com- This is a tool that I implemented that I believe Google needs to acquire and add as a standard GMail service. This solution solves the back and forth email chain for scheduling meetings. Now, I simply send one email with a link. My customers/partners pick out a time that woks for them and the meeting is automatically scheduled. If multiple members of my team need to be in a meeting, I have a special URL for that too. Now I can get meetings scheduled quicker with less email clutter.

What technology tools do you use to increase productivity life?

Xcelsius Blog You Must Bookmark

Ryan Goodman — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 17:18:16 +0000

Over the last few months, I have been a regular visitor to Josh Tapley’s blog, http://data-ink.com/. His natural design aesthetic coupled with technique is something I admire, and his willingness to share with the community is something that should be appreciated by anyone who is using his tools/techniques.

I reached out to Josh to learn more about him and his experience and wanted to share with you:

Q: When did you learn how to approach dashboard design best practices?

A: I learned about Edward Tufte and Stephen Few right before I began using Xcelsius, which significantly impacted my design style. I’m completely self taught utilizing online blogs (EverythingXcelsius, MyXcelsius and HackingSAP) as well as the very active LinkedIn groups.

Q: When did you start using Xcelsius?

A: My first public splash with my Xcelsius work was for the 2010 Reportapalooza. I continued to practice with the software to make sure that I didn’t lose in 2011 (even though that competition never came). During that time, Kalyan Verma asked me to guest blog on his site and I founded my own blog to showcase my work.

Q: What dashboard are you most proud of:

A: Late summer of last year I placed as a winner in the ‘Dig-In’ category for the Strata O’Reilly Conference in a data visualization competition that was judged in part by Juice Analytics. My interactive dashboard was a Xcelsius solution that I built in a single weekend.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: Now I’ve left my previous career in health care to join Ron Keler (fellow Xcelsius blogger) as a BI consultant at Cleartelligence specializing in dashboard design.

Make sure you check out and bookmark Josh’s blog: http://data-ink.com/

Auto-Fill Feature with Free Component

Ryan Goodman — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 18:18:02 +0000

Today, my team released a free component into our labs page called Input Text. This super-simple component is something that we have used for a long time, and I asked my team to package it up for the community to use and distribute. The driver for this effort was a recent requirement for auto-fill supplied by a customer. Instead of building an auto-fill component, I suggested a technique of combining our input text box with Filtered Summery. The combination worked like a charm and saved the customer thousands of dollars in custom development. From that experience, I wanted everyone to have this new functionality without having to pick up the Xcelsius SDK.

The filtering process is taken care of with Filtered Summary, which allows you to filter thousands of records very quickly as you type in values.

We should have some other incredibly useful templates like this coming soon to the community where we leverage our components with standard Xcelsius functionality to create truly useful experiences.

Get the source files and component