Last week I went to the MicroStrategy World conference in Las Vegas.   It was a jam-packed full two days of learning and networking.  It was also my first time in Las Vegas as an adult.  Truly, there were a lot of new experiences for me!

The kick-off general session began with a Gwen Stefani impersonator who fooled most of us in the audience into thinking she was the real thing.  We should have known, we were in Vegas, after all!  

I spent most of my time in the technical sessions learning more about Intelligence Server and administrative components like Integrity Manager and Enterprise Manager; in the evenings we explored Las Vegas in all its glory and exchanged notes on what we had learned that day.

I love going to conferences.  I think it’s because I love to learn and am always looking for ways to improve the work I do with my clients.  After any conference I have a long list of new things to try and I feel rejuvenated and excited to get back to work to put all my new found knowledge to use!   This conference had an added benefit in that MicroStrategy just released a new version of their software and each session was focused on showing all the cool new stuff it can do!  It helped me expand my knowledge and showed me how to take advantage of the new features.   Of course, I also gambled $2 and came out ahead $1.37 – but I had to spend $1.99 on a package of band-aids for all the blisters I attained while walking down the Strip…. But I still think I came home a winner!

There seems to be a lot of activity on the BI front these days.  As the world emerges from its recession darkness, BI is there to welcome it with open arms.   BI bloggers all over the blogosphere are making predictions for the new year and touting their top 10 trends and predictions for 2010; most of them share common advancements:  cloud BI tools, improved analysis and advanced visualization.

I’ve been glancing through these articles and started to consider what the future might look like in a sci-fi world.  So, taking these three advancements into account, this is my vision of Sci-Fi BI.

Cloud BI tools exploded into the market in 2009.  They combine the appeal of getting data out there quickly with a visual dashboard that contains the results of the analysis.  Dashboards contain all the classic elements of gauges, bar graphs, pie charts and the like, with some cool Flash widgets that make a dashboard super cool.  In a sci-fi world, this concept would be taken to the next level.

Let’s consider the advancement of data visualization over the past few years; I recently wrote a blog about a few of my favorite data visualizations.  Using tools like Adobe Air or Microsoft Silverlight allows for a more flexible and dynamic visualization application.   In the sci-fi world, data would be continuously added to a database/data warehouse or, even better, read directly from transactional systems; analytical tools would process the data and feed its results to a free-standing or web-based visualization application.  This application would be accessible through your computer or your smart phone; or a big screen in Times Square.  

The visualizations that you would be presented with would go way beyond the pie charts and gauges of a typical dashboard today.  Your business intelligence would be presented like a news ticker complete with advanced visualizations, and, at any time, you could glance at the images and get a feel at that moment for what’s happening at your business.   The tools might even “ding” you when something significant happens and you could immediately see what’s afoot.  Imagine your BI reporting in the same way news is reported.  You could even have a full-time analyst that adds BREAKING NEWS tickers.  

That’s how I see sci-fi BI.  I’ll finish with a J.G. Ballard quote “Everything is becoming science fiction. From the margins of an almost invisible literature has sprung the intact reality of the 20th century.”

Your dashboard design needs to be simple and clean with a focus on the data.   Your challenge is to display all the required information on a single screen in a way that can be instantly digested and with minimal distractions.  The idea is that the less the business user has to think, the better your dashboard design.  

There are a lot of theories about the layout of dashboards, but there are no hard and fast rules.  The basic tenet is that a dashboard needs to be customized for its purpose, well organized, concise and free of distractions.  There are some elements that need to be considered:  

• Windows:  If you have  too many windows the mind can’t focus on any one of them.  Generally good dashboard designers don’t use more than 6 windows in a 3 x 3 symmetrical layout.  The windows should be equally sized to be the least distracting.
• Widgets:  The widgets you use need to make sense based on the data it’s representing and be easy to read and understand.  If you have animation it should be controlled by the business user rather than run automatically or in a continuous loop.
• Colors:  The color scheme should be neutral and if you’re conveying information with color, check it out in black and white:  10% of us are color-blind and different monitors render colors differently

It's a good idea to perform user testing to be sure the dashboard is user friendly, particularly if you have a lot of interactions.  Finally, make certain you get input from your business users; they know what they need and like.