Professional networking? Yo! BlankedOut Sucked

Martyn Richard Jones

Hello, readers.

Before my Aunt Dolly went to a better life she received a handwritten letter from her dear friend and long-time admirer Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling, which was to be passed on to the CEO of, what he called, an interweb professional dating site. Now, she didn't actually give me a precise name, so I now find myself at a loss. So, if there's anyone out there that recognises who this might have been written for, then please let me know.

What follows is Sir Arthur's text, as relayed to my Aunt Dolly. 

Dear Mister Def Archibald Quengler,

We've never met, and we probably never will, and I don't much like the cut of your jib, but, I would like to take this opportunity to draw your attention to the demise of a once burgeoning professional dating site where decent chaps and chapesses and an assortment of pathetic likeminded individuals could share likeminded individual things. Such as pictures of cats, sexist crap, professional resumes, tips and tricks, insightful comments, 'me too' inanities, hype, boloney, mendacity, political detritus and even worse religious detritus.

Personally, I blame lack of national service and the parents… oh, and the teachers.

Anyway, I am writing to you in the tepid hope that your amazing and absolutely fabulous online concern does not fall victim to the same malaise.

You may have heard of the once significant, successful and utterly sensational BlankedOut web setup, it was a so called professional link-up site for pros, or some such dreck.

I am reliably informed that people loved BlankedOut, just a bit, and that they also hated it even more. Many people said to me "BlankedOut is the Facebook of the crass and dim-witted wannabe class, and apart from some minority exceptions, it is a gushing channel of crap and a conduit of intense mediocrity." But, not being aware of the game, I was in no position to make a judgement. I will leave that for others.

BlankedOut has been variously described as "a place where capital interests took us for a ride", and where members were generally treated as hapless schmucks, captive clowns and useful idiots, and that according to the observers on the hustings, they did it in such a way that people lapped up the ride.

My distinguished colleague Mister Bernice Hill, PhN observed that, as a role model for a Big Data and Big Data analytics company, that BlankedOut "sucked, big time".

He went on to state "It sucks from top to bottom, from left to right, and around the whole global enchilada." Bernice was tough, a hard-hearted man, and he had a way with words.

The former judge Sir James Beauchamp, also didn't hold back when he stated "From its obtuse, obnoxious and incessant promotions of sponsored rancid 'content' to its insipid, trite and fatuous love-affair with its god-damn-awful Effluence®s and fawning sycophants, BlankedOut stood as a shining internet beacon of manipulation, exploitation and hypocrisy." I seem to recall a certain Barnie Puddle as being one of the mendacious and manipulative of the Effluence®s. But, whatever, as the young people are want to say these days

So, you see. I knew bugger all about the matter of these sorts of high-class professional career-oriented pimping sites, past or present. But now, and you may call me an incurable romantic, when I look upon the history of the deceased BlankedOut community, as dead as a Norwegian blue, what I see is something that leads my thoughts to visions of a massive work of misuse, abuse and deception. 

Which is not a good omen.

Of course, alternatives to BlankedOut existed, but they were ascetically professional and did not venture much into the wild-side of vulgarity, populism and cant. They stuck to their core competences, like troopers, and trusted their clientele to be just as serious, decent and professional as they were. More fool them, what?

But not so, at poor, dead and despised BlankedOut, lying in a state of disgrace, like some sort of dead pisshead society on a pyre of burning nothing.

So, Mister Def Whiner, heed my word, don't let your business turn into yet another BlankedOut. If ever there was one, an abject lesson in snatching failure from the jaws of success.

Carpe diem, man, carpe diem!

So, I just have this to tell you, and I will say it only once. Good will to all women and men and all of that.  If you are still an admirer of what was that dreadful BlankedOut business model,,, then, bugger off and take your bloody dogs with you!  

Yours sincerely,

Sir Arthur Greeb-Streebling

Admiral of the Grand Fleet, retired

Well, nothing much to add from me. Sir Arthur seems to have said it all. Although, I would still like to know who this letter is supposed to have been written to, because try as I might, I can't track down anyone who goes by the name of Mister Def Archibald Quengler. That stated, the next time I am in Palma de Mallorca I will ask my Aunt Dolly, now that she is in a far better place and has more free-time on her hands.

Next week I will be looking at financial scams that concern greenhorns, their parentages and protectors, culture establishments, incongruous financial arrangements, the government and more importantly, the police and the judicial system.

Stay tuned.

Many thanks for reading.

The golden age of Big Data bullshit

Without a shadow of doubt, we have entered the golden age of Big Data bullshit.

In these postmodern times of always-on, instant-gratification, and vain superficiality; where crapulence has become the new credible, mean boloney the new benign and trite the new treasure; it is hardly surprising that banality has been elevated to the status of wisdom and knowledge.  

So, in spite of what the good people at the prestigious house of Gartner have been saying, the Big Data hype-cycle is far from over. This is why I believe that we have entered what might be fairly albeit humorously described as the golden age of Big Data bullshit.

Now, I remember the renaissance of Data Warehouse boloney, and some of it was outrageous, and in many cases perpetrated by the very same companies (and in some cases, people) who are now spreading the Big Data doo-doo around, thick and fast. But although it has some parallels with the golden age of Big Data bullshit, the comparison doesn’t really do justice to either.

When I started on my first Data Warehouse projects, there were no Data Warehouse success stories in Europe, it was just all too new. Sure, I had been doing things like managing the design and build Information Centres and MIS solutions in the eighties, and the projects I was involved in and responsible for were largely successful, but they weren’t the full-Inmon DW enchilada, and sometimes these solutions became unstuck and in unpredictable ways. Later, with satisfied DW users and successful deliver of DW projects, came a slew of tangible, coherent and verifiable success stories. But it wasn’t all about success, as more than fifty percent of so called Data Warehouse projects were accidents waiting to happen. Nonetheless, there were enough tangible, coherent and verifiable Data Warehouse success stories around that the task of providing this sort of information to interested parties wasn’t turned into an onerous task of ‘inventiveness and creativity’.

Up until that point, at least on my own Data Warehousing projects, success was based on the understanding that for success to be assured the process had to be absolutely business driven, market focused and technology based.

Sometime around 1995, technology companies realised that Data Warehousing was no longer going to be a simple niche solution. So what did they do?

I’ll tell you.

All of a sudden new and massive marketing campaigns were oriented to ensure that Data Warehousing was seen primarily as technology driven, technology focused and technology based. Even if the supposed outcome was to be a large population of pleasantly surprised DW users and business stakeholders. The key to all things wonderful in DW land was to be technology. Technology, technology licenses and technology services.

So, what happened next?

Well, the massive-shift to Data Warehousing as being mainly a technical solution almost killed the fatted calf, the goose that lay the golden eggs and almost gave away all of the Data Warehousing the family silver, in one fell swoop. From those days, the world of Data Warehousing never truly recovered from that massive cluster**** - a massive and naïve act of Homeric strategic incompetence committed by those in the IT industry who should really have known better.

Big Data is like that, but worse. There is no Inmon of Big Data. There is no coherent development process. Unsurprisingly really, as there is no real equivalence at both the business or market level, and what connections there are between technologies employed in both are almost purely coincidental.

Inmon Data Warehousing was a pragmatic and business oriented solution framework looking for technologies. It was side-lined by corporations looking to maximise their hardware and license sales, and by service providers who based their models on maximising offshoring, maximising hours worked per artefact, minimising quality and by creating and selling seriously dodgy contractual agreements.

Big Data is about niche ‘roman census’ technology looking for a problem. So far, in many domains, where no suitable and obvious challenge actually exists.

So, Big Data is an entirely distinct proposition.

One way or the other, like it or hate it, so bereft is the Big Data world of success stories, beyond the usual triad of Google, Facebook and Amazon, that the leading influential pundits of the day are ‘obliged’ to eke out success stories elsewhere.

How many times have we read Big Data success stories, that…?

1.      Were actually success stories from another area, such as a success story from Data Warehousing or Business Intelligence or Statistics?

2.     Weren’t actually success stories at all, but lazy, misleading and inaccurate notions about how Big Data might be applied.

3.     Were simply taking advantage of some human tragedy or another in order to schlepp Big Data snake-oil medicine around the social media.

Sure, it's all nonsense. But it's nonsense that means that evwerything becomes much more complex, and unnecessarily so. That things are done that should not be done, that projects fail that should not fail, and that any superficial initial savings on offshoring are wiped out because deliverables are basically unusable.

So, when I hear terms such as ‘amazing’, ‘guru’ and ‘influencer’ mentioned in connection with Big Data, well, what more can I do than reach for a nice cup of tea.

That's quite enough about that for now. I hope it makes sense to you and that you can avoid any nasty surprises in the future. Whether in Big Data or Data Warehousing.

Many thanks for reading.

As always, please share your questions, views and criticisms on this piece using the comment box below. I frequently write about communication, data, information, knowledge, strategy, organisational leadership and information technology topics, trends and tendencies. You are more than welcome to keep up with my posts by clicking the ‘Follow’ link and perhaps even send me a LinkedIn invite. Also feel free to connect via Twitter, Facebook and the Cambriano Energy website.

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12 Amazing Big Data Success Stories for 2016

12 Amazing Big Data Success Stories for 2016

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Every year I ask myself the same question. Will there be any tangible, coherent and verifiable Big Data success stories in the coming year? Every year I come up with nothing. Nothing at all. "Sorry, no rooms at the Big Data Success Inn, as we are closed for vacations."

However, this year things are different. More positive, more alive and more fantastic.

As you can probably guess, I am well excited to be able to reach out and tell you about the twelve amazingly fab Big-Data stories that will appear during the course of 2016. The year of the incredible, startling and awesome Big Data monkey.

To this end, and as this is a magically special occasion, I have made an extra-special effort to deliver the goods, to do full justice to the task, and to go that extra Big Data kilometer for my demanding readership.

So, I gazed into Madame Frufru's crystal ball, I opened up the kimono with the Ouija spirits of Von Neumann, Babbage and Jobs, and I pushed the envelope in the vast disruptive solution-spaces habited by Ada Augusta, Audrey Tautou and Jennifer Saunders… and, I came back with the best of the best.

I only hope it was all worth the blood, the sweat and the tears.

So, here for your veritable delight and salutary entertainment, I give you the twelve remarkable Big Data success stories of 2016.

Big Data leads to massive government savings – 2016 will be the year in which right-thinking, common sense and pragmatic governments around the world will leverage Big Data to bring about a radical reduction in government expenditure. Unchained from the dogma of professionality, administrations will replace overpaid, over-educated and over-bearing statisticians, with Data Scientists who can produce 'the required numbers', a priori, and at a tenth of the cost. If this works well, as no doubt it will, other professions, such as medicine, teaching and the law enforcement agencies, will also be subjected to the Big Data treatment. Why pay a professional Doctor, Teacher or Police Officer their exorbitant fees and salaries, when a Quack Scientist, Chalky Scientist or Plod Scientist can fill their places, and for a fraction of the cost.

Big Data clamps down on gum chewing in Singapore – Radical Polymer masticating criminals are the bane of the upstanding street-walking citizens of Singapore. However, in 2016, this will change. Why? Because Big Data will be used to identify, track-down and apprehend gum-chewing, sidewalk spoiling and anti-social spearmint-breathed offenders. Yes, capital punishment for such offenses may seem harsh, but remember, if Hadoop says it is a heinous crime, especially if it's backed up by expert social media opinion, then it must be right.

Big Data solves the Climate Change conundrum – Following the amazingly successful climate talks in Paris this year, 2016 will herald in a period of fantastic adjustment in how climate change is seen, measured and addressed. No longer will Climate Change it be seen as a threat or a problem, but as a seriously good opportunity for market capitalism in general, and Big Data in particular. Measurement of temperature changes will no longer be made, but massive Big Data technologies will collect climate change opinions from global social media, and that will be our unique guide to the actual effectiveness of the fight against things 'getting too hot'. Big

Data will lead the way, and factor 10,000 sun blocker and super-mega walk-in fridge-freezers, will follow.

Big Data helps put Real Madrid back in the top tier – The BBC* might not like it, but Big Data will triumph in sport in 2016, thanks in the main to its innate ability to help Real Madrid win the Champions League, the Spanish League, and the Spanish King's Cup. Even though the mighty-whites have already been eliminated from the last of these competitions (for fielding a Big Data player who was under a match ban). Okay, so Big Data can't get it all right, but no one is perfect.

*Bale, Benzema and Cristiano.

Big Data knocks out Data Warehousing – In 2016, Big Data will finally put Data Warehousing to bed. It's been on the cards for a while now, but in 2016 it will be proven beyond any shadow of doubt that the best input into strategic, tactical and operational decision making are massive concatenations of simple word counts, done on a vast array of what people are now describing as commodity hardware. Commodity hardware, to distinguish it from the other hardware that we were using up until now, which was also confusingly termed 'commodity hardware'.

LinkedIn publishes its first ever Big Data success story – Incredible, but true. In 2016, LinkedIn will get its resident Big Data guru, data master and influencer to document a tangible, coherent and verifiable Big Data success story. It will matter not a jot that it is a knock-off plagiarism of a late nineteen-ninety Data Warehousing partial success-story, as it's the thoughts, and not the facts, that count.

Queen Brenda inaugurates the Lady Di Memorial Big Data Lake – During 2016, HRH will inaugurate the former Windermere Lake as the new Lady Di Memorial Big Data Lake. Millions of subjects will hail this as a clear success story for Big Data and for Britain. The inauguration day will be slightly marred (no pun intended) by a gushing Big Data guru being told to beggar 'orf by none other than Phil the Greek.

Big Data housing becomes an issue of significant importance to the EU – Because of the incredible speeds amazingly valuable Big Data is being created at, the EU will move to take measures to capture and more importantly store all of this new Big Data. There will exist an existential realization that none of this life-giving Big Data should be lost or compromised, or both. Chancellor Merkel has already come out strongly and offered to take much of the generated Big Data in 2016, which will be housed in both public and private premises. For example, each German household will be asked to house volumes of Big Data based on the size of the family abode, the internet bandwidth and the number of smart phones im haus. France and Spain will follow suit, but with modestly reduced quotas. The UK will spend most of 2016 trying to opt out, and will even threaten a Big Data Referendum if the onus on them to take so much Big Data is not radically reduced. So, in net, a win-win for Europe and Big Data.

The CIA will be charged with custodianship of all Big Data success stories – During 2016, together with the custodians of Fort Knox, the CIA will be charged with custodianship of all tangible, coherent and verifiable Big Data success stories, and only those who should know, and can handle the power of information, will have access to the files. This will be done to avoid information of global importance from falling into the hands of evil-doers, delinquents and busy-bodies. This is a success story because it will demonstrate once again a truly tangible, coherent and verifiable Big Data success story. The Head of the FBI was unavailable for comment.

Big Data solves world issues – For years we have struggled to see the elephants in the global room. Now with the help of Big Data, not only will we finally be able to see them, but also we will have a key component of the solution within a click of the mouse and a rapid stroke of a smartphone gesture. Yes, hunger, poverty and the refugee crisis can all be identified in 2016, thanks mainly to Big Data. What's more, if we get the political will to do so we can also think of ways of partially, or wholly, fixing those problems. Although admittedly that is a 'big ask' of Big Data, especially in one enormously hectic year, where the focus of attention will be mainly on the UEFA European Championship, the Olympics and the war on terror. Now if that isn't a Big Data success story then I really don't know what is.

Big Data success stories to top a million by the end of 2016 – Thanks to a global and socially responsible market-driven initiative to reclassify Microsoft Access and Microsoft Excel as Big Data repositories, the number of Big Data success stories for 2016 will amazingly exceed a million, and that's just in Milton Keynes.

Democratic Elections replaced by Mega-Democratic Big Data Social Media Mining – Sick and tired of having to turn out to vote every four years? Tense, nervous pre-election headaches over not being able to think, weigh or decide? Worry no more. Thanks to advanced social-media mining techniques, from 2016 the election of politicians will be decided not by you – least not in the legacy way – but by a broad interconnected raft of machine learning, sentiment analysis and other data science gizmos – guaranteed 100% democratic. This is what we have all been waiting for. The end of old fashioned and boringly DIY-democratic elections, and the heralding of a brave new world of online interactive social-media politics. Don't look at it as the trivialization of democracy, the puerility of post-modernity and the throwing away of centuries of fights for civil and human rights, look upon it as being real progress – progress with a capital pee.

On the other hand, what 2016 might really herald might just be The Golden Age of Big Data Bullshit.

Let's wait and see.

Thank you so much for reading.

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Big Data: And the hype played on

MARTYN RICHARD JONES

In spite of the best-efforts of Hadoop evangelists, consulting houses, and IT infrastructure and service vendors, Big Data – hailed as the greatest thing since the dawn of greatest things – is failing, and dramatically so, to produce the necessarily corresponding quantity and quality of tangible, detailed and verifiable success-stories.

So, given the dearth of Big Data success stories, why are so many in the industry still banging on with troll-like insistence about the ‘indisputable’ relevance, importance and universal applicability of Big Data?

Seen from where I stand, and I don’t think I am particularly unique in this respect, a lot of arrows are pointing towards a quieter future for Big Data, one where it has far more limited use than was once imagined, a data niche rather than a data driven all-encompassing market-based revolution. But obviously not everyone is sharing that view, at least not ostensibly so.

The fact of the matter is this. That in spite of what the good people at the prestigious house of Gartner have been saying, the Big Data hype-cycle is far from over. In fact, we have entered what might be crudely yet accurately described as the golden age of Big Data boloney.

When I survey the Big Data landscape and see companies, organisations and individuals continue to bang on the Big Data drum like as if it was going out of fashion, it’s quite embarrassing. Acutely so. Even for someone who isn’t participating, either actively or passively, in the Big Data dog and pony bestiality-show.

So, what’s happening with the Big Data in-crowd? Words were coming to my mind, words such as overcompensation, projection, doublethink, denial, delusion, social, awkward, wacky correlation and non-existent causation. But none of these were entirely satisfactory. Lacking, as they do, in conveying any sort of coherent, tangible and credible explanation of the continuing and burgeoning Big Data hype phenomena.

Then it dawned on me. Black tulips.

Industry players and Big Data pundits are inexplicably engaged in what is at best a zero-sum game, and at its worst has clear parallels with the hubris, wilful ignorance and  greed which lead to the last major global financial crisis and also has nasty parallels with the dot-com bubble.

So, the next time you are reading a gushing puff-piece on Big Data take this advice to heart. Instead of thinking about the author as a friendly adviser, think of them as an unqualified, unregistered and unregulated financial adviser who is trying to flog you something that they probably don’t understand and that they have no idea how to value – remember, all they are thinking is in their ‘commission’.

More to the point, don’t go repeating the same talking points as if they were facts you can take to the bank, when you yourself are unsure about how reliable those ‘facts’ might be.

Stated simply. There is very little which could be more suspect than an announced global revolution in Big Data, a revolution that is accompanied by a dearth of tangible, detailed and verifiable success-stories. So take good note of what is really going on.

If someone deceives you once, it’s their fault, if they deceive you twice it’s your fault. If you then go on to ‘do unto others what has been done unto you’, then expect to be rightfully derided and decried.

Be professional, be on the side of the angels, and do the right thing. In the longer run you will thank yourself for your wise choices.

Many thanks for reading.

Something funny happened on the way to the Data Lake

When one surveys the vast array of Big Data tomes and the even vaster output of the regularly amazing Big Data bullshit babblers, one thing that strikes you immediately is that Big Data isn’t explained starting with a story about the marvellous useful applications that you might imagine are generating all of this additional Big Data, but instead they almost invariably dwell on all of the data generated by social media applications of dubious business value and even more dubious social value.

Basically we are being led to believe that applications of peripheral interest, that is, peripheral in the grander scheme of things, are capable of simultaneously meeting almost all of our immediate needs and also of generating a voluminous wealth of data detritus that is somehow going to bring about an amazing economic revolution, the awesome galvanising of innovation and the creation of absolutely fabulous riches beyond the dreams of avarice.

What’s more, every day some Big Data proselyting dope has a cunning plan and pops up on the web like a drunken gopher with some extrapolating and theorising boloney about the quite unusual successes of very unusual businesses such as Facebook, Twitter and Google and then hammers square pegs into round holes in order to produce a generalised theory of awesome Big Data irksome-foolishness that will certainly mean, without a doubt, that we will see the raising of the luck and fortunes of all businesses, everywhere, if only they would buy into the Big Data religion, now.

If you don’t believe me then check it out for yourself. For example, take a look at the Big Data channel over on LinkedIn, now that it’s been apparently taken over by the master guru of astro-turfing Big Data bullshit and babble himself, it now comes with wall to wall Big Data hype, and it’s all the same, and it’s all so obviously wrong that it makes you wonder if LinkedIn is not deliberately converting itself into some species of professional laughing academy, for idiots by idiots, with no room for even the occasionally and superficially contrarian.

In fact, looking at some of the latest blunderbuss blasts of blatant bullshit I am reminded of the quote ascribed to Groucho Marx which I will makeover for modern-day consumption: “These are my Big Data principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.”

The golden age of the Big Data babbling bullshitters

ONCE MORE... WITH A VENGEANCE!!!

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Many thanks, Martyn.

Pundits far and wide are hailing the end of the period of big data babble, hyperbole and bullshit and are looking forward to an epoch of practical, tangible and verifiable Big Data success stories.

Gartner themselves came out some time ago and declared that Big Data was no longer in the hype cycle. Some took this as a sign that the Big Data bullshit bonanza was over, others were more cynical and suspected a highly orchestrated ruse, a move to the next level in the game plan.

But does this new attitude towards Big Data really ring true?

Accompanying this apparent bold openness, frankness and humility in the ranks of the rehabilitated Big Data bullshit babblers there is an awful lot of what appears to be ‘more of the same’. Or as the people of Thailand might say, “same, same, but different”.

As some of you might know, I am the administrative owner of The Big Data Contrarians community group on LinkedIn, and even I was somewhat taken aback by a recent piece by Bernard Marr entitled 20 Stupid Claims About Big Data. So much so that I wrote a fairly complimentary comment on LinkedIn about it. The thing is, even as a posted it I was thinking to myself “you’ll be sorry”.

Today I read yet another Big Data ‘reformation’ piece on LinkedIn Pulse, this time from Matthew Reaney and with the compelling title of The 5 Myths of Big Data.

Call me naïve, call me illusory, and a believer in humankinds need for basic decency, but I frequently have the idea that praising moderately acceptable behaviour leads to even more good behaviour. But it was not to be, and as fast as one could say ‘what the hell is going on here?’ back came a surfeit of astroturfed Big Data bananas – from all directions - bigger, brasher and more bogus than ever before.

Make no mistake, Big Data hype hasn’t gone away, it has become more subtle, more cunning and even more misleading.

Leading the charge is the initiative to discredit Data Warehousing by all means possible, and the amount of bullshit, disinformation and blatant lies doing the rounds is beginning to look like Big Data hype reflecting Big Data itself, if only in terms of the vast volumes, varieties and velocities that this Big Data babbling bullshit comes in.

But seriously, we are simply getting more of the same, as the end of the Big Data hype war is declared, we are subject to a bombardment of Big Data boloney via Cloud, IoT, the Hadoop ecosphere (as if using Hadoop was someone linked to ecology and saving the planet), and especially this incredibly obnoxious and dopey vehicle for Big Data tripe known widely as the Data Lake – more on that stupidity at some other time. But onwards and upwards…

This all reminds me of a joke from many decades ago, retold in part from memory.

A teacher was looking for a subject about which her class pupils could write, to set as a homework exercise.

After much deliberation she decided to as ask the children to write about what they thought of the police?

Sure, not a good question, I know, and as I stated, this was many decades ago, when even grown-ups could be innocent and naïve and hopeful.

Anyway, when the children had handed in all their essays, the teacher read the essays and was disappointed to find that most of them were very wishy-washy and that the children were almost all unanimously indifferent or grudgingly respectful of the police, except for one. One of the children, let’s call him Dave, was very critical and had written “I don’t think much of the police.” When the teacher asked Dave why he had written that, he replied “All police is bastards, Miss”. The teacher was vexed by the reply, but being a good and caring teacher she considered how she could change this obviously hostile view of the bobby on the beat and the police detective taking evil doers out of circulation, so she decided to do something about it.

She had a bright idea and took her problem to the police and discussed what could be done to give the children a much more positive view of the police and the work they did, so they would see the police as a necessary part of society, to be respected but not feared.

As a result, the teacher and the police organised a police day at the school. It was a big party, with lots of free goodies, badges and posters, rides in patrol cars, sirens, interesting stories and a movie, and a big discussion with the police dog handler and his faithful and brave police-dog, Ajax. The police took special interest in Dave, he was the one they wanted to convince the most, and he was the one they made the most fuss of.

At the end of the day, the teacher again asked the children to write about what they got from the school police day that she had organised.

The following Monday, after all the essays had been handed in by the children, she sought out and read Dave’s essay, eager with anticipation.

This time it contained the surprising phrase of “I really, really don’t think much of the police.”

Again, the teacher asked Dave why he had written what he had wrote, especially considering all the effort the police had gone to in order to leave a good and lasting impression with the children in general, and Dave in particular.

He simply replied “the Police is cunning bastards, Miss.”

Personally, I have respect for the professionalism, courage and hard work of many officers in our police forces, but when it comes to my view of certain Big Data pundits – and naming no names, just watch my eyes - the feeling is not the same.

Make of that what you will.

Many thanks for reading.

If you enjoyed this piece or found it useful then please consider joining The Big Data Contrarians: https://www.linkedin.com/grp/home?gid=8338976

Many thanks,

Martyn.