Episode 5 – Leslie Warden – Digging Into the Data

Episode Summary

Welcome to Limitless B.I., a show that interviews real world, innovative business leaders who strive to see beyond the data to produce tangible results in their organizations using business intelligence. In this episode, Dr. Leslie Warden joins the show to talk about her unique role as an Egyptologist and the impact business intelligence has had on her archeological excavations. Leslie speaks to the vast data her and her colleague collect, document, and analyze every time they excavate a site. Finally, Leslie praises the business intelligence dashboard that has allowed her and her team to classify and input data seamlessly.

Highlights

00:59 – Introducing today’s guest, Leslie Warden

01:36 – The moment Leslie knew she wanted to become an Egyptologist

04:03 – Leslie speaks to some of the excavations she’s participated in

08:21 – A non-glamorized look at archeology

10:53 – The primary goal of archeologists

12:26 – How archeologists piece together the past from broken objects

15:32 – Collecting, documenting and analyzing data

18:57 – The incredibly vast amount of data that Leslie and her colleagues collect

20:39 – How business intelligence can help in the collection, classification, and analysis of this data

22:34 – Challenges Leslie has faced incorporating business intelligence into her excavations

30:18 – Modifying the business intelligence dashboard to include classification and input functions

33:32 – Other benefits Leslie has experienced with the dashboard

35:27 – Leslie speaks to the reaction other specialists have had to the dashboard

38:19 – Next steps for Leslie’s use of business intelligence in archaeology

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Looking back on it, it was just the whole kit and caboodle, if you will, right? Animal-headed gods! What’s not to like about animal-headed gods?

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We just move so slowly because we’re reconstructing ancient life based on the little bits and pieces that are left for us. And, if I’m just digging for the showy complete objects, I’m actually wasting 98-99 percent of what’s…

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And then for the analysis, you’re left with a bit of a challenge because there is clearly far too much data from any excavation to be entirely analyzed and entirely published.

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What I have found to be my personal challenge is learning the language of the tech and the tech team and them learning the language of the archaeology so that we can actually have productive conversations.

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It [the dashboard] took that three-step process and made it into a seamless and beautiful one-step process, which of course limits human error.

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I’m a huge advocate for getting people from the tech world and from the computer world involved in excavations because there’s so much that we have to share with each other.

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Links Mentioned

Limitless BI Website

Leslie’s LinkedIn

Episode 4 – Shaun Taylor – Taking Them to School

Episode Summary

Welcome to Limitless B.I., a show that interviews real world, innovative business leaders who strive to see beyond the data to produce tangible results in their organizations using business intelligence. In this episode, Shaun Taylor joins the show to talk about his experience integrating business intelligence dashboards into the educational system. As a former CIO at Tacoma Public Schools, Shaun speaks to the important role that data and metrics have played in the increased graduation rate in his district. Finally, Shaun shares his thoughts on the state of education and the challenges that must be overcome to make a positive change in this human-intensive industry.

Highlights

01:02 – Introducing today’s guest, Shaun Taylor

01:22 – Shaun’s background with business intelligence and technology

02:37 – Shifting into a second career in education

03:01 – The changes Shaun has seen in the CIO role throughout the years

04:23 – What business intelligence means to Shaun

05:33 – How new business intelligence technologies shape out decision-making

06:47 – How Shaun got involved in business intelligence

07:54 – The multiple challenges Shaun faced as CIO of the Tacoma Public Schools

09:50 – The data challenge

11:10 – The challenges that public school systems face

13:27 – The importance of metrics

15:32 – How long it took to extract business intelligence metrics from the public school system

17:18 – Developing business intelligence dashboards

20:26 – Key factors that drove the actions that led to such a dramatic increase in graduation rates

22:07 – How the outside community impacted the success of Shaun’s business intelligence dashboards

23:15 – How the community, school board, and faculty reacted to this data

25:16 – Shaun speaks to the ripple effect this dashboard has had on other school districts

26:31 – Next steps for the Tacoma School District

29:25 – Next steps for Shaun in his consulting business

31:47 – The challenge to change the education system itself

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And when I retired from the navy that’s when I tried to decide how to best leverage what I understood about information and how to help kids.

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What is the definition of success? That became a pretty challenging topic amongst the school board, the leadership of the district and also the community, because everyone had their own perceptions as to what success is.

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By the way, in education, ‘business intelligence’ is not a term they like to use because they think they’re different from business.

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Each two to three years, we added more benchmarks to see what else maybe we can do to influence better results for the kids. By the time we were done, just last year, our graduation rate is up eighty-seven percent from fifty-five percent.

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Education is a human intensive industry.

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Ya gotta have leadership buy-in and ya have to have leadership credibility to be able to pull something off like this.

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We need to hold school districts, administrators, and teachers accountable for what’s happening in schools.

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Links Mentioned

Limitless BI Website

Shaun’s LinkedIn

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