This time of year people often write about their reviews of the past year, but I’m going to take a slightly different tack by going for a long view of the past by sharing with you a recent interview I gave to SyncSort regarding the evolution of BI. You can read the interview published yesterday here:

Expert Interview Series: Stacia Varga of Data Inspirations on Improving Business Intelligence

I started my official BI career in 1999, but I had been “doing BI’ for much longer before that. I just didn’t know it had a special name before then! And prior that point, I didn’t know a thing about star schemas or OLAP or ETL. With nearly 20 years of BI under my belt, and a few books written, several conference presentations delivered, many projects with customers undertaken, and tons of classes taught in-person and online, I have seen ideas and products come and go, but the business problems haven’t changed much. Technology has been changing by leaps and bounds meanwhile. There were things we could only dream of in 1999 that are relatively accessible capabilities in today’s BI landscape. I don’t have a crystal ball about the future of BI, but I do know that we as data professionals need to continue to evolve, adding new skills to our repertoire and helping others use the newer technologies successfully. That’s pretty exciting to me! Here’s to another 20 years!