Contributor: Steve Swoyer
        
Stephen  Swoyer is  a technology writer with more than 16 years of experience. His writing has  focused on business intelligence, data warehousing, and analytics for almost a  decade. He’s particularly intrigued by the thorny people and process problems  most BI and DW vendors almost never want to acknowledge, let alone talk  about.
 
 
All articles by Steve Swoyer
        
     
        
                    
                
                
	                
                    
                                        
		            
                    A recent AlphaGo victory is being touted as a Big Win for artificial intelligence (AI). It's a no less important win for machine learning, which might be in the midst of a renaissance. 
                    
			            - By Steve  Swoyer
 - February 25, 2016
 
		            
		            
                
                    
                    
                    
                 
            
                
	                
                    
                                        
		            
                    Software development is in the midst of a transitional period, thanks to the emergence of use-oriented models like DevOps, which are revolutionizing application development, delivery, maintenance, and enhancement.
                    
			            - By Steve  Swoyer
 - February 24, 2016
 
		            
		            
                
                    
                    
                    
                 
            
                
	                
                    
                                        
		            
                    A new survey tackles a topic that's captivated thinkers from Aristotle to Jane Austen to Dale Carnegie: persuasion. Persuasion is a device -- a skill -- used in all human interactions. In many cases, it's the reason for human interaction: we communicate, we collaborate, we tell stories in order to persuade. 
                    
			            - By Steve  Swoyer
 - February 23, 2016
 
		            
		            
                
                    
                    
                    
                 
            
                
	                
                    
                                        
		            
                    In the New Information Economy, self-service use provides an empirical basis for demand. If people repeatedly use self-service tools to construct certain kinds of data flows, to perform certain kinds of analyses, or to access and integrate data from as-yet-unmanaged internal or external data sources, that's a critical signal to IT. These are use cases that must and should be identified, standardized, and productized as reusable information assets. 
                    
			            - By Steve  Swoyer
 - February 22, 2016
 
		            
		            
                
                    
                    
                    
                 
            
                
	                
                    
                                        
		            
                    Proponents of data warehouse automation say the way we design, build, and manage data warehouse systems is obsolete. They say ingenuity, not labor, is the most important contribution human beings can make to the design, development, and optimization of the warehouse.
                    
			            - By Steve  Swoyer
 - February 19, 2016
 
		            
		            
                
                    
                    
                    
                 
            
                
	                
                    
                                        
		            
                    Canadian National Railway puts big data to work keeping its system safe.
                    
			            - By Steve  Swoyer
 - February 17, 2016