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I am in Boston this week for a software User’s Conference, and I had an opportunity to share in two remarkable and energizing experiences.

In Boston this week the Spotfire Software Company held its annual User Conference in Boston. If you are not familiar with Spotfire, it is a unique visual data analysis product, with broad applications in many areas. The core of Spotfire is a high-performance Windows client that allows the user to bring large data sets into the tool, and find patterns in the data that are novel or unexpected. The power of the product is that it is highly visual and interactive, and lends itself to exploration, or as the company says – “Continuous What-Iffing”.

I spoke to this group Tuesday on Data Architecture. I stressed the importance of building a properly structured star-schema data mart to deliver aligned, integrated data to the Spotfire tool. As part of that talk, I related to the group what I called a “Spotfire Moment”.

With this interactive tool, it is possible to load a large complex data set, and through the use of interactive charts and “slider” query tools, quickly focus on an important subset of the data, and reveal the relationships in the data. I related my experience in reviewing a brand new data set of clinical patient stay data with several physician clients. Their jaws hung slack as I was able to partition and display the data from many angles – the “Spotfire Moment”.

The other moment in Boston was last night. I was on a dinner and latin dance outing with a young relative, a Boston University student. (Note: fully sanctioned and approved by my governing body, my wife The Reverend). We emerged from the dark club into the street, in the midst of pandemonium. A large noisy mob had formed down the street. Cars were honking, people were shouting. A man on the edge of the mob held up his cell phone for a distant listener to participate.

We were one block away from Fenway Park, then home of the Boston Red Sox baseball team. The Red Sox had just beat the Hated Yankees in a unbelievable come-from-behind seven-game playoff, and were on the way top the world series. We moved away from the area, and had to push against a torrent of fans pouring down the sidewalks and flooding into the streets.

Strangers were hugging. A trolley went by full of singing people. In a remarkable spontaneous outpouring, the people were streaming to the Mother Church of Boston Sports, Fenway Park.

Larry Cone.

Learn more about Spotfire at www.Spotfire.com.