Eric D. Brown

MARCH 19, 2019

How many times have you followed a recipe while cooking something in the kitchen and had the result turn out not to be quite what you expected? If you’re like me, more times than not. Sure, the result is edible (usually) but isn’t quite what you expected or what was described in the recipe. Recipes don’t always work. Recipe’s are great starting points for cooking great food, but a good cook will tweak that recipe to create something that is perfect for them / their

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Eric D. Brown

JANUARY 23, 2019

I’ve recently written about the risks of machine learning (ML) , but with this post I wanted to take a step back and talk about ML and general. I want to talk about the ‘why’ of machine learning and whether you and/or your company should be investigating machine learning. Do you need machine learning? Maybe. Maybe not. The first question you have to ask yourself (and then answer) is this: Why do you want to be involved with machine learning?

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Eric D. Brown

JANUARY 18, 2019

Late last year I had the opportunity to spend a week in Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP). Strangely, I’d never actually been to RMNP although I’ve been just about everywhere else around RMNP. The trip was part of a trip to nearby Denver for a conference so I didn’t get as much time to spend in the park and surrounding areas as I’d wanted to, but I did spend every morning in the park for sunrise – and loved every second that I had there.

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Eric D. Brown

JANUARY 11, 2019

I call this one “On the way to Zion” Captured with Canon 5D and Canon 17-40 handheld on the way into Zion National Park. See more photos in my 500px portfolio. If you like my photography , feel free to support my addiction habit by purchasing a copy for your wall and/or visiting Amazon (affiliate link) to purchase new or used photographic gear.

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Eric D. Brown

JANUARY 3, 2019

For those of you that might be new to data, keep this small (but extremely important) thing in mind – beware data mining. What is data mining? Data mining is the process of discovering information and patterns in data. Data mining is the first step taken in the Data -> Information -> Knowledge -> Wisdom conversion process. Data mining is extremely important – but can cause you a lot of problems if you aren’t aware of some of the issues that can arise from data mi

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Eric D. Brown

NOVEMBER 30, 2018

Sunrise over Sprague Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park, Estes Park Colorado. Made with Sony A7rIII and Sony 16-35 2.8 GM Lens. Click the photo to be taken to a larger version on 500px. See more photos in my 500px portfolio. If you like my photography , feel free to support my addiction habit by purchasing a copy for your wall and/or visiting Amazon (affiliate link) to purchase new or used photographic gear.

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Eric D. Brown

NOVEMBER 27, 2018

Organizations today are facing disruption on all fronts, which should viewed as a good thing as it allows organizations to redefine their strategies, their markets and re-create their organization to be better prepared for the future. This disruption is one of the driving factors behind digital transformation initiatives. In order to successfully complete these transformation projects, companies must build a foundation of properly managed data.

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Eric D. Brown

NOVEMBER 20, 2018

Digital transformation has taken center stage in many organizations. Need convincing? IDC predicts that two-thirds of the CEOs of Global 2000 companies will have digital transformation at the center of their corporate strategies by the end of 2017. Four in 10 IT leaders in the Computerworld 2017 Tech Forecast study say more than 50% of their organization has undergone digital transformation.

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Eric D. Brown

NOVEMBER 13, 2018

What would you do if you had so much data about your customers that you know could know (almost) everything about your customer when they contacted you? Better yet, what if you had the ability to instantly know the exact offer for service or product that would pitch the right ‘sales’ approach that your customer would immediately sit up, take notice and spend money?

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Eric D. Brown

NOVEMBER 6, 2018

According to some estimates, data scientists spend as much as 80% of their time getting data in a format that can be used. As a practicing data scientist, I’d say that is a fairly accurate estimate in many organizations. In the more sophisticated organizations that have implemented proper data integration and management systems, the amount of time spent sifting through and cleaning data is much lower and, in my experience, more in line with the numbers reported in the 2017 Data Scientist Report

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Eric D. Brown

NOVEMBER 2, 2018

This is a black and white of a sunrise over Sprague Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park, Estes Park Colorado. Made with Sony A7rIII and Sony 16-35 2.8 GM Lens. Click the photo to be taken to a larger version on 500px. See more photos in my 500px portfolio. If you like my photography , feel free to support my addiction habit by purchasing a copy for your wall and/or visiting Amazon (affiliate link) to purchase new or used photographic gear.

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Eric D. Brown

OCTOBER 12, 2018

Sunrise over Sprague Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park. Made with Sony A7rIII and Sony FE 24-70mm f/2.8 GM Lens. Click the photo to be taken to a larger version on 500px. See more photos in my 500px portfolio. If you like my photography , feel free to support my addiction habit by purchasing a copy for your wall and/or visiting Amazon (affiliate link) to purchase new or used photographic gear.

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Eric D. Brown

OCTOBER 5, 2018

I recently spent a (way too short) week in Rocky Mountain National Park. Luckily while there, I was able to make it out every morning to try to get some good sunrise / early morning photographs. Made with Sony A7rIII and Sony 16-35 2.8 GM Lens. Click the photo to be taken to a larger version on 500px. See more photos in my 500px portfolio. If you like my photography , feel free to support my addiction habit by purchasing a copy for your wall and/or visiting Amazon (affiliate link) to purchase

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Eric D. Brown

JULY 30, 2018

Everyone’s working on digital transformation projects. Much like ‘big data’ or ‘machine learning’, digital transformation is a phrase that you hear every day across just about every organization. The problem with digital transformation is that its not the end goal… you don’t set a goal of ‘being transformed’ especially when you’re looking at the digital space.

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Eric D. Brown

JULY 13, 2018

A capture from the Tulsa Zoo’s Eagle exhibit. The eagle’s in this exhibit are all injured and unable to care for themselves. Made with Sony A7rIII and Sony 100-400 FE G Master lens. Click the photo to be taken to a larger version on 500px. See more photos in my 500px portfolio. If you like my photography , feel free to support my addiction habit by purchasing a copy for your wall and/or visiting Amazon (affiliate link) to purchase new or used photographic gear.

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Eric D. Brown

JULY 6, 2018

I’ve always wanted to get a photography like this (a road leading off into the distance). This isn’t quite what I had in mind, but its close. Captured in the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge near Lawton OK. Made with Sony A7rIII and Sony FE 24-70mm f/2.8 GM Lens. Click the photo to be taken to a larger version on 500px. See more photos in my 500px portfolio.

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Eric D. Brown

JUNE 29, 2018

Oklahoma isn’t known for ‘mountains’ but there are a few areas in the state that are actually quite hilly and – officially – called mountains. The Wichita Mountains are in the Southwest portion of the state near Lawton Oklahoma. Within this range is the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge run by the US Fish & Wildlife Service.

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Eric D. Brown

JUNE 13, 2018

Machine Learning Risks are real and can be very dangerous if not managed / mitigated. Everyone wants to ‘do’ machine learning and lots of people are talking about it, blogging about it and selling services and products to help with it. I get it…machine learning can bring a lot of value to an organization – but only if that organization knows the associated risks.

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Eric D. Brown

MAY 15, 2018

How much is bad data costing you? It could be very little – or it could be a great deal. In this article I give an example of what the cost of bad data really is. A few days ago, I received a nice, well designed sales/marketing piece in the mail yesterday. In it, a local window company warned me of the dangers of old windows and the costs associated with them (higher energy costs, etc etc).

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Eric D. Brown

MAY 7, 2018

Everyone’s talking about machine learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) these days. If you are a CxO or work in IT or marketing, I’d bet that you hear these terms more than you probably want to. It feels an awful lot like the early data of Big Data or Business Intelligence or the days when the “Intranet” was first making waves within organizations.

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Eric D. Brown

MARCH 12, 2018

“But… all of our models have accuracies above 90%…our system should be working perfectly!”. Those were the words spoken by the CEO of a mid-sized manufacturing company. These comments were made during a conversation about their various forecasting models and the poor performance of those models. This CEO had spent about a million dollars over the last few years with a consulting company who had been tasked with creating new methods and models for forecasting sales and manufacturing.

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Eric D. Brown

FEBRUARY 16, 2018

A few weeks ago, I traveled to Sedona Arizona for a few days. While there, I was able to sneak out and get a few sunrise photos. Here’s the first of a few that i’ll be sharing over the next few weeks. Captured with Sony a7R III and Sony FE 24-70mm f/2.8 GM. Purchase a print of Sunrise colors over Sedona here.

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Eric D. Brown

FEBRUARY 5, 2018

I’m regularly asked about how to get started with big data. My response is always the same: I give them my big data roadmap for success. Most organizations want to jump in a do something ‘cool’ with big data. They want to do a project that brings in new revenue or adds some new / cool service or product, but I always point them to this roadmap and say ‘start here’ The big data roadmap for success looks starts with the following initiatives: Data Quality / Data Mana

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Eric D. Brown

JANUARY 12, 2018

This post is written by Mathias Lanni (Executive VP, Marketing – Velocidi). Agile management and scrum-style techniques have long been accepted in fields of technology development, but have been increasingly adopted outside the tech industry over the years. Fundamentally, agile tactics are a way for organizations to more quickly adapt to quickly-changing markets and customer demands, without the slow-to-change hidebound nature of top-down hierarchical organizations impeding change.

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Eric D. Brown

DECEMBER 31, 2017

2017 was an interesting year for me. I bought a new house in February after being homeless for about 4 months. In October 2016, my wife and I sold our house and spent the 2.5 months of 2016 and the first 1.5 months of 2017 traveling around the Southwest (we spent the time in Colorado and New Mexico). Our plan was to spend 6 months to a year traveling around the country but we both realized quickly that we need a ‘home base’ and weren’t cut out for living out of vacation rentals

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Eric D. Brown

JANUARY 2, 2018

Imagine you’re the CEO of XYZ Widget company. Your Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), Chief Data Officer (CDO) and Chief Operations Officer (COO) just finished their quarterly presentations and were highlighting the success from the various machine learning projects that have been in the works. After the presentations were complete, you begin to wonder – ‘are these machine learning models good enough?

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Eric D. Brown

NOVEMBER 20, 2017

“When should I use deep learning?” I get asked that question constantly. The answer to this question is both complicated and simplistic at the same time. The answer I usually give us something along the lines of ‘if you a lot of data and an interesting / challenging problem, then you should try out deep learning’ How a much is ‘a lot of data’?

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Eric D. Brown

NOVEMBER 2, 2017

If you don’t know, I’m a bit of a data nerd. I’ve been writing about big data, data science, machine learning and other ‘new’ stuff for years. I believe in data science and I believe in big data. I’m a fan of machine learning (but think you probably don’t need it ) for the majority of problems that the majority of organizations run across.

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Eric D. Brown

OCTOBER 12, 2017

A few weeks ago, I spent an afternoon talking to the CEO of a mid-sized services company. He’s interested in ‘big data’ and is interviewing consultants / companies to help his organization ‘take advantage of their data’ In preparation for this meeting, I had spent the previous weeks talking to various managers throughout the company to get a good sense of how the organization uses and embraces data.

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Eric D. Brown

OCTOBER 9, 2017

As part of a tutorial on Text Analytics and Visualization I just finished over on technical blog called Python Data (where I blog about using python for data analysis), I took a look at all 1400 posts over the last 11 years (11 years!). The findings weren’t surprising but they are interesting (at least to me). First, a visualization. This is a network map of the top three keywords from each of my posts and their association with other keywords.

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Eric D. Brown

OCTOBER 3, 2017

The world has become a world of data. According to Domo , the majority of the data (roughly 90% of it) that exists today has been created within the last two years. That’s a lot of data. Actually…that’s a LOT of data. And it’s your job to use that data to make better decisions and guide your organization / team to a brighter future. Whether you’re in marketing, IT, HR, Finance, Sales or any other function within an organization, you have data and you need to figure out how to use tha

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Eric D. Brown

SEPTEMBER 18, 2017

In a recent article I wrote over on CIO.com titled Want to Speed Up Your Digital Transformation Initiatives? Take a Look at Your Data , I discuss the importance of data quality and data management in an organization’s digital transformation efforts. That article can be summarized with the closing paragraph (but feel free to go read the full version): To speed up your transformation projects and initiatives, you need to take a long, hard look at your data.

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Eric D. Brown

JULY 10, 2017

At least once per day, I’m reminded of the “I love technology” song from the wedding scene at the end of Napoleon Dynamite. You know the one. Napoleon’s brother is getting married and sings a song to his bride. I’d link you to a video of that awesome song but none that I found seem to have audio, so I’ll just link you to the lyrics.

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Eric D. Brown

FEBRUARY 16, 2017

Just a reminder to everyone out there: This isn’t Data Magic… it is Data Science. The word ‘science’ is included there for a reason. I would LOVE for magic to be involved in data analytics. I could then whip up a couple of spells and say “abra cadabra’ and have my data tell me something meaningful. But that’s not how it works.You can say fancy incantations all day long, but your data is going to be meaningless until you do some work on it.

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Eric D. Brown

FEBRUARY 3, 2017

This is a multi-bracket, slow shutter capture of Cascade Creek near Durango CO. Captured with Canon 5DsR and Canon 16-35 f/4 L. See more photos in my 500px portfolio. If you like my photography , feel free to support my addiction habit by purchasing a copy for your wall and/or visiting Amazon (affiliate link) to purchase new or used photographic gear.

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Eric D. Brown

JANUARY 25, 2017

I was recently talking to a CIO friend of mine. She has a really good team of people working for her and has recently gone through a hiring spell where she has six new-ish employees on her staff. All six have been at the company from anywhere between 1 month to 7 months. While talking to this CIO, she was relating some stories of a few of these employees.

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Eric D. Brown

JANUARY 13, 2017

A capture of some of the rapids in Cascade Creek. Captured Canon 5DsR , Canon 16-35 f/4 L. See more photos in my 500px portfolio. If you like my photography , feel free to support my addiction habit by purchasing a copy for your wall and/or visiting Amazon (affiliate link) to purchase new or used photographic gear. Purchase an image of Middle of Cascade Creek.

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