Insight Address: "The Visual Organization: Data Visualization, Big Data, & the Quest for...

@philsimon

Phil Simon Thought Leader, Technology

Expert, & Author

Insight Address

“The Visual Organization: Data Visualization,

Big Data, & the Quest for Better Decisions”

“The Visual Organization”

Hi. I’m Phil.

Who am I?

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• Award-winning author of six

books, most recently The

Visual Organization

• Speaker, consultant, and

technology expert

• Huge Breaking Bad fan (more

on that later) @philsimon 3

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Netflix Stats

• Roughly 40M customers

• Nearly $20B market cap

• Responsible for nearly one-

third of all US weeknight

Internet traffic

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Data as of April 16, 2014

Netflix Facts

• Single biggest AWS customer

– 2012 Christmas day outage

• In September of 2013, Netflix became the first

non-TV network to win an Emmy for House of

Cards

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The Netflix Data Credo - 1

• Data should be accessible,

easy to discover, and easy to

process for everyone.

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Source: Netflix - tinyurl.com/tvo-netflix

Computers and Algorithms only get

you so far…

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Augmenting Existing Data

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• Comedies

• Dramas

• Westerns

• Documentaries

Move Far Beyond Simple Genres

77,000 Subgenres of Movies

• Dark Suspenseful Sci-Fi Horror Movies

• Gritty Suspenseful Revenge Westerns

• Romantic Indian Crime Dramas

• Evil Kid Horror Movies

• Visually-Striking Goofy Action & Adventure

• Violent Suspenseful Action & Adventure from the 1980s

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Source: The Hollywood Reporter

The Netflix Data Credo - 2

• The longer you take to find

the data, the less valuable

it becomes.

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Example

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Stats

50,000 Netflix subscribers

watched all 13 episodes of

Season 4 of Breaking Bad the

day before Season 5 premiered.

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Source: The Hollywood Reporter

The Netflix Data Credo - 3

• Whether a dataset is large

or small, being able to

visualize it makes it easier

to explain.

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What does Netflix know about each of its

40M streaming customers?

• What they watch

• When they watch

• The device on which they’re watching

• When they pause and/or resume watching

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• He with the most data doesn’t win.

• In an era of Big Data, success hinges on what

an organization does with that information.

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Characteristics of a Visual Organization

• Eschew “set it and forget it”

• Encourage data exploration and discovery

• Augment creativity with troves of relevant information

• Buy and build new tools as necessary

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5 Lessons from the Book

• Big Data can augment and refine creativity

• Experimentation is paramount

• Walk before you run

• Avoid the “quarterly visualization mentality”

• All data is not required to begin @philsimon 24

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Connect with me

www.philsimon.com

@philsimon

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Questions

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