We Need To Talk: The Blue View Manifesto

We need to talk.

I am continuously surprised at the lack of strong IBM Cognos community content available on the web. With a few notable exceptions Cognos blogs burn bright, die fast and leave a handful of good posts slowly aging into obsolescence.

If you have made a career in Cognos this is a critical time. Cognos can do data discovery, visualization, self-service and collaboration but even IBM seems to lack a holistic vision to stitch it together.  Or else True Blue and the business partners are content to keep it behind the consulting pay wall.

That’s a huge problem. That’s the old world that Tableau and Birst have been sent here to destroy. Yes the new breed of BI tools are powerful and cool and excel in their particular niche, but more than anything they foster a user community that feels connected to one another. Last time I checked Tableau’s forum had over 18,000 posts. Where is IBM’s forum?

That’s a trick question because it doesn’t matter. A software community can only be formed and sustained by a group of people who have knowledge and the passion to share it. The deeply technical how-to’s and the holistic design philosophies have already been crafted by the army of talented Cognos developers.

We just need to talk about it.

So let’s start now.