So today is Donnie Berkholz‘ first day as a RedMonk employee.

When we started on the search to hire an analyst with deep analytics skills a few months back I had no idea we’d find somebody so good. We had plenty of outstanding candidates throw their hats in the ring, but Donnie has the skillset we need now.

“So if you love developer tools, methods and mores, and want to be a developer advocate – pushing the biggest tech companies on the planet to do a better job serving developers, if you can tell stories that resonate, can riff with authority, and you know how to get the most out of logs and available data sources to build and stand up thesis about Developer Experience and how to improve it we’d love to hear from you.”

In my first email to Donnie I described him as a “terrifyingly good candidate.” In the intervening time I have only become more impressed with him.

People bandy around the term data scientist, but of course any scientist is a data scientist… and Donnie is the real deal. He was a Fellow in Physiology & Biomedical Engineering Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine at the Mayo Clinic, doing stuff like:

and Using a conformation-dependent stereochemical library improves crystallographic refinement of proteins.

His previous role explains why we had to wait a couple of months before he could join us. When you’re doing disease research you can’t just swan off at a moment’s notice. So we have a PhD on the team. If you’re supposed to hire people that are better than you are then RedMonk is on track.

But what does biomedical engineering have to do with developers? Well Donnie is a developer at heart, and has been a long term open source contributor, a leading light in the Gentoo Linux distribution.

He understands, and does a great job of explaining How Assholes can Ruin Your Project (with data!). Our recent Monktoberfest conference was the first time I had seen Donnie speak, and I was impressed. No drama, just data.

In this age of Social Business you’d think we’d be looking for social in an analyst hire. Honestly- that wasn’t a huge deal for us this time around. But even during the hiring process I was blown away by the fact Donnie just dovetailed with us. If I wrote a post Donnie commented. If Stephen tweeted about some data, Donnie explained how to normalise it. He friended me on every social network I use, and engaged. More than any other candidate Donnie just became a natural part of the team… before we even made the final decision to hire him.

Honestly, I feel humbled that someone of Donnie Berkholz caliber has chosen to join us. He is passionate about RedMonk’s role as developer advocates, and that’s why he threw his hat in the ring. RedMonk is a purpose-driven company, and Donnie shares that purpose.

It may have taken us a while to get our new RedMonk Analytics platform into shape, but he will make a huge difference there. Its a business now, rather than an idea. I look forward to introducing Donnie to our community and our clients. I am sure you’ll all welcome him to the team.

So data is at the nexus of pretty much everything awesome in tech right now. Hadoop is changing the world, Big Data is the air we breathe, businesses are finally waking up to the instrument-absolutely-everything-and-analyse-the-data-world.  The web has changed the world forever when it comes to analytics. If your business isn’t data driven get ready to be run over by competitors that you probably haven’t realised are competitors yet. RedMonk is not immune to the data contagion. We are currently hiring a data scientist and storyteller (watch this space) as we sell a our new voice + data plan to customers.

I have been working on a video series talking to issues around the changing data management and analysis landscape, and it kicks off today. The sponsor is Actuate, the People Behind Birt. I say sponsor but perhaps a better word is Patron, as per my take on the New Patronage economy. If this is pay for play then I am happy to play. Seriously. Actuate left the content totally to my discretion. I don’t talk about products in the video series, I just talk to the issues as I see them. Actuate will use the content to try and push traffic into its marketing funnel, but I have to say I am knocked out by the approach the firm has taken. Lets face it – a lot of analyst content paid for by vendors is just that – paid for- and it shows. RedMonk generally doesn’t do white papers because we are not about asking vendors for permission, we are not about quibbling over adjectives in publications, we are not about becoming a “message from our sponsors”. The message needs to be by us, for us. Its not our job to say how much vendor A rocks. Any analyst report without market context provids little or no value. I see it as the analysts role to provide market context, so if our reports don’t do that, well then… they are not analysis, they are PR.

We’re not going to go there, which is why I am so glad that RedMonk clients understand they’re playing a different game by different rules, because we’re playing a different game by different rules. To understand the new game you could do a lot worse than subscribe to Mike Maney aka @the_spindmd – this deck is hugely insightful about the new Social web of influence. Think Alcatel Lucent is staid? On the contrary – it has game.

So does Actuate. Lets face it – its easy for a new commercial open source startup to emerge around some code. The cost models and everything else make sense – especially with VC funding and an exit plan. But for an established proprietary player like Actuate to become an open source leader, as it has with BIRT, is much harder. New revenue models, new comms models, new everything models, and investors that don’t really understand how the world has changed because for them it hasn’t.

So I just want to thank Actuate for being a patron, and I really want the video series does drive some traffic. I’d appreciate it if you helped drum up some attention for it. Here is the first one – and yes I am sending you over there. The first topic is Using Visualisation For Discovery.

So finally back to the why of data. The punchiest deck I have seen on the value of data lately came from founder of Buyosphere Tara Hunt. It was written for company founders, but we all need to think more like them, because they are coming.

Gartner certainly fosters chatter in the “independent” analyst community. How could we not talk about the 900 lb Gorilla? Ever since the Altimeter Group got a gravitational slingshot from Forrester one of the topics under discussion is the Star Analyst firm, and whether a big firm can be one. Can larger firms celebrate their analysts as individuals, or must they have a Corporate Voice and Line?

Anyway I recently posted a response to a conversations the Enterprise Irregulars are having, and thought I might as well cross post here. The Irregulars are some of the smartest guys in the room, with a rough and tumble yet touchingly familial culture. Get Well Soon Vinnie.

Here is what I said:

I see plenty of *stars* at Gartner. and they are all allowed to use twitter and so on. My opinion of the firm has actually improved in recent years (please read further coverage from me here and here).

Far more engagement, far more transparency, and I have some really good friends there. Gartner has plenty of really high quality people and I would happily take advice from Nick Gall (@ironick) or Thomas Otter (@vendorprisey) or Kirk Knoernschild (@pragkirk) or any number of folks. I am loving the more collegiate atmosphere I see at this firm.

Of course the analyst model is to some extent busted, because so much of it predicated on purchasing decisions, rather than running better operations. The quadrant is just the money maker that allows the business to pay the kind of salaries that can pull the likes of Michael Gartenberg (@gartenberg) back into the fold. Scaling a services business is hard. Of course Gartenberg is a Star Analyst- he has more twitter followers than I do

My friend Hugh Macleod lives in Alpine Texas. He is a cartoonist and inspiration. Being in Alpine has given him enough isolation to turn the inspiration into work. One of his new shticks is business cards for selected influencers, pushing the social object angle. I made the list! I made the list! So now what?

What’s a social object? Something that draws people into the conversation, which draws them into the service, which draws them into the web that any good businessperson spins.

I say business cards is a new shtick. But of course its not. Hugh is famous as GapingVoid, “cartoons on the back of business cards”. He used to doodle on the back of his cards from a NY advertising agency, as a nice little conversation starter to go with a martini or four.

“You like my cartoons? Great – lets talk about ‘em once you get your tongue out of my mouth.”

Hugh is a renaissance man. A great writer (I think he is more interesting than his mentor Seth Godin), he has sold wine, Saville Row Tailoring, but most of all himself. See- the business card above is supposed to be for me-but I am writing about Hugh. Watch out for his next book – Evil Plans.

The card Hugh made for me speaks my language. After all, Everything is Dead. But the conversation that the card really kicks off in my mind is the one that RedMonk began when we launched the company back in 2002: Things To Do in the Analyst Business When You Are Dead.

We believe that industry analysts need to get out of the Cathedral and into the Bazaar. Its time to clean up the business. We can only do that in collaboration with others. We should be more transparent about who is paying the bills too. We’re going to keep open sourcing content. We’re going to keep talking to practitioners and treating them like peers.

I am not dying, I am a consultant. Being alive is being open.

Coincidentally I got tagged on Twitter this morning by another of Hugh’s fans, Tyler Hurst, asking what’s my favourite Gaping Void cartoon. Well the answer is pretty obvious- the one he did for me!

CIOs and IT managers today have far more options to get independent IT analysis on tech trends than they ever did. The simple fact is, industry analysts are competing with the Internet, competing with Google, for relevancy.

Gartner is doing a fine job, keeping the street happy with deals, while building its talent base with these tuck in acquisitions. But Gartner could buy every single analyst firm in the world, including RedMonk, and there would still be more options than ever available to enterprise purchasers and decision makers, should they choose to take advantage of them.

Gartner is a packager of information, and a remarkably effective one at that.

There is a possible downside for vendors, in that Gartner is increasingly “the voice”. But to be fair to Gartner it is becoming more open about its processes in, for example, Magic Quadrant selection, and its doing a better job of tracking open source. Gartner is increasingly real time, which used to be a web (and RedMonk) advantage.

In the past I criticised Gartner for not being open enough. These days I tend to just sit back and admire the execution. RedMonk is a very very different firm, and as a source of second or third opinions, this acquisition can only benefit us.

Enterprises use Gartner for a reason – for the experience and knowledge of its people – and with Burton comes heavy collaboration, directory, networking and SOA experience. Its European security events tend to be well attended even if the firm doesn’t have many bodies here. The Burton deal adds to the recent infusion of AMR supply chain talent. If I were an enterprise customer I’d be quite happy to see the infusion of new consulting and advisory blood, as long as I didn’t have to pay any more for it.

At RedMonk we celebrate the voices of our people, rather than the voice of the firm. That seems to be the ongoing trend. We’re happy with it. Makes us findable, accessible and so on.

Thanks to Barton “Only Floss The Ones You Want To Keep” George from Lombardi Software for the interview. We, the media, indeed.