Oversimplified: Volume 126

Dashboards that suck less, hold to record, and Mike Cannon-Brookes

Hey there 👋

Oversimplified is a digest of the best links I stumble upon each week, and any new posts from me. If this is your first issue, welcome! You can subscribe with the big blue button below:

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✍️ Making Dashboards Suck Less

Dashboards are just a medium. They are a collection of charts and metrics that organize and showcase data in a hopefully useful light. They aren’t inherently bad, but there is room for improvement. Perhaps a starting point: I suggest we try to think of them as living, breathing documents rather than static views.

📚 The Observer Effect: Mike Cannon-Brookes

The Observer Effect from Sriram Krishnan hasn’t missed with an interview yet. They are chock-full of interesting anecdotes, and the latest post with Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes stays true to this. One fun quote to remember: “I don’t want to be on my deathbed reflecting on the great software that I built.”

📚 Does Not Compute

Some of the biggest mistakes we make involve failing to distinguish what’s actually happening from what logically would make sense. Morgan Housel shares two war stories in this post that are well worth your time.

📚 The Full Potential of the Data Warehouse

Mikkel Dengsøe explains how the data warehouse will transition from “just another tool” to being at the core of everything an organization does. The real goodness here is in “how this will happen” which resonated with me: Business intelligence → Operational tools → Sales & marketing → Finance → Everything else.

🔗 Hold to Record

This is a fun design exploration on what happens when you take the “hold to record” interaction to the extreme. Think of this as voice memos, on steroids.

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Food for Thought

“I don’t want to be on my deathbed reflecting on the great software that I built. Hopefully, I've achieved things and changed customers’ lives, but if that's all I have to talk about, that would be very sad. It’s all about balance. I always think that if a CEO doesn't model good work-life balance, how can he/she expect his/her staff to do so?” — Mike Cannon-Brookes

Fresh fruit on a Sunday morning. Trying to take in all that Miami has to offer before I’m out of here on Friday.

Until next time

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Until next time,

Conor