It's Not Easy Being BI

I've been known to sometimes say that "being BI effectively doubles your chances of getting a consulting engagement on a Friday night." Yeah, it's kind of cheesy, but if you can't have fun with wordplays, what can you do, right?[1]

Well, the joke is sounding a little less funny today.

I'm currently involved in organizing a business intelligence conference[2] and have been sending emails to colleagues and potential speakers and have not been having the best of luck. In fact, when sending one email to an employee of a certain software company located in the Pacific Northwest, I got this explanation for why the email was rejected:

<Your e-mail was rejected by an anti-spam content filter on gateway (1.2.3.4). Reasons for rejection may be: obscene language, graphics, or spam-like characteristics. Removing these may let the e-mail through the filter.>

Yeah, no kidding.

I then went through the email and replaced all instances of "BI" with "Business Intelligence" and the email went through without error. But today I've been fighting with a few more similar problems - what a way to waste a few hours I didn't have to spare.

Has anyone else seen this issue?

 

[1] There are many other humorous stories that revolve around this particular play on words, like the well-known Microsoft speaker who wore his "BI Power Hour" t-shirt to the hotel bar at TechEd last year (not knowing that there was a gay pride event going on at the same time) and ended up having lots of nice men buy him drinks.

[2] More details on this in the days and weeks ahead - stay tuned!