In my last blog I commented that the Wilshire Data Governance Conference in San Francisco was a small-but-quality affair. A couple more highlights:

I saw Gwen Thomas at cocktail hour. Gwen is always interesting both on and off the record. “Architecture is everything,” she told me, and I found the claim rich in its simplicity, which was also true of the Bailey's Irish Cream I was drinking. The next day Mike Meier of Olmstead Medical Center joined Gwen to discuss the three Cs of data governance: Community, Communication, and Credibility. Judging from some idle chatter at the conference, “Crazy” should be their fourth C, but who am I to influence content?

I’d mentioned Janine Joseph of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, who’d delivered a great presentation on “Improving Information Integrity Through Data Stewardship.” Janine unwittingly made the case for Dan Roam’s the new book, The Back of the Napkin, which discusses how to present new ideas with stick figures. Indeed, everything old is new again, which Len Silverston confirmed in his presentation, "The Power of Using Flexible Data Models for MDM."

DataFlux CTO and founder Scott Gidley and yours truly called our presentation “Implementing Data Governance.” Truth be told, it used to be called: “From Strategy to Execution” but somehow that got appended to Brian McVay’s presentation instead, so we were left with a fairly banal title, which the audience more than made up for.

Scott and I talked about the role of process in data governance, a topic I thought was a bit sparse at the conference. My former Charles Schwab sponsor Chris Stormont was in the audience and shared some of her current war stories. “I wish you would have told me that six months ago!” cried a battle-weary attendee whose boss wanted to prematurely launch a council. (Me: Don’t go into the light!) Scott did a great job of describing the evolution of data governance, and someone thanked him for “giving us the ‘how’ and not just the ‘what.’”

I found the attendees engaged and serious. The event validated what I’ve been saying about data governance: there are different entry points and different ways to launch it, and most of it depends on existing business-IT relationships and company culture.

Hey! Did I mention I’m doing a data governance newsletter for BI Network? Sign up for it here, or miss it when it comes out on June 26.

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