I’m speaking at some exciting industry events this fall and recommend all of them highly. Consider attending one of these—you’re bound to learn something new. And if you decide to come, send me an e-mail and we’ll experiment at the bar with Absolute Limon. If you can't make it, don't call me in the office until November...I'll be on the road.

Initiate Exchange: Initiate Systems is always out in front of the market and has some really smart customers doing forward-thinking things with their MDM hubs. I’m giving a presentation on trends in data governance to the early-adopters on Initiate’s Customer Advisory Board. Scottsdale, September 29 – October 1.

SAS Canada: I love the people at SAS Canada. I’ve been with them in Toronto several times now and they routinely provide thought leadership to their customers and prospects, staying on top of industry trends. The topic of my presentation is “Data Governance: Moving from Chaos to Compliance.” This time I’m going west. Calgary, October 2.

2008 Microsoft BIC: The second annual Microsoft conference dedicated to all things BI. I'll be laying off the Absolute Limon in favor of mead. (Don't ask.) Seattle, October 5-7.

DataFlux IDEAS: DataFlux has a great group of customers and prospects and this year its user conference is in Vegas, baby! Our own Frank Dravis is on an executive panel to discuss data governance and data quality. Las Vegas, October 6-8.

Teradata Partners: With a mixture of pride and shame I'll announce that I’ve been to almost every Partners conference since the 1980s. So I'm especially grateful that Teradata has abandoned the well-worn Dolphin and Swan Orlando venue in favor of …Vegas, baby! Evan Levy and I are presenting “Managing Data, Managing Change,” which is also the title of our latest MDM white paper. Las Vegas, October 12-15.

MDM Summit Fall 2008: Evan teaches a new version of his “Best Practice for Master Data Management” workshop on Sunday afternoon—he’s included new material on building the MDM program team—and I’m on the Sunday evening analyst panel. New York, October 19-21.

TechTarget MDM for the Enterprise Series: Three cities, three days of MDM expertise. Tactical roadmaps, lessons learned, and companies that have deployed real-life MDM solutions will all be represented. Detroit, October 23; San Diego, October 28; Philadelphia, October 30.

TDWI World Conference Fall 2008: This one’s a biggie. Baseline will be very active at this event (and not just on Bourbon Street!). For one thing, my partner Evan is the Monday keynote. He’ll be delivering “The Five Levels of MDM (and Data Governance!) Maturity.” I’m doing BI from Both Sides on Sunday, MDM for BI Professionals (“New!”) on Monday morning; and on the heels of our TDWI 10 Mistakes booklet Kim Nevala and I are doing “10 Mistakes to Avoid When Launching a Data Governance Program” on Tuesday morning. Frank Dravis co-presents with Evan on data integration and James Masuoka presents the popular “MDM and the Vendor Landscape” on Wednesday. Kudos to TDWI for investing in New Orleans and focusing on MDM there! New Orleans, November 2-7.

Data Symposium 2008: For those of you in Europe (or looking for an excuse to go), I’m going to be soaking up the ancient sites of the eastern block, and having some great data conversations, courtesy of the Data Symposium and our friends at Adastra. For those of you not in Europe….skol! Prague, November 11-13.

I’ll be blogging from most of these events, which will take me right up to Thanksgiving at which point I’ll probably stick a pot-pie in the oven and call it a great Fall 2008. Looking forward to seeing you at one or more of the above!

Technorati tags: master data management, data governance, Initiate Systems, TechTarget MDM, TDWI, SAS Canada data governance, Data Symposium Prague 2008

The current media coverage of the well-worn “lipstick on a pig” colloquialism got me thinking about some BI environments I’ve seen in the past year. You be the judge.

“We have a fully-integrated, enterprise data warehouse.” But co-located data doesn’t mean integrated data. Just because you’ve got data from different source systems or multiple subject areas on the same physical hardware platform doesn’t mean you have an integrated data warehouse. It just means that you have lots of hardware. Calling a big data dumping ground an Enterprise Data Warehouse is like calling a flannel nightgown evening attire.

“We have data quality standards at the corporate level.” But that’s only because everyone in the corporation has his very own standards. Often data standards are only as valid as the knowledge of the application development team creating them. True enterprise standards mean that the business is involved in defining terms and policies. It means data governance. Anything less is like putting whipped cream on a cow pie.

“We have a data profiling tool and we use it all the time.” Fair enough. But your data profiling tool is SQL and it’s taking you ten times longer to figure out whether the data is valid than it would with an automated tool. Of course your outsourcing firm is quite happy to continue the SQL-slinging since it involves more billable hours and ongoing work. Now they’re talking about manual cross-system data comparisons. Yes, with SQL. That’s like putting a long-tailed cat in a rocking chair factory and calling it a pet.

“We have a new metadata project, and we’re calling it EIM.” Enterprise Information Management is all the rage at companies that are starting to understand that data management is bigger than the data warehouse and that it transcends organizations and systems. But calling a metadata, data quality, or data governance effort EIM is like… Well, you know.

P.S.: For the right way to launch EIM, check out the SAP/Business Objects webcast on Tuesday, September 16, in which Baseline Consulting’s Frank Dravis will define EIM and—in advance of his upcoming white paper on the topic—discuss the importance of an overarching EIM strategy. Register here.

Technorati tags: Lipstick on a pig; Enterprise Information Management; EIM; data integration; Frank Dravis