For our April event, Thomas Kilbane, Jeewan Singh, and Eric Hayslett from Slalom Consulting presented on the people and process side of the data: pillars that are critical for organizations to establish if they want to meaningfully put data to work on an on-going and ingrained part of the organization.

The five pillars:

• Bold Vision—and it needs to be a vision that is clear and business-aligned (“We’re going to do AI” doesn’t count)
• Access & Transparency—users need to be able to be able to get to the data and understand how to interpret it
• Data Literacy—users need to have both the hard skills (using tools) and the softer skills (hypothesis development) and the incentives to be putting the organization’s data to use
• Guardianship—governance of the data so that it can be trusted by the users as to its accuracy, as well as ensuring it is compliant with regulatory requirements
• Embedding Insights—a pillar that is dependent on all of the other pillars: actually incorporating the use of data into all relevant aspects of the organization’s day-to-day operations

Slalom’s support for the event also enabled us to up our game on the food, with a delicious spread from Chef Jeff!

The event photographer has finally learned how to set a custom white balance on his camera. He even occasionally remembers to reset it when he moves from the meeting space out into the atrium. Occasionally.