Big Challenges in Data Modeling–Data Model Governance

Join me and an excellent panel of industry experts in discussing the state of Data Modeling Governance.  No, not Data Governance, but Data Modeling Governance.  This free webinar is Thursday,  23 May at 2 PM EDT.  While the formal part starts at 2 PM, you are free to join us 15 minutes before as we prepare for the event.  You can even post your Data Modeling Governance questions then so that we can answer them

We data architects spend a great deal of time advocating for organizations to treat their data as an asset.  We champion the efforts to set up stewardship programs and data governance councils.  We insist that data conform to enterprise naming and modeling standards.  We enforce data policies, measure data quality, report deficiencies and track anomalies.  But do we follow our own advice when it comes to managing “our” data – metadata and data models?

In this webinar, we’ll be tackling the questions of:

• Do you have budget (money and time) to govern the data modeling environment?
• How can we get the resources we need to properly govern our data models?
• Who sets permissions and manages them?
• When does data modeling by email work?
• Are data modeling artefacts part of the production systems operations?
• Are there multiple data modeling tools in your environment? For the right reasons?
• Are we loving our data models as much as our data?
• …plus more.

My panellists this week have a great deal of experience in working on a variety of enterprise environments:

• Anne Marie Smith, Ph.D. is an Information Management professional and consultant with broad experience across industries. She has exceptional, demonstrated skills in business requirements gathering and analysis, data governance and stewardship, data architecture, data and process modeling, strategic data management, meta data management, data quality management, master data management, data warehouse planning and design, project management, and information systems methodology development.
• David Loshin is the President of Knowledge Integrity, Inc, (www.knowledge-integrity.com), a consulting company focusing on customized information management solutions including information quality consulting and training, business intelligence, metadata, and data standards management. David is among Knowledge Integrity’s recognized experts in information management.
• Pete Stiglich is a Senior Healthcare Data Architect at Perficient. He has over 25 years IT experience having worked in Enterprise Data Architecture, Data Management, Data Modeling (Conceptual, Logical, Physical, Dimensional, Data Vault, EDW), Data Quality, DW/BI, MDM, Metadata Management, Data Quality, and Database Administration (DBA)
• You! I always consider the audience as the first panellist in a webinar.   We have a open, engaging webinar configuration where attendees can chat with each other and ask questions to the panel.

You’ll need to pre-register, but it’s fast and free.  Bring your questions, comments, snark and observations.  See you Thursday.

Oh, and if you are late reading this and the webinar has already happened: no worries. We record every event and post it to the Dataversity website. You’ll miss all the great chatter in the chat room, though.

#EDW13 And Now Listing Pain Points

#EDW13 Working on Data Success Stories

My class writing out their top 10 Data Success Stories.

Slides from Karen’s #EDW13 Get Started Blogging Session

I was really happy to see such a great turnout for today’s session on how to get started blogging at Enterprise Data World (#EDW13).  I wasn’t just happy to have a full room, but that I got so many great, insightful questions and comments.

My Get Blogging slides are available for download now.

Some of the resources I mentioned during the talk:

• WordPress.com This is my blogging platform of choice.  You can set up a blog in 10 seconds, for free. 
• WordPress.org Same platform, but if you want to host it someplace yourself.  You can also find a third party host and they typically will have this ready to install from their catalog of approved applications.  It’s free.
• Windows Live Writer http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-live/essentials-other-programs  This is what I use to compose most of my blog posts
• TechSmith.com Home of Camtasia (video editor of my choice) and SnagIt (my screen capture tool).  You want these.
• ERwin.com Go To page for all things ERwin, including their blogs (under the community page)
• Embarcadero.com Where to find ER/Studio blogs
• Dataversity.net Home of numerous blogs and articles

Remember, if you start blogging, I want to hear about it so that I can share, comment, and help you promote your writing.

Get Blogging!

#EDW13 DAMA – Enterprise Data World

Strutting: We all Know When You are Doing It. So Stop.

Rant Level: High. It’s Friday. 

I was reading an ACM blog post by Judy Robertson about strutting, a tactic used by audience members at event.  Robertson discusses a specific type of this behaviour, done by IT people: nerd strutting. 

Garvin-Doxas and Barker (2004) refer to "strutting" as a style of interaction where people show off their knowledge by asking questions carefully designed to demonstrate that they know a lot about the topic, and quite possibly that they know more than everyone else around them. The problem with this in a learning situation is that students who lack confidence assume that they are the only person who doesn’t understand, and quickly feel even more demoralised.

The full paper is available if you’d like to read about the study these researchers did on Defensive Climate in the Computer Science Classroom.

I’m betting you’ve seen this behaviour before.  In fact, I’d bet that if you attend enough events, you could name the people most likely to nerd strut before the speaker has even gotten 15 minutes into her presentation.  They ask questions, often sprinkled with references to product codenames, Greek philosophers, small startups and archaic error numbers.   They use highly jargonized terms.  They use insider terms. They want you to feel outside the inner circle.  They want you to know just how freaking smart they are.  But you know what’s funny?  The vast majority of the people in the room can see what they are doing and silently smirk.   

I’m interested in hearing just what sorts of people fall for this bravado.  Everyone else in the room talks about how insanely annoying the behaviour is, but no one wants to do anything about it.  I’m not even sure what we can do about it, other than to ask audience members to stop.  

Insults R Us

Another tactic that nerd strutters do is sit in the audience and stage whisper criticisms of the speaker and the topics.  I find this incredibly annoying as an audience member.  It doesn’t impress me, nor does it make me feel as if the strutmaster is actually convincing anyone he is superior. A variation of this is a group of people, chatting with each other and loudly snickering about the speaker or the topic.   

If you are sitting in a presentation and you find it too "level 100” for your tastes, you should just get up and find a presentation more fitting for your enormous brain…or whatever body part is keeping you from learning anything.

Why it Matters

I know, some of you are saying “But Karen, just ignore the @$$#@+s that do this stuff”.  I do, mostly.  However, Garvin-Doxas and Barker found that the effect of many types of negative communication, even when it was not intended, has a negative impact on many students, especially women.  Yes, women should suck it up and learn to play the game of competition.  But we don’t do it that well.  In general, women prefer a collaborative environment.   We love a bit of friendly competition. But one where team members insult others in public? Not so much.

The authors point to the fact that IT work is highly collaborative.  Supporting and enabling a culture of jabs, insults, mockery and distain works against that goal.  I hear people constantly ranting that topic X should not be on a conference agenda because it is isn’t what *they* want  learn.  I say “choose another session – there are several other tracks”.  When I see someone nerd strut in front of an entire audience, I want to call them out – tell them they are showing off.  We can all tell when a question isn’t really a question. I don’t do call people out on this, though, because no one else does.

What to Do

Robertson gives 3 tips in her blog post on dealing with nerd strutting.  Go read them.  I’d love to see the community deal with this in a consistent, collaborative way.

I’d like to add to them:

1. Encourage others to ask questions during presentations.  One of the reasons why many nerd strutters can do what they do, often several times in the same session, is that very few people ask questions or give commentary.  If enough people are asking legitimate questions, then the strutters get less show time.

2. Ask the Insult R Us people to take their conversation elsewhere. It’s annoying enough to hear anyone ramble on while you are trying to listen to the speaker.  It’s not rude or unfair to ask people, no matter what they are talking about, to either be quiet or to wander somewhere else.

3. Stand up to people who insult the work of others.  This one is the biggest pet peeve of mine.  It’s fine for people to be proud of their own work.  It’s not cool for them to insult the work of others just because they think it’s easy or low-level stuff. I don’t just draw boxes and lines all day.  BI professionals don’t just draw bar charts all day.  Developers don’t just type all day.  We all have difficult jobs.  I don’t need to step on someone else to raise myself up.  I will continue to speak out to the people who need to insult others.  I’m hoping you can, too.

Community Impact

From the paper:

Finally, when people communicate certainty in a dogmatic fashion, they also tend to communicate a low tolerance for disagreement. When defensive communication becomes habitual in a social context, it engenders a "defensive climate." Distrust of others becomes the norm, resulting in a social environment privileging competition over cooperation.

We all need to recognize that this negative behaviour hurts everyone.  It poisons the community.  It drives people away, especially new community members and those who want to work together to solve problems and build the community.   And we all need to work together to keep people focused on making the community an inclusive, inviting environment.

Garvin-Doxas, K. and Barker, L. J. 2004. Communication in computer science classrooms: understanding defensive climates as a means of creating supportive behaviors. J. Educ. Resour. Comput. 4, 1 (Mar. 2004), 2. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1060071.1060073

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