BRKTHROUGH 6403 W 135th St Ste E4, Overland Park, KS 66223 RSVP to rsvp@kcdama.org by Feb 2nd, 2024 Free for 2023-2024 members Guest may attend by purchasing a ticket here.

Buffet style dinner followed by 90 minutes of fun and exciting social entertainment in immersive high-technology challenge rooms

• Send your RSVP to rsvp@kcdama.org by Friday, Feb 2nd, 2024.
• Free attendance for 2023-2024 members.
• $40 attendance fee for guests.

Stay tuned for upcoming events @DAMA Kansas City

Speaker: Gwen Thomas - Data Governance Pioneer

Gwen Thomas founded the Data Governance Institute twenty years ago. As the primary author of its DGI framework and guidance materials (published at DataGovernance.com), Gwen has influenced hundreds of data programs around the globe. She spent 20 years working in IT shops and providing data management and data governance consulting services, before spending 10 years as an in-house data strategist for the World Bank Group's private sector arm.

Much of her time there focused on translating between executives, program leaders, data governance teams, lawyers, architects, modelers, policy writers, auditors, and data quality teams. While she is a technician, her special focus is on helping non-technical teams become stronger advocates for their own needs. Currently, she provides training and advises projects through the Data Governance Institutes’ consulting arm

Topic:  How to Convince the Business You Solve Business Problems

Business Leaders and teams have a common complaint: they aren’t confident that today’s Data Teams understand what they need and are ready/willing/able to deliver what they need. And there’s a lot at stake: Business needs the RIGHT data to drive value, insight, and innovation. Data Teams of course want to solve business problems, and they realize their employment may depend upon it. Both groups recognize the problem is not merely messaging or communicating needs, results, and impacts. Indeed, data and data environments are exceedingly complex, and they’re typically described using jargon and marketing language that is not understandable to business stakeholders who are trying to express their needs.

In this highly interactive workshop, Gwen Thomas (the founder of the Data Governance Institute) flips the current paradigm. Instead of demonstrating the value of various data/tech disciplines (while using technical jargon), she introduces a completely nontechnical framework that defines and organizes data needs, along with criteria for recognizing what “RIGHT data” means. Using a real-life use case, she’ll step through a simple process that extracts and elaborates those business needs, then maps the plain language results to requirements that use descriptors/jargon that are familiar to data and IT teams. Participants will be provided with worksheets they can take to work, to start making a difference immediately.

Meeting Time & Location:

**Due to an unexpected and urgent personal concern of our scheduled speaker, our March meeting will unfortunately need to be postponed. We will reschedule this event at a date later in the year.**

Membership & Participation:

• You must RSVP to RSVP@KCDAMA.ORG by March 15th, 2024.  You must chose in person or virtual when you RSVP
• Each individual who will participate virtually must register separately, the link to the meeting is yours only.
• Current members can attend at no charge.  Guests are welcome to attend for a $40 fee and can submit payment here.
• We have special rates for students and unemployed, please contact RSVP@kcdama.org for more details.
• We also offer a scholarship to one deserving individual if you or someone you know would like to apply to attend for free, send an email to RSVP@kcdama.org with a short paragraph for application.

NOTE:  Please contact Membership@kcdama.org or Treasurer@kcdama.org if you are unclear of the status of your membership.

KC-DAMA is excited to bring back our first DAMA Day since 2019! We will have “The Data Doc”, Thomas Redman, and a member favorite, John Ladley, with us for an exciting half day session.  You won’t want to miss this amazing session!

Lunch will be served for those attending in person from 11:00 - 11:30AM, presentation will begin promptly at 11:30AM.

Speaker Bios

Thomas C. Redman “The Data Doc”

Thomas is President of Data Quality Solutions. He helps companies and leaders chart their courses to data-driven futures with special emphasis on quality, organizational structure, and analytics.

His latest book, People and Data: Uniting to Transform Your Organization (Kogan Page 2023), urges companies to increase the power of their data programs by getting everyone involved. Tom has a Ph.D. in Statistics and two patents.

John Ladley

John Ladley is one of the leading pioneers in the field of Data Governance and Enterprise Information Management.  As a consultant, trainer, and  author he has over 30 years of coal-face experience dealing with the people and process challenges of putting data to work.  John has worked with clients across a range of sectors, bringing a pragmatic set of insights to the management and governance of
data as an asset and the leadership of data-related change and organization transformation.

John is also a founder of the Data Leaders’ Organization, a collaborative think-tank of industry experts working to promote good practices in data and information management and data technology adoption.

John’s books include two editions of Data Governance: How to Design, Deploy, and Sustain an Effective Data Governance Program and Making Enterprise Information Management (EIM) Work for Business: A Guide to Understanding Information as an Asset. He is also a contributor to the DAMA DMBOK 2nd Edition. John is a regular keynote speaker at data industry conferences worldwide.

TOPIC: Data Quality, AI, and People
Presented by:  Thomas C. Redman “The Data Doc”
Featuring:  John Ladley

More than anything else, success with Artificial Intelligence depends on data and people.  One cannot do good things with AI without high-quality data and one can’t ensure high-quality data without large numbers of people contributing to the effort.

The first part of the claim, “one cannot do good things with AI without high-quality data” will not surprise anyone.  The notion that “one cannot ensure high-quality data without large numbers of people contributing to the effort” may prove enlightening.

We will discuss these ideas in a workshop, starting with some basics, moving to the unprecedented demands AI places on high-quality data, and finally to the roles of “regular people,” those who without data in their title.

The workshop will feature John Ladley, challenging the audience and speaker to think deeply about the implications for the data community and the first steps attendees should take now!

Meeting Location:

Training Umbrella
10551 Barkley St. Ste. #102
Overland Park, KS 66212

Directions: in Overland Park off of Metcalf: 105th & Barkley

Membership & Participation:

*IT’S TIME TO RENEW YOUR MEMBERSHIP WITH KC DAMA!
To attend this session, you must have a 2024 to 2025 membership with KC DAMA.  You can renew on-line using:  Join DAMA
If your company requires an invoice, please contact Membership@kcdama.org to get this process started.

• You must RSVP to RSVP@kcdama.org by May 3rd, 2024.  You must chose in person or virtual when you RSVP
• Each individual who will participate virtually must register separately. You can only join virtually using the name you registered under or you will not be admitted.
• Current members can attend at no charge.
• We have special rates for students, retired and unemployed individuals, please contact RSVP@kcdama.org for more details.
• We also offer a scholarship to one deserving individual if you or someone you know would like to apply to attend for free, send an email to RSVP@kcdama.org with a short paragraph for application.

NOTE:  Please contact Membership@kcdama.org or Treasurer@kcdama.org if you are unclear of the status of your membership.

Platinum Sponsors:

Gold Sponsors: