 Hello and welcome to Dataversity Talks, a podcast where we discuss with industry leaders and experts how they have built their careers around data. I'm your host Shannon Kemp, and today we're talking to Shannon Kemp, Chief Digital Officer at Dataversity. Wait, what? With a robust catalog of courses offered on demand and industry-leading live online sessions throughout the year, the Dataversity Training Center is your launchpad for career success. Browse the complete catalog at training.dataversity.net and use code DVTALKS for 20% off your purchase. Hello and welcome. My name is Shannon Kemp, and I'm the Chief Digital Officer at Dataversity, and this is my career in data, a Dataversity Talks podcast dedicated to learning from those who have careers in data management to understand how they got there and to be talking with people who can help make those careers a little bit easier. To keep up to date in the latest in data management education, go to Dataversity.net forward slash subscribe. And this week, we're going to mix it up a bit. Several of you have asked me about my bio when I'm going to be interviewed, and well, today's the day. So please welcome Tony Shaw, founder and CEO of Dataversity. His bio was the first podcast we published. You can check it out online at Dataversity.net forward slash podcast. So Tony, hello and welcome. Thanks for stepping in here. Hi, Shannon. Thanks for asking me. Yeah, I guess it makes sense that if we're going to turn the tables here, then I should be the one to do that. And if I stick to the script, I should say that today we're joined by Shannon Kemp, Chief Digital Officer at Dataversity, and normally this is where we would read a short bio about our guest. But since that's the point of this podcast is to get into your bio, then we're going to skip that part and get going on some questions. So are you ready? I'm ready. Okay. So Shannon is the Chief Digital Officer at Dataversity, our CDO, not the usual context that we use those letters in. But really, Shannon is the person who runs all of the digital activities for Dataversity. So it's a very appropriate title. And she is sort of our Chief Data Officer also. And we might get into some of that later in the conversation. But so this seems a little weird for me to be asking this question. But for anybody who may not know, perhaps just listening to us for the first time, I'm going to ask you about the organization that you work for. And what exactly you do? So what is Dataversity? Great question. So Dataversity is a company that specializes in the education of data management. And that's a very broad spectrum from the end to end from the data architecture and managing the database to the analytics and everything in between. We do a lot of education and data governance. That's been kind of our core topic lately in addition to data architecture, data modeling, lots of interesting aspects of data education. In terms of what I do, as you mentioned, I manage all the digital aspects of the company and the digital programs that we run from creating and building and managing the website to the webinars that we produce, the online conferences that we produce, and our online training center with more in-depth education, which is very exciting. And yes, and lots of data I do also. I help when face-to-face conferences need to go to a digital aspect. And through all these things, I do work with a lot of our data. I try and keep us up to date on the latest in data privacy and policies. So I'm in contact for that as well as dive into our analytics often so I can make good decisions on how to build out these digital programs. All right. Well, I'm actually going to come back to some of those things that you mentioned a little bit later. But I know this was exactly the job that you wanted to have growing up. Actually, it's something that... You can see the tongue in my cheek there. Because none of these jobs existed when we were growing up. But what did you want to do when you were growing up? Well, when I was very little, I either wanted to be Ella Fitzgerald or Wonder Woman. But those weren't really in the cards. But then when going into... I did it was involved in a lot of theater. I did a lot of theater growing up. Actually, I went to college to major in theater at Southern Oregon University, which is in Ashton, Oregon, famous for at Shakespeare Festival. But when I got to college, I discovered I really didn't... It wasn't for me. I didn't have the passion to start over and do all the networking. I didn't love it as much as I thought I did. So I went... I discovered physics. So I switched my major to physics. I took a couple of business courses as well, because I'd always wanted to get in business. But business, that was not the right university for business. The first class that I went into, I fell asleep in. And then went, showed up for the midterm and the final and got an A. So it was not for me. So I wanted to learn. I just really wanted to dive into some other passions. And physics, specifically quantum mechanics and theoretical physics, was really exciting to me. Lots of data there. And then a minor in music, ultimately trying to create the best sound system possible. So but yeah, so that's what I wanted to be. I know you've continued to pursue your music interests through some current day activities. Why don't you tell us about that? Ella Fitzgerald, I'm not, but I do love singing blues and gospel. I'm in a choir right now, a church choir. So it's a no audition, but it's a fabulous program. It's one of the most amazing programs. We're very blessed to have a huge choir, almost 100-person choir with some amazing musicians who are a part of that. So I get to use those talents. I forget exactly what Summit was that you sang when we're in Atlanta for Enterprise Data World. And your dad got up on stage with a guitar and you, I think you might have dragged him up, but you sang something. Do you recall the song? Three Little Birds, Bob Marley. Yeah, it was. Yeah, it was. I mean, we all knew that you were in the choir, but I think it was a wonderful surprise to everybody to actually experience that little performance. So maybe when we get back to in-person events fully again, we'll we'll do that. All right, so bring us up to, there's a chunk of time between school and when you eventually joined Dataversity. So why don't you give us a little bit of that? We can just get a sense for the context under which you actually joined Dataversity. Sure. Yeah, so I think it started a little bit younger, but before I used to work with my dad a lot. He worked from home. He was a wholesale rep for shoes sold to companies. It's rep different brands and sold them to companies like Nordstrom. And I kind of grew up in the Nordstrom stock room. He worked with Nordstrom before he became a wholesale rep. And so I would help him with his P&Ls. I would help him with this and that. I learned a lot about business. I wrote my first business plan when I was 12. I really wanted to start and grow a business. And that has always been in the background. A lot of the stuff that I did was discovering what my passions were outside of that. I started working for Nordstrom when I was 16. And in and out of college. And as soon as I left college, I went back to Nordstrom. I was going to work for a year to earn some cash and do some traveling. I wanted to travel the world. And I went back and a few months later, I was promoted to an assistant buyer in the Men's Shoes in Bellevue. At that time, the buyers were at each individual store level and department level. And then within the next three years, I ended up with nine promotions and moved all over the country. So I ended up just working my way through Nordstrom and ended up working there for 11 years. I was a buyer and worked in various different jobs and had a lot of really great mentors in terms of learning business. And as a buyer, we were encouraged to treat it as our own business. It's kind of a singer swim. You learn and it was great. I was very lucky in getting the opportunity to work with Blake Nordstrom. And him being one of my mentors, he was just such a smart human being. He could meet somebody and never forget their name. And out of all the employees that Nordstrom has, it's really impressive. Yeah, yeah. So really, it was great. And then I was on a I did finally travel. I got to Ireland, fell in love with Ireland. And I went back a second time, not much later. And on my way back was a plane full of Microsoft employees from the office outside of Dublin, flying in for the company, the annual company meeting. Like, oh, well, this is awesome. Okay, so I'm going to go work for Microsoft. So I gave Nordstrom my two weeks notice and found a temp agency that that temp to Microsoft, I didn't even know what a browser was at that point. I just decided I'm going to go work for this company that has global offices. And got in through a temp agency to as a customer service rep, was hired full time, six months later as a group admin for a general manager. And spent another I spent 11 years Microsoft work my way through lots of different great learning experiences. I became a telecom analyst for the call center, managing over 1000 KPIs for the call center, which is crazy. Lots of things that we did there, forecasting the volume, the call volume traffic, organizing forecasting the call volume down to 15 minute increvels. So we could determine how many staff we needed on the phones by 15 minute intervals. And it was it was a lot of fun, loved. So I got a lot of exposure and data there. My mentor there was CPA, an accountant. And then I learned Excel from a lot of the Microsoft accountants, which was great, which is exactly what it was built for, who it was built for. And yeah, and then I was in 2007 part of the massive layoff that the company had when in the recession. And at that point, I'm like I decided that instead of looking for another job within the company, because I certainly had the contacts, I just decided it was time to take a break and do my own thing and work, if I was going to keep working that hard, I wanted to do be more involved in something creative and be have it be more visible and more hands on to something evolving versus this tiny little piece and a big corporation. So I, yeah, so I decided after many after a couple of months of thinking that I was going to go into freelance writing, I love to write, I wanted something creative was one of the many business plans that I had. So I started and that's how I met you. Well, yeah, I, not to tell your story, but you know, I have, I have my version of how we met, of course, I'll let you tell yours, but if it doesn't match up with mine at all. Do you remember how we, do you remember how we met? Yeah, I do. Yeah, you posted an adding Craigslist. Yes. I was, and I was searching, you know, part of being a freelance writer to be to make any money, you just have to apply to as many jobs as possible. Yes. Do you remember what the project was? Yeah, yeah, it was to convert EDW talks into articles. It was, yeah, it was taking transcript, making transcriptions and then trying to make them into articles. That's right. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, the first one I did actually was for was one of John Ladly's talks. So I here is where I am going to embellish for you because I remember, I mean, even back then we were, we were communicating by email of course, but I remember one of the first phone calls we had and I gave you a little bit of background as to what we were looking to accomplish, because we had only just renamed the company as Dataversity at that point. And I want to say that this was on a Friday that we had this conversation. And I think we agreed to talk the early the following week. And over the weekend, you had created an entire new website for us that was, you know, aimed at some of the strategy, strategic direction that I had outlined on the Friday. So you know, at that point I was sold. And I think we started talking about coming on full time almost immediately. So yeah, I don't remember how good the transcription was or the article, but I certainly remember the website. And yeah, then we were off and running. Yeah, yeah, we did. We launched the website April 1, 2011. Okay, I didn't remember that part, but but it was EDW. Yeah. Oh, yeah, that part I yeah. Yeah. So, um, all right, let's start talking more about data then. And um, I guess, you know, did you did you come into the job with some idea of what what data was or what, you know, what it meant to be working with data? Some other jobs that involve data analysis, but you know, did you have a concept of what it was to manage data? Oh, none, none at all. I mean, I had done some projects to for data quality projects at Microsoft. When I was the telecom analyst, so we I certainly familiar with many individual pieces of it, but I never thought about it holistically, right? I knew how to generate data and you had to pull data I knew how to create a chart. But in terms of the big picture, I didn't know how that fit in with everything with everything else. More and more companies are considering investing in data literacy education, but still have questions about its value, purpose, and how to get the ball rolling. Introducing the newest monthly webinar series from Dataversity, Elevating Enterprise Data Literacy, where we discuss the landscape of data literacy and answer your burning questions. Learn more about this new series and register for free at dataversity.net. So let me ask you then to sort of reflect on what you knew back then to what, you know, now. And yeah, I'm not even quite sure what the right question to ask is, but, you know, how has has that perspective changed? And, you know, how do you how do you see the data management space now after a dozen years from the perspective that you've had? I have a definitely a more holistic view of what's going on, you know, and even it's funny because with all the webinars that I've produced and conferences and events that I've attended and listened to, I'm still learning a lot. And when working for a smaller company, analytics are still, like I mentioned, really important to us. So I had to had to get a grasp of the end to end of, you know, where are we storing our data, how are we pulling it, how are we, what's the architecture behind it, what's the metadata behind it so that we can keep it consistent across platforms and and make it super efficient. It's, yeah, I just have a more holistic view. I know what data governance is now, I know how to implement a process, which, which is good and necessary to achieve any of the other things that we need to achieve in in the analytics, then I still, you know, of course, dive into the analytics religiously. But yeah, I think it's interesting for, you know, one of our customers tend to think that we are experts at everything that that all the experts teach through data. And, you know, I hate to disappoint them by saying, you know, I'm not not an expert on this topic. I understand where it fits in. But it is interesting to me how even at the scale that that we operate, which is really very small compared to, you know, some of the enormous organizations that that we hope educate through what we do. You know, all the principles still apply. And, you know, the things that we learn through listening to the largest organizations and how they manage the data can actually be applied even in a, you know, a small organization like our own. So, yeah, those, those principles are really, I think, you know, universal. Yeah. So, all right. So, based on this, this perspective that you now have and the position that you, you have sort of sitting able to look at a whole bunch of different aspects of data management and data application. Where do you think things are going in terms of, you know, the significance of data management, data governance and the type of jobs that people are going to be working at in the data space in years to come? Do you have a view on that? We do. You know, I haven't been lucky in being able to interview a lot of people and get their take on it already. Because even though, you know, we may not be, you know, experts ourselves, we are so blessed to work with so many experts and use as resources. But from my own business perspective, I definitely see the trend of the jobs increasing through in the role of data has become, it's so important to understand what data is, how to use it, and especially as more chief digital officers emerge and it's a fairly new role and become prevalent in companies in terms of to initiate that digital transformation that's happened since, especially since COVID and since, you know, so much has gone online. It's even more important, companies are realizing that they need to get a grasp on their data and they need to digitize a lot of their data that hasn't necessarily been digitized. They need to organize, structure the policies, the processes, implement data governance around the data. They need to, in order to have data quality, a lot of companies are way ahead of that and are initiating, you know, machine learning concepts and programs. But so we've seen so many companies who try to stand up machine learning, but stand it up on data that isn't organized, isn't prepped, isn't that there's where there's no quality and the machine learning projects fail because the data wasn't good to begin with. So as these things continue to evolve, there's definitely going to be a lot more jobs where an awareness data needs to exist. And you plus you have the additional jobs of that have always existed like the analysts. But you need that data architect to help bring better data to the analysts, no matter what. So I wanted, I mentioned this earlier on, I wanted to branch off into a couple of specific roles that you have at Dataversity. The one in particular that I'm curious about is the, or that I'd like you to share with people anyway. Obviously, but you know, at a very early stage in the in the privacy, in the world of privacy as new regulations came out, we of course always felt that it was very important that we followed those regulations and practices very closely and tried to set a good example for others. And we certainly didn't want the potential embarrassment of being caught out not complying. So you raised your hand and said, okay, well, I'll take this on. So you are our designated data privacy represent, I forget the term exactly, but you know, as required by GDPR and some other regulations, you are a designated person. So why don't you tell us a little bit about that role and how you how you perform that on our behalf. So data protection officer really is what that's that is. And it's really just being a point of contact for anybody who has complaints or questions about how we manage their data. So of course, we collect data for people on when people somebody fills out a form to download a white paper or fills out a form to register for a webinar or one of our events or for our purchase of something from the training center, you know, we collect data. And in like you say, I mean, with a company name like Dataversity, we should probably get it right. So yeah, it's, you know, I really work hard, it's hard to keep up with these days on the data privacy, but I really work hard to keep up with the laws and what's happening and what we need to the how we, the communication that we publish and make sure that it's really transparent on what tools we're using, where data is being stored, how it's being stored links to, you know, any software as a service link to their privacy policies and how they are staying compliant. We vet all of our software companies that we use for their compliance with data privacy and it's we vet them before we buy the tools. It's one of the most important RFP components for us is to say, how do you store the data? Who has access to it? Are you compliant? And how are you staying compliant? Because it's so hard. Is that an important thing to you? And of course, all the companies we work with say yes. So it's yeah. And then also mention, if you also mentioned, if you would, so your part of your role is to educate the rest of the staff and make sure that, you know, they are also following the protocols. True. Yeah, we had to write policies and practices to ensure that we're not sending PII, you know, via, you know, openly via email, it's all encrypted, it's all stored in secure locations, and nothing is ever, you know, there's no exposure to, you know, or it's, you know, getting hacked, anything like that, or accidentally sending something to the wrong person, that kind of thing. So we have a lot of really tight and we talk about it all the time in company meetings. And, you know, everybody's had to sign a privacy policy contract and how and where they'll send PII. So yeah, I mean, as the CEO of the company, you know, probably like any CEO, I get kind of irritated by the level of, you know, regulation that some of these things impose. But thankfully, you are always the head keepers on track. And more importantly, you know, to keep keep the folks who are actually handling the data on track. But I understand both sides of this issue very well. You know, somebody trying to run a business and also as somebody who has a lot of respect for the goals of the legislation and as a data user myself, you know, as somebody who is information is out there. So what I will say is that, you know, I think the structures that you've set up have enabled us to be compliant with actually relatively little effort, as long as everybody is well educated and informed about what they have to do. It's not that difficult for us to be in compliance. You know, we just have to stay vigilant. And so, you know, I think in a sense, we're actually pretty good example for other small businesses. But so, you know, one of the things that I know that you ask people about typically in these in your interviews with them is how would you advise somebody to get into a career like yours? So I'm going to break that into questions because yours is a I mean, you're not a typical data management professional. That's part of your job. You're also a media professional at this stage. So I'll ask you how would you, from what you've seen and heard from others, how would you advise somebody to get into the data management profession if that's what they would like? That's if, you know, if that's their career goal. Now, I I've loved everything that I've done in my career. And the thing I love about data diversity is I get to follow my passion. I get to have a role in in a lot of say an input into how the business gets developed. I can see visions of what's next and have what's going on. And you are so gracious in letting me try everything, especially at your expense and all these different things. And, you know, and I bring that up because the number one thing that I'm finding from a lot of the practitioners is that's the best advice is to get into be passionate, find the area of passion, right? So if it's analyzing the data, you know, really just keep get into it, find, you know, find a way to develop that skill. If it's architecting the data end to end and saying, okay, what is how is this going to flow? What is that going to do to find that deep passion? There's so many different areas, whether it's on the IT side or on the business side. That is the number one thing that it's just it's going to make any job better, not just in a career of data management. But it's just following that and being honest with yourself about what you love to do and honing it and keep learning. Okay, so my pot B question is going to be how to get into a career like yours specifically. Does your original answer cover that as well? Or I mean, if somebody wanted to be at this point, you're a webinar host, you're a podcast host, you're an, you know, an editor, a publisher, a business person, you know, you're, you're driving strategy, you're, you're a very strong process person. You know, it's a very mixed it can somebody design a mixed skills kind of career, do you think? Or does that just come along with being flexible in whatever job that you that you take on? I think it's a lot of both actually. You know, I certainly would not have received the promotions or moved to the next level if I wasn't constantly learning and being flexible, as you say, in, in what I was doing, I, you know, if you're going to do something, do it well, don't just don't just kind of do it to the minimum level. So find that thing that you're willing to do well. And so yeah, it still applies because my passion is what's taken my career and so many different directions and taught me so many different things like I didn't know anything about podcasts before we started doing a podcast and other than I've listened to a couple, right? But you know, being willing to learn and just how do I make it the best I started listening to the best podcasts or that have the most followers or rated the highest and okay, what do all those have in common and then figuring it out from there and listening and reading to blogs. Tim Ferriss has a podcast that I listened to and he had a podcast on how to set up a successful podcast and I learned a lot. It's just being willing to learn. It's the only way to achieve anything I think and to not and to never assume I certainly had reached those moments where I assumed I had learned everything, especially in my youth. I think that's a folly of youth sometimes. But there's always more to learn. Everybody has something to teach us and the more open you are, the more curious you are, the more you're going to learn and more you're going to discover about yourself about what you love and where you want to go and where you want to take it. And I love that I have so many roles and so many things to do. It really keeps, there's never a dull moment in my job and that is the best part for me. I'm just, it's the fact that I get to wear many hats and be creative as well as be linear and have used both sides of my brain often. Well, I have to assume there are some hats on the horizon then that you're, what's next? What would you like to be working on next? Growing this company has just been my whole focus. I'd love for us to be a Fortune 500 someday. I want to take over the world. I think my favorite part of this job actually, sincerely, is that we've created jobs. You and I together work so hard to create jobs. And I think that that's just, that's an amazing, that's the biggest reward that there is. And I would agree, there's a great deal of satisfaction from doing that. And I think you could probably take more credit for that at this point than me, because our digital operations are two thirds of the business now, whereas it used to be the other way around compared to our in-person events. So, all right. Well, I'm gonna, is there a question that I didn't ask you that you'd like to answer anyway? Okay. Ask yourself a question. I don't know about that. It's, it's different being on the side of the table. So, all right. All right, then I'm gonna return to the script for a minute and say, Shannon, thanks very much for our interview today. It's been a pleasure. Thank you for inviting me to interview you. And to all of our listeners out there, if you'd like to keep up to date on the latest podcasts and the latest in data management education, you may go to dataversity.net forward slash subscribe. And I think, am I sending back to you, am I throwing back to you here, Shannon, for the wrap up or am I bringing everything to a close? That's all we got. Okay. That's all we got. It's a Friday afternoon here. Not when we'll be sharing the podcast, but I wish you a good weekend. And we'll be talking to you very soon, I'm sure. Well, Tony, thank you so much for taking the time to do this. I appreciate it. Okay. All right. Thanks for my next time. Bye bye. Bye. Thank you for listening to Dataverse City Talks brought to you by Dataverse City. Subscribe to our newsletter for podcast updates and information about our free educational articles, blogs and webinars at DataverseCity.net forward slash subscribe.