 from the campus of MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It's theCUBE, covering the MIT Chief Data Officer and the Information Quality Symposium. Well, the lights have come up, the bars are being wiped down, the pool tables are being vacuumed, and we are at the end of another MIT CDO IQ symposium. This is our fourth as theCUBE, my fourth as association with the MIT Forum. I'm here joined by my two colleagues, Stu Miniman and George Gilbert, both of whom are first timers of this. So I think it might be interesting to contrast our perspectives, seeing things develop versus confronting some of these topics for the first time. I know that one thing that was interesting to me, I think over four years of doing this conference had really seen the evolution of this CDO role. You know, when we started four years ago, it was kind of a concept and there weren't many CDOs. Now we see 3,000 CDOs according to Jean Leganza. We see a lot of talk about how the role develops, about where it goes from here. No longer questions of existential questions about whether there should be a CDO, but questions about really how it fits into the organization. And I think a big revelation for me this year was this is not a technology job. This is a relationship job. It's a political job, first and foremost, and it may evolve into more technology-oriented position in the future as the organization gets its data act together. But really, most CDOs, their first and foremost task is finding where the information is, twisting the arms necessary to get it out of these silos, and begin to put it to use. Stu, what struck you about some of the things that you heard here over the last couple of days? Yeah, so first of all, it was really good. So we talked, this is a symposium which means it's a relatively small and short event. The quality of the guests were really good. We talked to a number of CDOs. I'd gone back and watched some of the content for the last few years, and while every CDO is a little bit different and we don't have kind of a common definition and job description, when you get them all together in an event like this, well, many of them together in an event like this, they found a lot of commonalities. They felt they were getting beat up for the same kind of things. They found certain things they could all commiserate over a panel, a question, a beer. So they have some mandates that they're doing. Many of them are making good progress as to understanding where data fits into their business. They've got, as Tom Davenport talks, they've got the defensive things of all the governance. And then we found some really good examples of the offense that they're doing as to how they are creating new value for the business, how they're not just fixing things and kind of trying to solve some of that information quality, which, I mean, how many decades have we been talking about things like metadata and, you know, is it data link or is it data swamp that I've got there, but helping to work closely with the business and drive things that improve the business. And as Tom Davenport said, actually, if you're not taking advantage of these new tools and getting somebody like a CDO in that type of role, you're going to be left behind by your competition that does this. Reminds me a lot of what we've said about big data for the last few years. You know, data is kind of the oil of what our businesses are run. So if you're not finding ways to take advantage and leverage what you've got, your competition is and therefore you're going to be left in the dust. George, what were your takeaways? If I had to put a name to the CDO acronym, I guess I would have called it, or I would call it the Custodial Data Officer, because they don't really own it. And as, you know, going back to, like Sue's comment, they're responsible for it and they're responsible for its effective use, but they have to do that, you know, through essentially through, what's the word? They have no authority, but they have- Persuasion. That was an early onset Alzheimer's brain cramp in there. The other thing is because this is such a CDO centric audience, we heard all about all the rules and about how to maintain the integrity of the data, but we didn't hear really much about the perspective of the organizations and the individuals who want to consume that data. It doesn't mean that they don't exist. It's just that the perspective we got here was, I think, somewhat one-sided. George, I'm curious, because I think we had the CDO on from the city of Syracuse and he said this position was funded in a group focused on innovation. So while he doesn't own the analytics piece, which I know is kind of near and dear to your heart, most of the CDOs we talk to is, yes, some of that governance and the quality of data are part of what they're doing, but they're working closely with the business. They're helping to do more and better things with it. We heard from the federal government people like the open mandate is a little bit challenging because there's no direction and maybe not funded, but if somebody's hired to be a CDO, they've at least got some good executive sponsorship. They've got kind of a role they're doing and it's not, I didn't hear anybody saying, oh, I'm stuck on the side. I'm not thought about it. I don't have good things I'm doing. I just kind of see, you know, kind of analytics and the CDO play together. I'm just curious how you think on that. I guess maybe then if I'm not being articulate enough. Custodian sounds almost a little negative that they just needed to clean up some stuff. No, no, Custodian means they have sort of beneficial ownership, but not authoritative ownership. They take care of it, but they don't own it. Yes, and they, while it's under their care, they're responsible for its improvement, but then at the same time, the end users, it's their consumption of the data isn't always analytic. Sometimes it's just exploratory and, you know, as primitive as business intelligence, but we've seen this sort of tension, you know, for decades in computing where there's the power at the center which wants to keep things sort of clean and tight, and then there's the power at the edge which wants better access. And neither is right or neither is wrong. My classic push-pull between end users and IT, the end users want control, IT wants to own the data, keep it clean, keep it safe, and you just want to get as much of it as they can. Keep it safe. I think, you know, Sam Edelstein, the CDO, the city of Syracuse, I think had one of the most memorable examples of these two days when they talked about, you know, the value of harmonizing data that is in silos in so many organizations. He said, you can send a road crew out and they can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars fixing a road without being aware that there's a sewer under that road that has burst 50 times in the last five years and is going to have to be fixed. So that work is going to have to be all torn up a year from now and it's all going to go to waste. That was such a compelling example, I think, of, you know, sort of writ large of how getting your data act together can, at the very least, prevent wasted money. Yeah, I guess I would add, that was a very vivid example. And if I were to use, you know, words that come up over and over that I've heard in research, you know, prior to coming here was the role of the CDO is to put guardrails in. You might think of it when you're first learning, you know, to ride your bike when you get the extra, you know, two wheels, training wheels. You know, so you don't hurt yourself. It's not, it doesn't tell you which way you can go. It just helps you not tip over. And, you know, when we, especially now, when we have this explosion of volume of data and the different types of data, in the old world with the data warehouse, we had it so carefully and laboriously, you know, craft everything before anyone could touch it. Now it's just poured in there, whether we call it a lake or a swamp, but it's there probably more than anywhere else that we needed those guardrails so that someone going in there says, oh, I've got the right data element, you know, or the right data set for what I need. But that's a great thing though, just to be able to pour it in there. I mean, it's such a shift in mindset from having to manage very carefully what goes into the warehouse. Now you have this concept of, you know, let 100 flowers bloom and we'll sort of sort it all out after it's all there. Right. Final question, if we come back a year from now and you come to this symposium again, how do you think the topics would be different? Who are we talking about, Stu? Well, I hope next year when I come here, I don't hear people asking questions about are the CIO and the CDO in opposition to each other? We should be able to put that to bed immediately. Every feedback we got is, you know, are they always hugging each other? No, you know, these are corporations, there's always politics involved, but for the most part, they are working together. Sometimes they're reporting to each other, but they're not in opposition to each other, so we should be able to get past that narrative that we've heard kind of in the media too much. So, that one I hope we can put to bed. And I'm sometimes accused of these hard to follow analogies, so I'll try and bring it down to data terms or technology terms, but there are companies like Alation and Waterline and I think Informatica, if I can figure out what they're doing, where they will help put in the guardrails that the central data organizations want to help keep the data safe and sound, and then you'll see the trifactas, the pecsatas, the altrix, the teblos, clicks, and Microsoft Power BI's that empower the end users to do what they want. And I don't see any one vendor solving both sides. It looks very much like end user computing 30 years ago, where we had the sort of IT repositories and then the sort of PCs for end user computing. Yeah, it's very clear these problems are not going to be solved overnight. They may never be solved. There'll be a role for chief data officers for a long time going forward. We're out of time. We want to thank you for joining us here at the MIT CDO IQ Forum. This is theCUBE. We'll see you again.