 Hi, Geoffrey here with theCUBE. We are on the ground at a really special presentation is the MID Chief Data Officer West, the second one that they've done. We cover the Eastern one at MIT all the time, but we wanted to come out and check out the MIT CDO West conference. Had a great panel discussion following on the human face of big data, great movie, something everyone should watch, we'll have to find out if we can get it on theCUBE site. But we're joined by our first guest, Timo Elliott, Innovation Evangelist from SAP. Welcome. Thank you very much, hi. So that's quite a movie, really puts a face and some really interesting use cases on big data beyond what I think a lot of people think of, which is do I get a lot to keep on when I walk by my local Starbucks? Some fantastic examples of people really taking data to the next level and not just to improve business, but really to improve every aspect of life. Yeah, and you jumped on always a hot topic, causality versus correlation, right? And the two are not connected, they're related but not connected. And you really can't use correlation as causality. Yeah, the example was, did you know that children with bigger feet have better handwriting? It's absolutely true. It's because they're older. I still don't believe you. I'm gonna check that one. I don't think anybody can handle it. Maybe I can type faster. But the key point is that we have this fantastic technology, we have this fantastic new data that we can sift through, but at the end of the day, it's about how human beings actually use that data. And one of the easiest things we can do in organizations is actually help people learn how to use data more intelligently. Right, right. And there's an interesting correlation too out there. The movie talked about the target example, right? Which is the often cited example of target sending stuff to a home for a woman, or a girl who was pregnant at 18 year olds and her father didn't know it and had a conniption fit, turns out she was pregnant after all. And kind of the responsibility of what do we do with that data? And can we build the algorithms? Can we predict the outcomes when we start to kind of get into a path with the scale of data and the type of data and algorithms that we really haven't seen before? So it really opens up a lot of new challenges around governance and regulations and really ethics. These are really early days. We've come a long way, but there's a whole new culture around information that we need to create. And data privacy in particular is incredibly important. The data target example is interesting because what came out was something that normally would be very anodyne. You just using data to do some promotion of your materials. But in this case, it turned out to be something that was quote unquote embarrassing. One of the problems with data is that your most embarrassing secrets are already stored in a database somewhere. It's just waiting for somebody with bad intentions or just by accident to reveal that to people that you'd rather not reveal that information to. Yeah, there's a saying I've heard too, where if it's done well, it's magic. If you get that right thing in your inbox, in your Google card, in whatever, it's terrific. If it's not done well, it's creepy. And then of course then you've got this example with the target example that it just wasn't the right thing to do, whatever right really means. But you're from Paris, and Paris has different data laws in the US historically much tighter. So you've got a different perspective and you talked on the panel really about governance and laws, and this is really an opportunity for some laws to be dictated to kind of help corral kind of the opportunity at hand. But my question is at the rate of change, at the rate of speed of technology change, implementation change, big data change, can the laws keep up? How can government really keep abreast on what's going on? And the speed of government in terms of even if they're on top of it to get to decide they want to do something, how do they keep up? What does government do in this situation? It's really hard, but one of the basics and this is an area where European law, as far as I understand, is much stronger in the US is that you have a right to transparency. So in Europe, if I want to be able to download everything that Facebook has on me, then I can request that and that data has to be made available. So I can at least see what people are doing with my data. I live in Paris in France and there's an organization where anybody that stores any information about me has to register with that organization. So I can go and at least find out who is storing information about me and then I have a certain right to go and see that data and eventually try and correct it. That I think is a minimum, transparency. Today, one of the key things that I would say to any organization is that if you were doing things that you would be ashamed of if your customers found out about how you were using that information, that's probably a good sign you shouldn't be doing it. Yeah, other you're gonna say grandma. You know, if you're doing something that you wouldn't want to tell your grandma, maybe you shouldn't. But it's really an interesting concept because people do click on the eula, right? And it's kind of a joke. A lot of people, they click on it, they don't really read it. And the other thing that I came up in the movie was what is the real value of that information? I don't know that people have valued the information that they're making in exchange for these services to the degree in which those providers are doing it. But maybe it isn't that good. Maybe it's in the aggregate is really where they get a one plus one makes three impact in terms of the value of that data. And it isn't just my individual. So again, how do we deal with that kind of reality when I'm happily giving that data as the movie said, I'm happy to post my pictures on Facebook for the opportunity to keep up with my high school friends, not really knowing exactly what they're doing with that. And again, this is probably where I have the European point of view where I do believe that just like we make people wear seatbelts because it's something that they should probably do that they might not do. Then I think we do have the responsibility to protect people from themselves a little bit when it comes to giving their data away. But there is a trade-off. A best example I know of is medicine. So it's vitally important, for example, that we're able to collect information from different patients and how they're treated and use that to improve patient care. In aggregate, it's absolutely vital and a fantastic opportunity. But at the same time, we have to absolutely protect the rights of any individual patient to make sure that their data is not freely available. So that trade-off is really difficult. It's something that we're going to be struggling with for years to come. Yeah, and just a couple other kind of big topics is that you touched on there's really central control versus kind of a federation control. And then there's this thing called the cloud where the data goes up there. And I don't even know, I don't think Google deletes anything. I think it's easier for them to turn off access than to actually find the bits of files that are distributed throughout this massive system. So again, a unique set of challenges that deliver tremendous value in the services they provide but from really a regulation and really a governance point of view, a very different type of challenge. And so one of the topics we covered is that there's been a huge change in the culture of information use. It used to be back in the day that the information that people are using in organizations was generated by their own systems and controlled by the IT organization that they get limited access to it. But now there's been an explosion. People have their own devices. Most of the data that executives use comes from outside the organization now. So there's a whole new cultural approach that we have to create. In particular, existing IT organizations have to go away from this command and control type of structure because they just don't have the power to implement that anymore. And they have to have more of a community and culture building approach to get what needs to happen. Well, Timo, thanks for taking a few minutes. It's early days, but it's late nights. So we'll let you go. And again, thanks for taking a few minutes and good luck tomorrow at the conference. I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE. We're at the MIT CDO West in Santa Clara, California. Thanks for watching.