 From around the globe, it's theCUBE, covering Data Citizens 21, brought to you by Calibra. Hello everyone, John Walls here as we continue our CUBE Conversations here as part of Data Citizens 21, the conference ongoing. Calibra at the heart of that, really at the heart of data these days and helping companies and corporations make sense, all of those data chaos that they're dealing with, trying to provide new insights, new analyses, being a lot more efficient and effective with your data. That's what Calibra is all about. And their founder and their Chief Data Citizen, if you will, Stan Christians, joins us today. And Stan, I love that title, Chief Data Citizen. What is that all about? What does that mean? Hey John, thanks for having me over and hopefully we'll get to the point where the Chief Data Citizen title is pleased to you. Thanks by the way for giving us the opportunity to speak a little bit about what we're doing with our Chief Data Citizen. We started the company about 13 years ago, so 2008, and over those years as a founder, I've worn many different hats from product to pre-sales to partnerships and a bunch of other things. But ultimately the company reaches a certain point, a certain size where systems and processes become absolutely necessary if you wanna scale further. And for us, this is the moment in time where we said, okay, we probably need a data office right now ourselves, something that we've seen with many of our customers. So we said, okay, let me figure out how to lead our own data office and figure out how we can get value out of data using our own software at Calibra itself. And that's where the Chief Data Citizen role comes in. On Friday evening, we like to call that drinking our own champagne, morning, morning, eating our own dog food. But essentially this is what we help our customers do, build out the data offices. So we're doing this ourselves now and we're very hands-on. So there's a lot of things we're learning, again, just like our customers do. And for me at Calibra, this means that I'm responsible as a Chief Data Citizen for our overall data strategy, which talks a lot about data products, as well as our data infrastructure, which is needed to power data products. Now, because we're doing this in the company and also doing this in a way that is helpful to our customers, we're also figuring out how do we translate the learnings that we have ourselves and give them back to our customers, to our partners, to the broader ecosystem as a whole. And that's why if you summarize the strategy, I like to sometimes refer to it as data office 2025, it's 2025, what does a data office look like by then? And we recommend to our customers to also have that forward-looking view just as well. So if I summarize the answer a little bit, it's very similar to a Chief Data Officer role, but because it has the external evangelization component, helping other data leaders, we like to refer to it as the Chief Data Citizen. Yeah, and that kind of, you talked about evangelizing. Obviously with that, you're talking about certain kinds of responsibilities and obligations. And when I think of citizenship in general, I think about privileges and rights and about national citizenship. You're talking about data citizenship. So I assume that with that, you're talking about appropriate behaviors and the most well-defined behaviors and kind of keeping it between the lanes, basically. Is that how you look at being a data citizen? And if not, how would you describe that to a client about being a data citizen? It's a very good point. As a citizen, you have rights and responsibilities and the same is exactly true for a data citizen. For us, starting with what it is, right? For us a data citizen, it's somebody who uses data to do their job. And we've purposely made that definition very broad because today we believe that everyone in some way uses data to do their job. Data is universal, it's critical to business processes and its importance is only increasing. And we want all the data citizens to have appropriate access to data and the ability to do stuff with data, but also to do that in the right way. And if you think about it, this is not just something that applies to you and your job, but also extends beyond the workplace because as a data citizen, you're also a human being of course. So the way you do data at home with your friends and family, all of this becomes important as well. And we like to think about it as informed privacy-aware data citizens who think about trust in data all the time. Because ultimately everybody's talking today about data as an asset and data as a new gold and a new oil and a new soil. There is a ton of value in data, but it's not just organizations themselves who see this, it's also the bad actors out there. We're reading a lot more about data breaches for example. So ultimately there's no value without risk. So as a data citizen, you can achieve value, but you also have to think about how do I avoid these risks? And as an organization, if you manage to combine both of those, that's when you can get the maximum value out of data in a trusted manner. Yeah, I think this is pretty interesting approach that you've taken here because obviously there are processes with regard to data, right? I mean, that's pretty clear. But there's a culture that you're talking about here that not only are we going to have an operational plan for how we do this certain activity and how we're going to analyze here, input here, action or perform action on that, whatever. But we're going to have a mindset or an approach mentally that we want our company to embrace. So if you would, walk me through that process a little bit in terms of creating that kind of culture, which is very different than kind of the X's and O's and the technical side of things. Yeah, that's I think where organizations face the biggest challenge because maybe they're hiring the best, most unique data scientist in the world, but it's not about what that individual can do, right? It's about what the combination of data citizens across the organization can do. And I think there, it starts first by thinking as an individual about universal golden rule, treat others as you would want to be treated yourself, right? The way you would adequately use data at your job, think about that there's other people at other companies who you would want to do the same thing. Now, from our experience in our own data office at Codiba as well as what we see with our customers, a lot of that personal responsibility, which is where culture starts, starts with data literacy. And we talked a little bit about climate rock and the small statues in Brussels, Belgium, where I'm from, but essentially here we speak a couple of languages in Belgium and for organizations for individuals, data literacy is very similar. You're able to read and write, which are pretty essential for any job today. And so we want all data citizens to also be able to speak and read and write data fluently if I can express it this way. And one of the key ways of getting that done and establishing that culture around data is lies with the one who leads data and the organization, the chief data officer or however the role is called, they play a very important role in this. The comparison maybe that I always make, there is think about other assets in your organization. You're organized for the money asset, for the talent asset with HR and a bunch of other assets. So let's talk about the money asset for a little bit, right? You have a finance department, you have a chief financial officer and obviously their responsibility is around managing that money asset, but it's also around making others in the organization think about that money asset. And they do that through established processes and responsibilities like budgeting and planning, but also ultimately to the individual where, you know, through expensives that we all love so much, they make you think about money. So if the CFO makes everyone in the company think about money, the data officer or the data lead has to make everyone think in the company about data asset just as well. And those rights, those responsibilities in that culture, they also change, right? Today they're set this and this way because of privacy and policy X and Y and Z. But tomorrow, for example, as with the European Union's new regulation around the AI, there's a bunch of new responsibilities you'll have to think about. You know, you mentioned security and about value and risk, which is certainly, they are part and parcel, right? If I have something important, I've got to protect it because somebody else might want to create some damage, some harm and steal my value basically. Well, that's what's happening as you point out in the data world these days. So what kind of work are you doing in that regard in terms of reinforcing the importance of security culture, privacy culture, this kind of protective culture within an organization so that everybody fully understands the risks but also the huge upsides if you do enforce this responsibility and these good behaviors that obviously the company can gain from and then provide value to their client base. So how do you reinforce that within your clients to spread that culture, if you will, within their organizations? Spreading a culture is not always an easy thing. And especially a lot of organizations think about the value around data but to your point, not always about the risks that come associated with it. Sometimes just because they don't know about it yet, right? There's new architectures that come into play the cloud and that comes with a whole bunch of new risks. That's why one of the things that we recommend always to our customers and to data officers and our customers organizations is that next to establishing that data literacy, for example, and working on data products is that they also partner strongly with other leaders in their organization. On the one hand, for example, the legal folks where typically you find the aspects around privacy. And on the other hand, the information security folks because if you're building up a sort of map of your data, look at it like a castle, right? That you're trying to protect. If you don't have a map of your castle with the strong points and the weak points where people can dig a hole under your wall or what have you, then it's very hard to defend. So you have to be able to get a map of your data, a data map, if you will, know what data is out there with being used by and why and how. And then you wanna prioritize that data, which is the most important, what are the most important uses and put the appropriate protections and controls in place. And it's fundamental that you do that together with your legal and information security partners because you may have as a data leader, you may have the data knowledge, the data expertise, but there's a bunch of other things that come into play when you're trying to protect not just the data, but really your company on its data as a whole. You know, you were talking about 2025 a little bit ago and I thought, good for you, that's quite a crystal ball that you have looking at the headlights that far down the road. But I know you have to be, you know, that kind of progressive thinking is very important. What do you see in the longterm for number one, your kind of position as a chief data citizen, if you will, and then the role of the chief data officer, which you think is kind of migrating toward that citizenship, if you will. So maybe put on those longterm vision goggles of yours again and tell me what do you see as far as these evolving roles and these new responsibilities for people who are CDOs these days? Well, 2025 is closer than we think, right? And obviously my crystal ball is as fuzzy as everyone else's, but there's a few things that trends that you can easily identify and that we've seen by doing this for so long at Kotebra. And one is the push-around data. I think last year, the year 2020 where sort of COVID became the executive director of digitalization, forced everyone to think more about digital. And I expect that to continue, right? So that's an important aspect. A second important aspect that I expect to continue for the next couple of years, easily in 2025 is the whole movement to the cloud. So those cloud-native architectures become important as well as the, you know, preparing your data around it, preparing your policies around it, et cetera. I also expect that privacy regulations will continue to increase as well as the need to protect your data assets. And I expect that a lot of chief data officers will also be very busy building out those data products. So if you take that trend, then, okay, data products are getting more important for chief data officers, then data quality is something that's increasingly important today to get right. Otherwise, it becomes a garbage-in, garbage-out kind of situation where your data products are being fed bad food and ultimately their outcomes aren't very great. So for us, for the chief data officers, I think there was about one of them in 2002. And then 2019-ish, let's say there were around 10,000. So there's plenty of upsides to go for the chief data officers. There's plenty of roles like that needed across the world. And they've also evolved in responsibility. And I expect that their position, you know, is it really a C-level position today in most organizations? Expect that trend will also continue to grow. But ultimately, those chief data officers have to think about the business, right? Not just the defensive and offensive positions around data like policies and regulations, but also the support for businesses who are today shifting very fast and will continue to digital. So those chief data officers will be seen as heroes, especially when they can build out a factory of data products that really supports the business. But at the same time, they have to figure out how to reach an old branch to their technical counterparts because you cannot build that factory of data products in my mind at least without the proper infrastructure. And that's where your technical teams come in. And then obviously the partnerships with your legal and information security folks, of course. Heroes, everybody wants to be the hero. And I know that you painted a pretty clear path right now as far as the chief data officer is concerned and their importance and the value to companies down the road. Stan, we thank you very much for the time today and for the insight and wish you continued success at the conference. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Have a nice day, stay healthy. Thank you very much. Stan Christians joining us talking about chief data citizenship, if you will, as part of Data Citizens 21, the conference being put on by Calibra. I'm John Walls, thank you for joining us here on theCUBE.