Data Quality Events – Powerful and Cozy

For those of you who enjoy hobnobbing with the information quality community, I have a couple of recommendations for you. These events are your chance to rub elbows with different factions of the community. In the case of these events, the crowds are small but the information is powerful.

MIT Information Quality Symposium
We’re a couple of weeks away from the MIT Information Quality Symposium in Boston. I’ll be sharing the podium with a couple of other data quality vendors in delivering a presentation this year. I’m really looking forward to it.
Dr. Wang and his cohorts from MIT fill a certain niche in information quality with these gatherings. Rather than a heavily-sponsored, high pressure selling event, this one really focuses on concepts and the study of information quality. There are presenters from all over the globe, some who have developed thought-provoking theories on information quality, and others who just want to share the results of a completed information quality project. The majority of the presentations offer smart ways of dissecting and tackling data quality problems that aren’t so much tied to vendor solutions as they are processes and people.
My presentation this year will discuss the connections between the rate at which a company grows and the degree of poor information in the organization. While a company may have a strong desire to own their market, they may wind up owning chaos and disorder instead, in the form of disparate data. It’s up to data quality vendors to provide solutions to help high-growth companies defeat chaos and regain ownership of their companies.
If you decide to come to the MIT event, please come by the vendor session and introduce yourself.

Information and Data Quality Conference
One event that I’m regrettably going to miss this year is Larry English’s Information and Data Quality Conference (IDQ) taking place September 22-25, in San Antonio, Texas. I’ve been to Larry’s conferences in past years and have always had a great time. What struck me, at least in past years, was the fact that most of the people who went to the IDQ conference really “got it” in terms of the data quality issue. Most of the people I’ve talked with were looking for sharing advice on taking what they knew as the truth – that information quality is an important business asset – and making believers out of the rest of their organizations. Larry and the speakers at that conference will definitely make a believer out of you and send you out into the world to proclaim the information quality gospel. Hallelujah!

Thanks
On another topic, I’d like to thank Vince McBurney for the kind words in his blog last week. Vince runs a blog covering IBM Information Server. In his latest installment, Vince has a very good analysis of the new Gartner Magic Quadrant on data quality. Thanks for the mention, Vince.