Alexis
Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of Data Dave Dives Deeper. Today, we have two special guests to join Dave and I to dive deeper into a pretty fun topic that I’m pumped about. But before we get started, I always love to remind our listeners you can submit a question to Data Dave by emailing us at talktech@d3clarity.com or right on the D3Clarity website. If you’d be interested in joining us for one of these Data Dace Dives Deeper, you can also contact us at that talktech@d3clarity email address. So, hopefully we’ll hear from you soon.
Dave, I’m pumped. This is a four person podcast today!
Data Dave
I know, I’m excited as well. I think this is going to be an excellent one as well. We’ve got two fabulous guests that we first met at DGIQ in San Diego in June. So, we’ve got Rose Hansen, who’s a DB administrator from the Christian Healthcare Ministries, so that’s going to be exciting. And Colette Leung, who’s the Data Governance Program Manager for the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology. And I’m assuming that you guys don’t live anywhere near each other and so there’s got to be a story there as to how you managed to be giving a joint presentation at DGIQ.
So, let’s get right into it and start with – how did you get into data governance and what’s your story to get here? And then we’ll drill into the story of how you came to be presented together on such an interesting topic, which is “Data Governance on a Shoestring”, which is again another interesting one. So, we’re super excited to get into this and so without any further comment, let’s go straight in.
How about Rose, let’s hear a little bit of your story. How did you get into data governance?
Rose Hansen
Oh, wow. So, the varied path of how you end up in data governance. I started at a company working on the phones, the help desk and answering calls.
And after crying for several days because people are mean on the phones, I decided that was not what I wanted to do. And so, I moved my way up into customer service and from their QA, from their product and landed happily on the data team where I just found my love. I love working with SQL. SQL language just makes sense when you ask it what you want from, where you want it from, and it answers. And that’s pretty much SQL.
Alexis
That’s a little bit different from being in customer service, where you ask what you want to ask, and it doesn’t give you the answer hat you’re looking for.
Data Dave
Or just wait for a long time.
Rose Hansen
Yeah, so very true. So, yes, I’ve spent many years on the data team now and I’ve done a lot of different roles. I’ve been a database administrator, I’ve been a database engineer. I was the data governance engineer at my previous position, and now I have just done a full circle where I’ve transferred to Christian Healthcare Ministries as their DBA and hopefully will be leading or assisting with the charge of creating data as the company based on data and built by data and pushed forward by data. And so that’s my goal.
Alexis
Colette, I would love to hear your story as well. How did you get into data?
Colette Leung
I guess to echo kind of what Rose said is it always feels a little bit like a meandering path. I’m going a little bit far back in the lore here, but I always think it’s kind of a cute story to tell. When we were teenagers, my best friends and I, we were really, really into Neopets.
And in Neopets you had like this virtual pet and you could make a storefront for them and you could customize the storefront by like coding it. And so, I couldn’t let my friends have a cuter store than me. So, I kind of started picking up some coding and this kind of ended up being a theme that kind of stayed in my life.
Data Dave
Coding or Neopets?
Colette Leung
Coding, although I wouldn’t hate Neopets to have stayed in my life either.
But yeah. So eventually I got an undergrad in linguistics and then I ended up going to library school because I love books. I’m very passionate about that and information and helping people understand things. And I went into that industry purposely wanting to be a digital archivist.
And so, I got two master’s degrees, one in library science and one in something called digital humanities, which basically looks at how we can use computer science to enhance traditional humanities studies came out of that. And the market was really tough to get a job in digital archivism. So, I kind of took one of the first jobs that I had in the meantime to tie me over. And that job had me writing data policies. And that was like 10 years ago. And I ended up that I had a really good knack for it and I really, really loved it.
So, some of the people in the data team started to being like, “Oh, we’d really love to pull you into doing some more of the work that we do with data governance.” And we did. Eventually, I transferred to working for a mid-sized bank here in Canada called Canadian Western Bank. The banking is a great industry to kind of cut your teeth on data governance on because yeah, it’s got a nice mix of some innovation and some regulations, so you can really do some fun things.
Yeah, just really fell in love with it. It’s funny because sometimes when I tell people this story, it’s like- I’m sometimes so glad I didn’t end up being a digital archivist because I couldn’t imagine loving that job more than loving what I do now currently.
So, I feel very, very blessed that way.
Data Dave
Yeah, excellent. Yes. One of the reasons we asked that question, most people, and you probably heard this at DGIQ as well when we’re there, is that there’s a shocking number of people that never intended to get into data but ended up here anyway and absolutely love it. And library studies librarians are not uncommon in this space, as we found out as we’ve gone through this. That’s fascinating.
How did you two get together?
Rose Hansen
Well, we both ended up attending EDW 2023 in Anaheim. None of us knew each other. We actually have a group of four friends that we made from that conference. We met each other, we started discussions. The things that were lacking, the things that we needed help with, just conversing, having people to converse with who go through the same thing that you go through at your job. We made some friends and then. Colette, you tell the rest of the story.
Colette Leung
Yeah, I was gonna say. Actually, the other thing I’d say that was kind of fun about our group is like all of us were kind of… This sounds like sad, but it’s not meant to be sad… But like we were kind of a little bit alone. Like in our companies, we’re trying to push these initiatives forward. We have this expertise. We don’t necessarily have other people there that we can have the same kind of in-depth conversations that we ended up being able to have when we met each other when we went to EDW from there. Cause we had such a great time kind of talking with each other, sharing ideas, sharing ambitions, sharing war stories.
Data Dave
A bit of a self-help group for data governance professionals.
Colette Leung
Yeah, exactly.
Very cathartic. Very cathartic. It was amazing. We were like, “Wow. We didn’t know how much we needed this”. So yeah, so we wanted to keep in touch. Afterward, we kind of started our own little Discord chat, and we tried to kind of have monthly meetings just so we could talk about things we’re working on and things like that. And then from there Rose and I, I think just kind of. We were very consistently coming to these meetings. We would spend a lot of time chatting. And so, Rose said, “You know, I think it’d be really fun to do a talk. Would you be interested in doing that with me?” And I was like, “Yeah, that’d be amazing.”
And so I really have to give credit for it. Rose has been an amazing partner in working on all of this. I think she compliments my working style really well. But it’s been really fun to, like, compare, like, our two backgrounds, our experiences, even the different industries we’ve come from, the different international regions we come from, and kind of seeing those differences and. And seeing the commonalities as well. So. Yeah, and that’s kind of what led us to end up being kind of like, we share a lot of commonalities with people who are struggling to make these programs maybe feel a little bit alone. Sometimes we come to these talks and there’s a lot of resources or like, what you would need to get those resources is more budget than people typically have. And so we’re like, “Let’s share some of those success stories that we’ve had that have been really meaningful to our group with a wider audience. And yeah, practical.”
Rose Hansen
We wanted practical ideas.
Colette Leung
Practical. Yeah.
Data Dave
There’s a fabulous segue. You just mentioned success stories that you’ve had in doing this. Let’s drill into that. What are some of the best success stories?
Rose Hansen
Gamification is a big buzzword, right? So I created a badge system.
Alexis
You gotta stop there. We gotta. Yep, we gotta start there at the beginning. Game-gamification? As in turning something into a game?
Rose Hansen
Yeah, making something- a task- fun, you know, treating it like a game.
We created a business glossary, and you can’t build a business glossary by yourself. You need the whole company to participate and help and add, edit and things like that. And so I created a badge system which had little icons that could earn expert, novice, things like that, where you could put it in your Slack profile or your email signature, showing off that you had earned this by participating a certain amount in editing that business glossary.
So, I think that went really well. It was fun. It was fun for me to create, but I think it was fun for people to earn it too, and get some of that participation in that business glossary.
Data Dave
Who was the king? Who got the most badges or not who? How many badges did the person with the most badges win?
Rose Hansen
I had to hand it off. So, I’m not sure where it is currently, but yeah. It was a good amount. A good amount of effort. We had a lot of effort in people submitting terms. You know, we had a contest for that, and we gave away gift cards, of course. So, entice them with money. Entice them with things they can win. They like things like that.
Alexis
While I have you guys on this topic, I’m gonna go completely off-topic here and ask you a question.
If I were to say to you, if everybody in our organization completes their trainings that they have to do every year or so, I will video record myself being pied in the face. Is that something that you guys would be like, interested in? Listeners out there, is that something that you think you would be interested in? I’m trying to figure out ways to get our people to do our trainings. And I’m like, maybe if I’m just like, listen, you guys can pie me in the face virtually if you all do your trainings. That gamification of a simple task.
I got some laughs there, so I feel like that might work. Listeners comment if you think that that would be a good idea. If you have a better idea, I’m totally up to hearing it.
Rose Hansen
I’m going to steal that idea. I’m going to steal that idea and offer it for something. The next time I need to entice people to finish something for my data governance program, I’m be like, hey, I’ll do this.
Data Dave
You might be better if you offered to pie me in the face actually, Alexis.
Colette Leung
Now, I like that.
Alexis
I like the idea of trying to help people be excited about participating. We talk about, we’ve talked about it with, on many of these Dives Deeper podcasts. The idea that you’ve got to get your crowd behind you, you’ve got to get your team behind you. It’s not something that you can easily do by yourself.
Data Dave
Exactly. So, Colette, success story.
Colette Leung
I really love Rose’s example, but I think maybe I’ll say one of the things that. And we talked about this in our talk as well. But success in terms of the small wins are worthy of celebrating too, not just the really big ones.
So, I talk a lot about consistency, of having like, you know, a consistent newsletter, for example, something like that’s just constantly reminding people. And then I always feel like a tremendous amount of pride when I just hear someone in the business be like, “Oh, yeah, like this reminds me of something I read in the newsletter. Or there was one example I gave”.
So, when AI first came out, we kind of had these no-judgment zones for instructors to show up and talk about their hopes and fears about AI when everyone was just kind of trying to figure it out. We captured like whiteboards of people’s thoughts, and I was so pleased when I was reading some of those because they would be things like I was so surprised to learn this thing in the data governance newsletter, like, you know, and those are like really good feelings because it’s like, oh, your efforts are not just going into the void like, and getting those pieces of feedback. Those do feel like the wins that help sustain you on this journey of trying to bring data governance.
Data Dave
And yeah, I totally agree with that. Celebrating the wins, the small and the large wins as we go and getting everybody to participate in that celebration is incredibly important, I think, as we move through this journey.
So, your talk at DGIQ was entitled “Data Governance on a Shoestring”. That I find really interesting because there’s so frequently that we hear that people have been appointed as a department of one in a data governance world. The budget is super tight, and it has to be done through influence, without authority and without budget. So, I’d love to hear a little bit of that and how you guys have come to that. The size of the departments that you work in. And I’m sure, given that you formed this self-help group, it’s probably pretty small. So, you looked outside for that mutual support within the community. So, if we have a few words on that, I think that’d be excellent.
Colette Leung
I’ll highlight one of the things that just because I’m just bouncing off you a little bit here, Dave, because I think that was a really important theme in our presentation. But really finding community is really important to help building that. And so whether that’s community that you’re building from finding your data champions in your organization. So, people who are really keen about data initiatives and really care about doing it right, you’re going to find them everywhere. It’s surprising. But also like, like even outside community, like there are organizations in your local area that you can get involved with. Going to these kinds of conferences, the kind of friendships that I made, like with Rose and our other friends, those also help. Those are also really helpful in moving your programs forward. Other things that we talked a lot about were things like what are things that you can start that are small and that you can scale up and what are things that you can start just by yourself without a lot of budget.
So, we looked at like open-source tools, those kinds of things, like even how to do, like kind of an assessment of what tools are available in your environment to help you move forward. And then the last thing, and this was kind of Rose. So, I’m kind of stealing her thunder a little bit because she brought this up. But one of the things that we also really wanted to emphasize was giving yourself some grace and some kindness.
I think I run into this a lot where we run into people and they’re like, “Oh, my gosh, why isn’t my program more far ahead? Look at all these people that are doing all these cool things.” It’s really hard work, and you’re probably doing better than you think you are. And you have to give yourself that kind of space and that recognition as well to have sustainable.
Data Dave
Before we jump over to Rose, you talked about data champions and finding them. Are they elusive? Where do they hide?
Colette Leung
They feel a little bit elusive because your data champions, in my experience, they don’t always correlate with maybe your data roles. So. you might have, like, data stewards, data trustees. Sometimes people are in those roles. It’s not maybe their passion.
But data champion could be someone that’s just really just. And I’m thinking of some people I’ve worked with in the past that just have a huge amount of knowledge. They just really care about this kind of stuff. So, some of the ways that I’ve elicited finding those people is by having things like open workshops that people can attend. People who will attend those frequently will probably be people who care a lot.
Data Dave
Yep.
Colette Leung
And you can usually find them if you’re going around and giving workshops and things like that. They’ll be the people that have a lot of questions, that have a lot of like, I’ve done this this way. What do you think? You know, those kinds of things, and those end up being often your data champions.
Data Dave
Are there common places where they hide? Do you find them lurking in sort of finance organizations or sales operations?
Alexis
I was just thinking that as well as an institute of higher education, especially a technological institution, I imagine you probably have faculty members who are part of your data champion that you would never think to, like, bring into your organization until that one moment where it clicks that that person really has a good idea.
I worked in higher ed for a very long time before I joined D3Clarity. And I remember finding, like, my help and my people in the oddest places. Like, the librarians were always, like, huge help. There were these consistent faculty members that I knew could explain a pivot table to me and teach me how to handle X or Y. It was awesome to be able to find them there. But it’s probably a better pool for you than maybe it Is for Rose.
Colette Leung
That’s a good point. I will mention just very quickly to your point also, Alexis, like the ones that you find, like you can find people in very unexpected places. So, I think it’s actually to your benefit not to try and pre guess where you’re going to find them, but instead kind of offer things that allow them to kind of come out of the woodwork, so to speak. And the other thing I’ll just mention really quickly is sometimes the people who push against you the most can actually be your greatest allies because they’re pushing because they care. Yeah.
Data Dave
So totally agree with that. And I’ve now got this great mental picture of these elusive kind of fearful data champions that crawl out of the woodwork every so often. Like you’re offering them a piece of cheese or something.
Colette Leung
Exactly like that. Exactly like that. And it’s like, great, please take the cheese and bring it to your other friends like, you know.
Data Dave
Yeah.
And tell them where you got it.
Colette Leung
Yeah. Yes, exactly.
Data Dave
I digress.
Rose Hansen
I don’t remember our question, to be honest.
Data Dave
So the question was the data governance on a shoestring and giving your perspective of that as a topic. And some of the interesting points that have arisen by trying to do this on a shoestring because we often hear about the huge organizations that are pouring millions of dollars into this. But I find a lot is learned from people just grassroots, driving this within their own passion and within their structure where they are finding and recruiting people to this data. Cause that says I’m going to make the data better in my organization, and I’m going to recruit people across the organization and form this and build it. And we’re going to do it not because the organization is mandating it, but just because we feel that it is the right thing to do. And we’re going to see wins and we’re going to see a beta movement. So, just some comments on that would be awesome as that’s your sort of the focus of your talk and the focus of your discussions today.
Rose Hansen
Date governance practical things without spending money.
There’s so many programs out there that are six figures a year. If you can afford that, fantastic. But 90% of the companies can’t. And data governance is important, especially in a world where we’re trying to lead everything by data, and we have all these breaches everywhere. You know, it’s super important to govern that data using the tools you have at hand. If you have access to PowerPoint, make your data diagrams of PowerPoint. If you have access to SharePoint put all your documentation on SharePoint so everybody can read it. Just using all those tools that you already have, and you don’t have to spend extra money for. It was about that.
Colette Leung
I think the other thing that we kind of focused on a lot was the idea of taking starting places that maybe you can use to leverage other parts of data governance as well.
Alexis
Yeah, I’d like to hear an example of that.
Data Dave
Yeah, I was going to say, can you give us an example on that?
Rose Hansen
Yeah. So, I always partnered with Security because, at the company I was at, Security could get a budget push through for anything or get people strong-armed. People like you have to do this for regulations. And so I was like, “Oh yeah. So, this matrix roles matrix needs to be done by every single manager in the company. I’m going to give it to security and have them push it through and they’ll strong arm the managers and get it done.” And they did. So, partnering with those other teams, those other groups in your company to help push through, helps you know what’s important to them.
They can get the backing sometimes to get your initiatives pushed through.
Colette Leung
We called it “sneaky data governance”. Do you remember that?
Data Dave
Yes, exactly.
Rose Hansen
Sneaky data governance.
Data Dave
Piggybacking on other things. Piggybacking data governance.
Rose Hansen
Right, yeah.
Alexis
So, for people out there who are one-person shows, who don’t feel like they have anyone who understands what they’re going through, it’s good to remember that there’s a lot of people who understand what you’re going through. And this is some great advice. It’s a perfect place for us to end this podcast. Good advice from three very, very intelligent people of how you can be more successful with data governance even if you don’t have the budget to do it. So, this has been perfect. Thank you so much for joining us today. Rose, Colette, it has been an absolute pleasure talking with you guys.
Data Dave
And one other piece of advice, listen to Talk Tech with Data Dave.
Colette Leung
Yes, 100%. This is community. Right. So yeah, 100. Yeah.
Alexis
This is how I build my connections so I enjoy it.
Dave, anything else besides a shameless plug for our podcast that we need to cover in this episode?
Data Dave
No, I think that’s good. I’ve run out now.
Alexis
Rose, Colette, any closing thoughts? Any closing comments?
Colette Leung
Thank you so much for having us.
Rose Hansen
Yeah, yeah, thanks for having us.
Data Dave
Oh, you’re very welcome.
Alexis
This has been great.
Data Dave
Yeah, you’re very welcome and keep in touch and keep us informed. And we’re more than happy to help form and work with your self-help group and whatever’s necessary with advice and thoughts and anything else. So, stay in touch.
Colette Leung
Awesome. Yes, we’re definitely looking at scaling that up eventually. So that sounds great.
Alexis
Yeah, totally awesome. Well, thanks again to our audience out there. If you are interested in joining us for one of these Data Dave Dives Deepers, like I said at the top of the podcast, reach out to us at talktech@d3clarity.com. We’d love to have you on the show again. Thank you everyone so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it, and I hope everyone has a wonderful day.
Data Dave
Thank you.
