Meetings

Upcoming Meeting

Apr 24, 2024 @ 11:30am – 12:30pm Online Event: Navigating Data Catalog Trends & Best Practices

Join us on Wednesday, April 24th from 11:30AM – 12:30PM for an engaging session to explore the crucial role of data catalogs in modern organizations.

We will cover:

  • Guidance for effective data management
  • Insights into current trends
  • Strategies for future advancements
  • Frequently asked questions

Potential Questions Discussed

  • Why is there a resurgence of enterprise interest in Data Catalogs?
  • Why is it more important than ever to have a properly implemented a data catalog?
  • What are the key considerations when implementing a data catalog?
  • How do Data Catalogs impact Citizen Developers?
  • How do emerging technologies affect data management principles?

Event Details:

Register for the Event

Past Meeting

Mar 6, 2024 @ 4:30pm – 6:00pm Q1: Practical Data Governance for Generative AI

https://www.meetup.com/houston-data-management-association/events/299067575/

Join DAMA Houston for a high-impact panel discussion featuring thought leaders to discuss data governance best practices in the context of Generative AI (Gen AI).

While organizations recognize the exponential value that Gen AI can deliver, many are not confident with their data governance maturity to provide a sense of trust, safety, and reliability. In this DAMA event, we invite you to engage in an open dialogue with a panel of industry thought leaders, practitioners, and educators. We will focus on real-world examples and practical applications of data governance disciplines to address the most common challenges in leveraging Gen AI.

Key thematic questions:

  1. What are the top challenges organizations face regarding data readiness for Gen AI?
  2. Which data management capabilities should be prioritized?
  3. How can organizations accelerate their data literacy and skills development?
  4. What can we learn from emerging regulations and legal cases about Gen AI?

Our Panelists and Moderators:

  • Sushma Bhan is a Non-Executive Director at Ikon Science and an SPE Technical Director for Data Science & Engineering Analytics. She leads a global advisory for the energy sector data sciences and guides companies on growth opportunities and product oversight. Previously, Bhan was Chief Data Officer for Subsurface and Wells at Shell. She was recognized as Hart Energy’s 2024 Influential women in Oil & Gas and received SPE awards for her contributions to the petroleum industry. An active mentor to professionals and students, she holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Delhi and an executive MBA from the University of Houston.
  • Bala Vaithyalingam leads Worldwide Solution Engineering from IBM Technology Expert Labs. He drives Data & AI strategy and Digital Transformation for many state and federal agencies and Private organizations in North America and worldwide. Bala received many awards at IBM, including the patent invention achievement award. He holds an MBA from Purdue University and was awarded three University gold medals for his outstanding achievements in a Bachelor of Technology from Anna University, India.
  • Robyn Fuentes is a VP of Consulting at Improving and specializes in helping companies build and implement technology solutions in various industries, including Energy, Transportation, Health Care, e-commerce, Accounting, Mortgage, and more. In addition to her role at Improving, Robyn leads impact initiatives, personally coaches people, and speaks publicly to help others find a path to their goals in leadership.
  • Erika Vela is an attorney at BakerHostetler LLP where she represents global business clients in technology, software, and data privacy. With a solid foundation in general and corporate matters, she also advises clients on mergers and acquisitions, intellectual property, and licensing. Erika is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese and has represented clients in both languages in the U.S. and abroad.
  • David Hendrawirawan is an adjunct faculty member at the University of Texas and an independent board member at Heat Transfer Research Inc. He speaks at industry events and teaches graduate courses in data governance, cybersecurity law, and privacy engineering. Previously at Deloitte and Dell, David led cross-functional teams to provide data analytics strategy, governance, cybersecurity, privacy, and regulatory compliance.

November 8, 2023 @ 4:30pm – 6:30pm Q4: Industry Panel Discussion on Master Data Management

https://www.meetup.com/houston-data-management-association/events/296804157/

Join us for a high-impact panel discussion featuring thought leaders from banking, manufacturing, and oil and gas. We’ll delve into Master Data Management (MDM), key pillars for achieving operational efficiency and compliance. This interactive event will cover the following:

  • How MDM streamlines data quality, enhances compliance, and drives business agility.
  • Common roadblocks like data silos, regulatory constraints, and change management.
  • Effective strategies for data stewardship, governance frameworks, and technology adoption.

Our Panelists:

  • Jeff Green, Chief Information Officer at Strike, LLC leading technology and digitization strategy and execution. Recognized by Energy Tech Review as top 10 Energy CIOs in 2023.
  • Sonali Mathur, Global Director at General Motors, responsible for marketing data, privacy, and operations. Finalist of Women Leaders in Data and AI (WLDA) 2023.
  • Angela Tran, Director of Strategy and Staff Development at BNY Mellon. Prior experiences: AIG and Discover. Recently presented at CDO Summit Houston on analytics-driven culture.
  • Vivian Chang, Data Architecture & Governance Consultant. Delivered MDM Data Strategy and Architecture design for various companies and industries.

This is a must-attend event for executives and data professionals looking to leverage MDM for strategic advantage. Gain actionable insights and network with industry peers.

August 8, 2023 @ 4:00pm – 5:30pm Q3: Speed, Simplicity, Self-Service: Accelerating & Automating Data Movement to Cloud

https://www.meetup.com/houston-data-management-association/events/295100365/

How long does it take your organization to onboard a new data source or dataset into your cloud data platform?

By the time you design, build, test, deploy, document, and automate a new data pipeline, it’s likely that days, weeks, or months have gone by, and that’s assuming that the backlog for the data engineering team is minimal. Unfortunately, every day that goes by chips away at your credibility and relevance.

During this talk and *live demo* you’ll learn how Fivetran accelerates and simplifies data movement and streamlines data pipelines to the cloud addressing critical data challenges for any organization such as:

  • Time to insight: It’s fast to set up production data pipelines that help deliver data outcomes.
  • Architectural constraints: It’s a pure SaaS service so any infrastructure effort is removed.
  • Self-service: You don’t have to be a data engineer or developer to use Fivetran effectively.
  • Operational sustainability: It just works and uptime is 99.9%+.

Using Fivetran’s fully automated and fully managed data movement service, you’ll see *live and in real-time* (in less than 10 minutes) how an application data source with customer/account information (Salesforce) and a relational database source with lab analysis information (SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL) are both easily and quickly connected to a cloud data platform for a historical sync, ongoing incremental replication, and change data capture that produces an understandable, organized, and normalized dataset. You’ll also learn how to automatically build aggregations and ready-for-analysis data models in just a few steps from the new customer/account dataset.

Speaker: Kelly Kohlleffel

Head of Partner Sales Engineering
Fivetran Global Partner

Kelly leads the Fivetran Global Partner Sales Engineering organization where he works with a broad ecosystem of technology partners and consulting services partners on modern approaches to data products and solutions.

He previously led the GTM team (sales, technical sales, marketing, and alliances) at Hashmap (acquired by NTT DATA) and also hosted Hashmap on Tap, a weekly podcast focused on data company founders and industry leaders. Kelly enjoys all aspects of the data industry and before Hashmap helped grow Hortonworks across the energy industry and worked closely with enterprise clients as Key Account Director at Oracle.

He’s also passionate about his family and when he gets the chance to unplug from tech for a while you can catch him (usually with a family member) on the tennis court, basketball court, or the lake in a kayak.

Sponsor

Improving provides consulting, software development and training to our customers through high environments of trust.

May 9, 2023 @ 4:00pm – 5:30pm Q2: How to Modernize Your BI and Analytics Architecture with Semantic Layer

https://www.meetup.com/houston-data-management-association/events/292938718/

Learn about using a semantic layer to modernize analytics architecture and accelerate the business impact of AI and BI at your organization.

This session will offer practical advice on how to drive AI & BI business outcomes with a modern analytics architecture that leverages a semantic layer. 

You will learn how to achieve quantifiable results by modernizing your BI and analytics stack with a semantic layer that delivers an order of magnitude better query performance, increased data team productivity, lower query compute costs and improved Speed-to-Insights.

Attend this session to learn about:

  • Gaining business alignment and reducing data prep for your AI and BI teams. 
  • Making a consistent set of business metrics “analytics-ready” and accessible. 
  • Accelerating end-to-end query performance while optimizing cloud resources.
  • Delivering speed-of-thought performance – without extracting large data sets or maintaining OLAP cubes. 

Who should attend this session?

All data & analytics leaders and professionals (E.g. Chief Data Officers, data analysts, statisticians, data scientists, data engineers, data literacy, business intelligence, and data governance professionals)

Speaker: Daniel B Gray | VP, Solutions Engineering, AtScale

Bio: Daniel Gray brings rich experience in technical solutions engineering as well as software engineering to his work with global enterprise organizations. Prior to joining AtScale to lead the Solutions Engineering team, Daniel spent many years in the analytics space including Hewlett-Packard’s Advanced Technology Center, Vertica, and Domino Data Lab. When he’s not in the office or onsite with customers, you’ll find Daniel running, climbing, hiking, and biking – basically anything outdoors.

October 11, 2022 @ 4:30pm – 6:00pm Q3: DAMA – Ballot Data Model: How Elections Work

In Harris County, Texas (which is approximately the City of Houston), for the November 6, 2018 election, David Hay was appointed an “Alternate Judge” to help oversee the voting process for a precinct.

Because the ballot for each precinct is different, the complexity of the whole set of registration, election district, contest, and results data for Harris County intrigued him, he did what he knew how to do best: he developed a “conceptual data model” to try to simplify that complexity. The drawings in this presentation, along with descriptions, constitute such a model.

David C Hay Bio: Since the early 1980s, David Hay has been a pioneer in the use of process and data models to support strategic planning, requirements analysis and system design. He has developed enterprise models for many industries, including, among others, pharmaceutical research, oil refining and production, banking, and nuclear energy. In each case, he found the relatively simple structures hidden in formidably complex situations. Mr. Hay has published several books and numerous articles. He is a frequent speaker at professional Society Conferences. He is Founder and CEO of Essential Strategies International.

Meeting is Remote: Please RSVP for GoToMeeting Details

November 2nd, 2021 @ 4:30pm
Q4: DAMA – Data visualization and Data Storytelling (details coming soon)