Introduction

The Prophecy team had a great time (and learned a lot) at the CDOIQ Symposium last week in Cambridge.

We heard from Chief Data Officers, data strategy leaders, and hands-on practitioners tackling the rapidly changing world of data and AI.

And we were able to share how data transformation is key to this data puzzle, with conversations about the Prophecy Data Transformation Copilot, a symposium presentation, a great executive dinner, and an interview with our co-founder Maciej Szpakowiski on theCube.

To top it off, we had a chance to see some of Cambridge, including a night out at the MIT Museum.

The Data Gap and CDOs

The CDO role is now over 15 years old. In a look back, Randy Bean invited pioneers in the role from Capital One, Yahoo, Koger (84.51), and T-Mobile to share their experiences. While the role is ever-changing, the panel agreed that the CDO should be measured by the value they drive from data, and focus on closing the gap between what is currently happening with data and what is possible. Randy shared a great example from his most recent Data and AI Executive Leadership Survey: over 60% thought generative AI is transformational, but only 4% have something in production.

This core relationship between data and AI was present in nearly every session including impactful AI use cases at Pfizer, guidance on sensitive data to the cloud from Nuvance and Akron’s Children’s Hospital, and the new data value chain from Steward Bond.

Wrapping things up was a great panel with Subbiah Mahalingam from BD (maker of medical technology) and Arvind Rajagopalan of Verizon. Stressing the fundamentals of data ownership,  the pair also laid out a recipe to meet these challenges including self-service, data contracts, and getting the foundation right before laying on tools and AI.

Focus on Data Transformation

Before our session at the event, we held an audience poll to ask “What is the biggest challenge keeping everyone from getting the clean, trusted, and timely data they need?”

The results:

For all (except two lucky folks), overcoming obstacles to transforming data to power AI and analytics is a critical part of powering the next generation of AI and analytics.

Throughout the event, the Prophecy team had a chance to share how the Data Transformation Copilot can help everyone working in data overcome those challenges. 

This included:

• Discussions and demos at our table.
• Hosting a roundtable discussion “Lunch and the changing role of data engineering”
• Our session “How to Unlock Data for AI by Breaking Through the Data Transformation Bottleneck" with an overview of the impact of data on AI and a great demo from Prophecy co-founder Maciej Szpakowski. Slides are here - and attendees can see the recordings in the event app. 
• theCUBE interview with Maciej Szpakowski with hosts Sanjeev Mohan and Dave Velante on how Prophecy is changing the game and bringing generative AI to the world of data engineering with promptless efficiency for experts and full pipeline generation. The result: speeding transformation and bringing the business into the process to deliver data faster and, in the case of Prophecy customer Texas Rangers, deliver winning results.

Catching Up and Stepping Out

CDOIQ has a rich history with MIT and we all had a chance to see this at the event party hosted at the new MIT Museum. The museum was founded on the long tradition at MIT of holding on to ‘stuff’. Previously in rooms around the campus, it was great to see items like components of the Voyager spacecraft, early computing machines, icons of modern computing like scratch cats, and so much more in a spacious new building. 

Not to be outdone, the Prophecy team hosted our Ocean Odyssey Executive Dinner for a night of conversation and data strategy. Thanks to everyone who attended for sharing their amazing work. Reinventing auto sales, streamlining insurance, guiding clients, and building data strategy, this is a busy group!

See You Next Year

Add all that to the warm welcome from everyone in the CDOIQ community including co-chairs  Carl Gerber and Richard Wang and you have a truly great week!

We hope to see you next year. 

In the meantime, to see the Data Transformation Copilot firsthand join our weekly demos.

Thanks again!