I am very lucky. I love my job. I get real satisfaction helping people implement data governance frameworks and improving the quality of their data. It’s great to see the huge benefits that my clients achieve. Over the years I’ve realised that every single data governance implementation, I have been involved with has started from a “standard” or “best practice” framework. But it practice it has to be tweaked or amended to fit the culture of each and every organisation. Failure to do so will inevitably result in a less than successful implementation.

Each experience has presented various different challenges and as I have dealt with them, it has given me yet more tactics, tools and techniques to help me overcome the various obstacles that you invariably face doing this type of work.

It occurred to me that with an ever increasing focus on data governance, a lot more people are entering the field, but do not have the benefit of having done this work numerous times. This got me thinking about how one of the best things about conferences is not necessarily the presentations (not that they aren’t very useful) but more the fantastic opportunities to network with your peers.

Sadly the conferences only occur on a limited number occasions per year and can be costly both in terms of money and time. However, the Internet has made the world a much smaller place and I thought about how I have some fantastic conversations with people I have never met on Twitter. Whilst Twitter has numerous benefits, the conversations are short, transient and each response is limited to 140 characters. Also you only interact with whoever happens to be online at the same time as you. LinkedIn is not so dynamic, but is much better for longer in depth conversations and discussions.

With this in mind, I decided to set up a LinkedIn Group with the express purpose of getting data governance practitioners together (both those very experienced and those just starting out) to discuss and share experience, tips and advice. As the New Year is a great time to start any new venture, I set this LinkedIn Group up last week and have been absolutely amazed at the response! In a very short space of time a significant number of people have not only joined the group, but have most enthusiastically entered into the discussions. In just over a week, I have discovered more data governance practitioners who I had not had the pleasure of meeting online before and I’m thoroughly enjoying the conversations.

If you haven’t yet joined the group, I’d love to welcome you. The calibre of the debates has been great from the start and if you’re a beginner there is already a whole host of experts who are more than happy to share tips and advice.

Click here to join the group now.

My free report reveals why companies struggle to successfully implement data governance. Discover how to quickly get you data governance initiative on track by downloading this free report