Quest EMPOWER 2021 is pleased to announce that Dr. Andreas Weigend, noted author and data scientist, will be presenting the keynote session on day 2. His book, “Data for the People,” is a bestseller available in eight languages. He was the chief scientist at Amazon and served as a member of Angela Merkel’s Digital Council of Germany.
Dr. Weigend will introduce Quest EMPOWER attendees to what he calls the “data dilemma.” It’s essentially that people demand privacy around data for themselves, and demand accountability around data from others. Because we now live in a data-rich world, with exponential data growth, we have conflicting expectations about how data should be treated.
As organizations collect massive volumes of data, Dr. Weigend proposes that the right question to ask is not “do we have the data?” but rather “what is the value of the data?” According to him, the value of data lies in the decisions that are based on it. In his keynote, Dr. Weigend will focus on the value of data, and on the rights and responsibilities of individuals and organizations as they extract that value.
Individuals should have rights to their data that fall into two categories: transparency and agency. Essentially, individuals should be able to see and access their data, make changes to it and control how much of their data is revealed.
Organizations should follow rules around how they treat data – not just how they safeguard it, but how they approach its use to gain value. As an example, Dr. Weigend recommends starting with a specific question that the data should answer – not starting with the data. Then, focus on the decisions that will be made from analyzing the data. There are five rules that Dr. Weigend will explain during his talk.
Dr. Andreas Weigend will also explore other concepts, such as the ownership of data, data refineries, trust in data and the importance of data literacy. He’ll be delivering his keynote during Quest EMPOWER on November 11 at 10:00 am Eastern.