4#1 - Tiankai Feng - The Power of Communities - CoP, DAMA and Beyond (Eng)

"For me, it really goes back to basic human needs, almost."

How can the sense of community support Data Professionals? We dive deep into this question with Tiankai Feng, a prominent figure in data governance and the Data Strategy and Data Governance lead at ThoughtWorks Europe. In this season four premiere of MetaDAMA, Tiankai shares his unique journey and how his passion for music plays a pivotal role in his professional and personal life. His story underscores the multidimensional nature of data professionals and the importance of a supportive community.

Building and nurturing internal communities is crucial. Tiankai and Winfried discuss how data governance conferences serve as therapeutic spaces, offering more than just professional development—they provide emotional and communal support. We explore various community models like grassroots movements and rotational leadership, highlighting the indispensable role of leadership in fostering these spaces. Recognizing and valuing community leaders is essential for sustaining these supportive networks within organizations.

Lastly, we delve into practical strategies for building strong data management communities. From integrating community introductions into onboarding processes to using these groups as recruitment tools, we cover it all. We also examine how company culture shapes the type of communities that flourish and the support provided by external organizations like DAMA. Joining communities helps alleviate isolation, share solutions, and foster a connected environment. Tune in to learn how to make community engagement a cornerstone of data governance and elevate both personal and professional growth.

Here are my key takeaways:
Communities in organizations

• Community is needed as a counterpart to the transactional behavior in a workplace.
• Communities of Practice is an established model, that comes from a technical side, methodology focuses.
• Communities can create new lines of communication, that can help spread a sense of belonging in an organization, beyond a specific department or team.
• Leadership needs to accept that being in a Community is also part of the job.
• Community leaders need recognition and to be valued for their work.
• The «smartest person in the room» should not be the leader of a Community - this can turn a community into a lecture setting.
• Ensure that organizational hierarchies are «flattened» in a Community, to support physiological safety and freedom to speak.
• Ensure you have some rules of engagement or code of conduct in place.
• Breakout groups can be a way to get everyone to participate actively in the Community.
• Leadership plays an important role to promote Communities in an organization.
• Well functioning Communities of Practice can become a selling point for recruitment.

DAMA as a Community

• A Community for Data professionals outside their organizations.
• The most outstanding impact DAMA can have is networking in a broad community, both local/national, but also internationally across sectors.
• There is an element of mentioning and coaching that a community of this size can offer.
• Another factor can be talent-sourcing: both for organizations, but also for job-seekers.
• Upscaling and learning are a great part of the DAMA Community, also including the CDMP certification.
• You need to find your balance between domain or sector specific communities and large data communities like DAMA.

SOME Community

• You need to be conscious about what you are reading on SOME.
• It can be a great place to provoke some new thoughts and get perspective on your work.
• There is certainly an entertainment factor to using SOME. Humor can heal a lot, and laughing about challenges we face as Data folks is like therapy.

Transcript

Exploring Data Management Community Engagement

Speaker 1 0:00

This is MetaDemo, a holistic view on data management in the Nordics. Welcome, my name is Winfried and thanks for joining me for this episode of MetaDemo. Our vision is to promote data management as a profession in the Nordics, show the competencies that we have and that is the reason I invite Nordic experts in data and information management for a talk. We are back with MetaDema and I'm really happy to have a season four to bring to you, and this is I mean, this is the fourth year we do the podcast on data management in the Nordics and we had so many great guests on the show and while the interest is still there and there are still so many great people to talk to, so I'm really happy to have a season four to start with, and, as always, we start with like an internal look looking at DEMA as an organization. Well, podcast is called Meta DEMA, so it's kind of obvious and this also gives me the opportunity to go a bit beyond the Nordics. So this time wanted to talk to Tiankai Feng, who is really active in DEMA Germany. He's one of the people you have to know when you work with data governance and you have to know if you work in the community, and this is also the topic we want to talk about today.

Speaker 1 1:42

We want to talk about community, and this is also the topic we want to talk about today. We want to talk about community, and it seems a bit meta, but at the same time, I think community is the basis of what we are doing In data governance. We talk a lot about communication as a key. Well, community, that's the place where you can communicate, where you can engage people. This is where you can get the sense of a shared identity, really, and a belonging, and I think it's important that, while we communicate with the business people in a certain way, we also need to have a place where we can speak our own language, share our ideas and feel like we are part of something bigger. So this is what it's really about, and I think there's probably no one better to talk about this topic with than Chiang Kai-fei, so welcome.

Speaker 2 2:28

Thank you so much. I'm really happy to be here and also very happy to talk about this topic of community that I'm very passionate about.

Speaker 1 2:34

Well, should we start talking a bit about you before we talk about community as a topic. What do you do for work now and what do you do when you're off work?

Speaker 2 2:42

Absolutely so. I'm currently the data strategy and data governance lead in ThoughtWorks Europe. Thoughtworks is a consultancy that focuses on tech and data topics. I think, especially in the last years, a lot was driven by Data Mesh, which was written by Jamak, who previously was also a ThoughtWorker, for example, but also I am the head of marketing for dama germany. That's, um, also what winfrey just referred to already.

Speaker 2 3:08

So, um, that already indicates that I'm also kind of a good communicator. I'm actually enjoying communicating a lot, right, and for me, being the biggest hobby I have is being a musician. So I really I'm a pianist but also a songwriter. I produce my own songs as well, in my little home studio as well, and I've been, of course, applying my music also a little bit to work since a few years now. That's also what I'm probably known for on LinkedIn of having music videos about data and other topics related to work. And, yeah, I'm really glad that I can actually combine my hobby and personal side with my work self a little bit, and that is also not awkward, but it's actually being perceived as nice and that people enjoy it too. So I'm enjoying it, I bring people joy and that is a win-win for sure.

Speaker 1 3:57

Exactly, and I mean this is really how you build an identity. People recognize you, they know about your music videos and I mean I've used some of your music videos in presentations before, because-.

Speaker 2 4:10

Wow, thanks, perfect, that's cool.

Speaker 1 4:12

Very nice. So you have an interesting journey to data, right? Because you're not the classically educated data governance well, as much as I am. But can you tell us a bit about your story and your journey to data?

Speaker 2 4:33

Sure, I mean it's actually not traditional data governance career but still a data career. I would say it all started when I studied industrial engineering in my bachelor and master's and when you study that you can choose a business focus and you can choose a technical focus, engineering focus, right and back then I chose marketing as a business focus and I actually chose IT engineering, slash database systems actually as my technical focus. And when I graduated, actually marketing analytics just became a big thing. So it was this time when social media and websites and paid media all of a sudden were measurable and really people wanted to make automate, make more informed decisions about how they engage on digital touch points. So I really rode that way of the hype around then and I worked at a consultancy where basically we were doing those analytics services and kind of data driven marketing recommendations for our clients. And I worked in China for that also a little bit, which is actually for data governance. Audience members is interesting one because I faced so little privacy and I kept looking at so much data from consumers. That scared me a little bit when I was working there, but that actually gave me a really good context when I returned to Germany of what is actually out there as well, but fast forward. I basically then returned to Germany for a few years and one of the clients then was Adidas so that project worked so so well also related to data driven marketing that I was offered basically to join the adidas side on the client side, and I've spent six years then there, where I was first leading the data product of reporting and visualization, which had more to do about tableau and power bi dashboards but also bringing it to the people and training them to actually use them in a better way. And then I was a capability lead for social media and voice of consumer analytics. So that was more about leading the tools but also the capability and expertise of that area.

Speaker 2 6:39

But during all that time I was a big advocate for data quality. I basically said, with all the bad data we're getting, no matter how good we are skilled, we cannot really do anything with it. All of the garbage in, garbage out. Basically, things are happening, and why is it so hard to fix? I was always asking.

Speaker 2 6:59

So I was addressing data governance with that question and then, basically, a few years later, data governance asked me if I wanted to help by solving their problems, because I'm so vocal about complaining about it, don't? I want to see how to fix it together and not only complain about it, basically. So I saw that as a very interesting challenge. So I basically took that on and realized very quickly why it's so difficult to fix data quality. And yeah, so that was my entry then into data governance. I led that product data governance team at Adidas, then did it for a few years, and now I'm excited to explore more industries and more touch points with data governance as a consultant too, because that allows me to look into different clients and their situation and I'm learning a lot as well.

Speaker 1 7:45

Really interesting journey and you've seen the problems from the other side and I think this is really important for data governance to get that understanding. Yeah, and then you chose to be part of that Daymark community. Right, what happened and how?

Speaker 2 8:02

Yeah, that was actually not even that planned but it was really interesting. So back in adidas, um, we basically were hiring a few more people and one of them was actually part of a dharma chapter in the um in latin america and there. And basically that is when she brought us dharma and the dimIMBOK and CDMP all to the attention and I felt like that might be not only a good way to learn more about it but also to bring people together to have like a standard understanding of something. So we built that learning groups basically inside the teams to learn together for what's in the DIMBOK and we did like peer toto-peer teaching thing as well. Um.

Speaker 2 8:47

And then a few months later, um, I was invited to the djiq conference in San Diego by dataversity and um. I went there and saw on the agenda that you can get certified for CDMP, basically there on site. I'm like, huh, I think that's a sign. I learned all of that with the team members. Now I'm going there and it's right in front of my face. Why, huh, I think that's a site. I learned all of that with the team members. Now I'm going there and it's right in front of my face. Why don't I just give it a try.

Speaker 2 9:15

So I went for it and I passed it. And then I got CDMP certified and right at that, there I actually met Ekerhardt from the German chapter of Dharma, who then told me more about the German chapter as well, and I was like, why not? I mean, I like community, I like also driving topics where it brings people together and upskilling them. Why don't I just see if I can join them? So a few weeks later we talked, I joined, and since then I'm helping as much as I can with the Dharma community in Germany.

Speaker 1 9:41

Fantastic and a perfect segue into the topic. Great, so we talk about communities on a bit different levels. Right, dema is more of a network community, but I think, before we can talk about DEMA and the networks, I think we should talk a bit about internal communities. So what can you do inside your organization to spread the word, get that sense of belonging to a community? Maybe the most basic question we should ask is why? So why do we need an internal community and internally to talk about data?

Speaker 2 10:16

I think for me it really goes back to basic human needs, almost right.

Speaker 2 10:21

I think, like over the history of humankind, collaboration has always been proven to be successful and to be helpful for the, for people basically.

Speaker 2 10:34

And when we talk about communities at work, then I really think that it tackles that need of a human connection more and instead of just having transactional kind of relationships with each other, community for me is like a little bit the counterpart to it, where it's more about helping each other, sharing more, rather than I want something from you and you want something from me kind of approach. Right, and this is how also I would define a community. Right, where this sense of community means that you are feels the sense of belonging, as you mentioned, you feel the sense of being welcomed and to be helped and that you want to help as well, and that it's also about psychological safety a lot. Right, where you can just share and vent as well without being frowned upon and that you can be open about your opinions and your pain points and maybe find some other people that might share the same pain points as you Very good and I think that you talked about a lot of interesting things here.

Speaker 1 11:26

I think that psychological safety is really important and to create that kind of safety it's not that easy in an organization, well, depending on the size, but I think the more complex an organization gets, the harder it gets to create that sense and that community. So we know why. So what kind of communities do you think are important to establish and how would you go about it?

Empowering Data Steward Communities

Speaker 2 11:52

Yeah, I think that, for I mean, the general trend is for going for communities of practice, I think, right, and that is something that is more established over the last years. It comes strongly, I think, from a technical point of view though, right. So that is about methodological expertise that is being shared, to talk about best practices or hacks or workarounds about certain topics, for example, that is being exchanged and that can be really helpful, right, especially when you're coding or when you're developing something. Right, that is really nice. But I see also communities as a way to, in a very cheesy way, cure loneliness, I would say right.

Speaker 2 12:29

And in data governance terms, data stewards can often be very alone in their own department, right, they are the only ones that have to bridge data and the business side and they're responsible for a lot of things, and they're probably also very stressed about it many times when things are going wrong. But everybody else probably is not as close to the data side in the same team, right. So I feel like if we focus on data steward communities, that also means to give them a sense of community, that they're not alone, right, you don't have to face all of that alone and face it, share your pains and share your stress with all of the other data stewards. They might all feel very similar, and I think that it's funny, because my feeling and you might have the same experience going to data governance conferences. A lot is like group therapy, because you're all venting about the same challenges together and it's basically what happened, I feel like, is we couldn't find that community sense in the organization. So we go to conferences to find that community, to just vent together and we feel all better afterwards.

Speaker 2 13:30

But it doesn't have to be outside the organization, right, and this is what I'm saying. It can be also inside the organization, as long as it's being enabled and encouraged. And for data stewards, but also data owners or data custodians, whatever data roles you might also have, they all might feel a little bit that kind of sense of loneliness, and when you actually then give them that community, I think that has effects also in terms of motivation. Motivation leads to higher effectiveness, higher productivity potentially, and that, of course, leads to business impact. So I think it's really a worthwhile investment also to look into a community Fantastic.

Speaker 1 14:05

And you talked about communities of practice or COPs. A couple of thoughts here on that and, I think, maybe to also get it a bit more practical right. The first thing that came to mind is that I read an article years back that was called Change for Change's Sake, so that you should change organizational structures every three years, not because you have to, but because after three years you establish certain lines of communication. So when you do the change, you establish new lines of communication, but at the same time people will for a certain time hold on to the old in addition. So you have basically a double set of communication lines.

Speaker 2 14:46

Right.

Speaker 1 14:47

But instead of doing that through organizational change and disruption, you could do that through communities of practice. You can establish those relationships, lines of communication where people can get together with people they wouldn't normally communicate with or or be in meetings with. And once you you need those communications, they are, they are ready there for you, so you have someone on the inside, basically absolutely.

Speaker 2 15:11

That's a great point basically to see communities as like a organizational structure agnostic way of communication. So even if you switch the structure, the hierarchies around the community is an organizational structure agnostic way of communication. So even if you switch the structure and the hierarchies around the community is staying right Because it was something that is outside of that, so you can actually use it very well to keep a stability on a nice aspect of communication while the more functional part of it might change. That's a really good one. Yes, I like that.

Speaker 1 15:40

I had a second one.

Speaker 1 15:41

And it's more about how do you organize a community of practice, and I think there are different models to it. You could do a top-down enforced community of practice. You could do it like a grassroots movement or something in the middle. I've seen all three of them in different organizations and also set up all three of them. I've been part of that and that's one thing and one question that always comes up, and that is who should be in charge of a community of practice? So the thing is that for some people, and especially when you talk about the grassroots movement, the entire question is wrong. Shouldn't be anyone in charge of a community.

Speaker 2 16:19

I think I might have two ideas about that, or like two opinions on it. So one is no matter how that community is initiated, it needs to be encouraged by the leadership, no matter what right, simply put, being in the community. Does that count as my working hours or not? If it's not in my working hours and I'm not allowed to be in there, then I don't want to do overtime just to be in a community, right? So you need to make sure that leaders all accept that being in a community also is part of the job and not something that you just do in your free time, right, and that needs that clarification on top.

Speaker 2 16:53

And the other side is regarding who's leading it. The question is if that's seen as an opportunity or seen as a burden. Right, because I think in many ways it might seem as a burden, because nobody wants additional administrative work. But to turn that major into something positively motivating it would be to give acknowledgement to those that lead it. Right, that community leaders are also recognized for it and they're being valued for it and everybody knows them, that they're doing something really important and nice for everybody around, and that all again comes down to culture and leadership. Probably right To say whoever steps up for this, they will actually be recognized for it, and we really want to bring them to more presence also in the organization, to be known for that.

Speaker 2 17:40

And then maybe that leads to, of course, the opposite, which could be politics. Everybody wants to be community level. Of a sudden, you can create rotation mechanisms. Right, it doesn't have to be always one person. It might be that you have one per month and you have a list of rotators, for example. Then there are other ways, but then it's a nicer problem to have that you have more volunteers than not, rather than having nobody and you never get started. So, yeah, I think that that's, for me, maybe the link that we need to culture and leadership I think this is uh, this is a really good insight.

Speaker 1 18:09

Um, so you need to have that management support to do it, and I think that rotational, rotational model, that that seems like a fair model to give everyone a chance to be part of and to actually also lead or host the community. That's one other thing that I've, at least from my experience, have seen as a bit of a challenge maybe in communities, and that is the knowledge mentor thing. So often the people who take charge in the community are maybe smartest people or the highest, most senior people in the organization, and then it doesn't become a community of exchange, it becomes a lecture setting, so everyone is just there to hear the smartest person in the room talk, and that's not a good setting for a community, right? It's not a good setting for sharing. How can you go about that? How can you integrate that knowledge and that mentorship but, at the same time, don't have them dominate the conversation.

Speaker 2 19:08

Absolutely. I think that goes probably from both sides. One is, those that are leaders and those that are smarter recognize that they might have an impact on the dynamic right. So and that might have something to do either with their level of leadership that they're in right, so higher grades and position in the organization just means generally that some people are a bit more or less open in front of them, right, but it also might mean that they might have an aura of just seeming a little bit strict or being a little bit, you know, not as nice or something. That's something they should work on. But what I'm saying is they should might be look at their own role and the impact that they have and just try to consciously take a step back. That could mean that when they're introducing themselves in the community to say I know that I'm a leader in this and this, and you might all know that I am, but I'm here just as a community member. I'm not here to really disrupt anything or to steer all the direction. I'm here just to be part of the community, right, and that already shows a good intention.

Speaker 2 20:11

But the other side is more about the rules of engagement I would say right, so with every community. You need to have rules in place and not as in, like process rules or like data rules, as we call them, data governance. It's really about there's no hate speech. There shouldn't be any bashing of other people, and part of that could also be we are all equal members of the community. We are not here to lecture each other. We are here to learn and to exchange from each other. We're here to learn and to exchange from each other.

Speaker 2 20:39

That I think that can also tie back to. If anybody is not behaving that way, then they're just a little bit not following the code of conduct, right, or like the rules of engagement. So we should be careful about that. And the last thing I would say is how you make community engaging, interacting with each other and when it's another right, and if you only have group meetings, then you might get that situation more often that there are a few more people that always speak and they're also more senior, so every session becomes just like a lecture of those. But there might be ways to have smaller group sessions, right. Just to say, within that community we build small interest groups or small sharing groups and then you just break it down right, make the dynamic be different and that can be part of the engagement too, where you don't always do like a big monthly meeting but have instead, like every month, five break breakout groups or something that meet, and then every two months, only a month, a big group, one.

Speaker 1 21:33

That really depends, but I think there are multiple ways to deal with that very good and I think we also should have a look at going in the different direction, so going a bit broader in the organization and especially when we talk about communities of practice that have a data focus. We've been talking for years about data literacy and it's really hard to just set up a data literacy program, do some training and hope that people get engaged. But communities are actually a really good way to engage people that maybe are a bit interested in data but don't really know where to start. So how can you spread the word about your community in your organization?

Speaker 2 22:11

Yeah, I think that again ties back to what I said about leadership, encouraging it, right, and if they could acknowledge that it in a more public or wider group settings, when they are talking, to also look at the communities and to motivate people to join them.

Building a Strong Data Management Community

Speaker 2 22:28

That's already a very important and a very good step. Generally speaking, I think with interest groups you always start with a critical mass anyway, right, so you know that a few people are interested and only then you start the community, so you can be pretty sure that there are more people that might have a similar interest. So then it's more about just being present in the internal communication channels, right, no matter if it's like an intranet or like a newsletter somewhere, or joining team meetings of other teams, there's always a way to spread the word. I think the key is to make focus and to prioritize that, because just waiting for people to come is not going to work, because they might not even be able to find you, right, you have to somehow proactively bring it to the people so they at least know they have a chance to. But that is following basically the internal channels of communication, and just do that more diligently.

Speaker 1 23:21

And I've also seen really good examples where new people join the organization. They get an introduction to certain communities of practice in their onboarding package, which I think is a really good idea.

Speaker 2 23:34

Oh, that's very cool, I like that.

Speaker 1 23:36

And I've also seen certain job descriptions and announcement out in the market where having certain communities of practice and certain expertise levels in the organization are a selling point for recruitment, which I think is fantastic to see that community can actually be something like that as well, yes, that's very cool.

Speaker 2 23:58

I like that. I mean, I would say, um, you can make that even specific to your organizations, right? Um? So, for example, when I worked at adidas, many communities were, of course, evolving around sports, right, so you would know that you can join a football club that is only for employees or like a swimming club, whatever, that will be communities too.

Speaker 2 24:19

I was, for example, initiating that choir, right so to get people that want to sing together and, like, I was leading the choir as well, which brought a little bit the singing community together. That was also very cool and, depending on what the culture of the organization is, you might have very specific interest groups as well and you can do that as well. I think, like I mean, we talk here about work interest communities, right, but I think when you do like this for hobby interests or like just like personal interests too, then that has a nice, maybe um, side effect to also then make communities just more of a default and more normal, right, that you can be part of multiple communities and that it's actually something that is as nice to be in as you would be in for a personal interest.

Speaker 1 25:04

Well, and then you have people like you and me who take it a bit too far with the data interest and go beyond work. Yes, Like Daymar right, Exactly exactly. So how do you see the role of Daymar in promoting data as a discipline in a broader perspective than just for one company?

Speaker 2 25:24

Yes, I mean, I think again, this is where I feel like if you have companies where you have a smaller data management data governance teams, unfortunately they cannot build inside their own community of practice, right? They might be the only data governance employees at all in the whole company. So where do they go? Right? And I think this is where Dharma plays a big role, because it's, for me, still the biggest existing community in different countries and internationally. That is bringing data management and data governance professionals together. And yeah, I mean the chapters give that a very nice local flavor too, right? So where actually you make local specific activities and communities as well, and that also in many cases breaks the language barrier, because then you can use it also the local language to do so. But it's definitely having the same effect, in my point of view, as the communities that you would do inside organizations, just that you can do it now across different organizations, across different organizations in a separate community.

Speaker 1 26:26

I think that that was part of what made me interested in DEMA in the first place. It was you have that local or the Norwegian chapter where you have a community in the country you are working in, and then you have also that international network, which is really broad, really interesting, a lot of great people. So that combination of the international plus the national I think that was the part that really got me interested. What do you think DEMA as a community can provide for for not just individuals but also organizations?

Speaker 2 27:01

I mean, I think the very obvious one is, of course, networking. I think just having like a wider network of people that you are having similar jobs with is nice to get exchange with, but also to learn from leaders, right, and from others that are more experienced to hear about the experience. Dayma is a very nice platform for that. I think. The other side would probably be about talent sourcing as well, right, so part of it is also that you might want to look for the right talents to join your organizations, or you are looking for a job in the right organization as well. So I think that is also a nice community where you can look into that and identify who might be good candidates for certain jobs, or if you might see organizations where you feel like you really want to join them because of their data governance.

Speaker 2 27:50

And and the last one, I think, is, of course, upskilling and really just um learning right. Um dharma is closely associated with cdmp, as it should, right, and um. The dim bug, as like, established a book of knowledge for data management, data governance and the recording, certification of it. Um has a big role to play in there as well, right, a lot of people are using the NBOG and the DAMA framework as like the one thing to work with in organizations. So going in that effort is not wrong and I think that is one thing of a standardized way of basically understanding data management.

Speaker 1 28:40

That can be really helpful really, and you have a lot of community, the networks that are domain or industry specific. What would you say is the balance to strike here right? You can't be part of every every network. What do you think is more important to have, like that domain um reliance or that more general data community rely?

Speaker 2 29:03

I would say, the balance right. I would also not be sure in what direction to take it more, but it's especially in data governance it's so important to understand both, because on the one hand, I'd say the methodological part and the technological part of how to do things in different structures and different operating models, et cetera. But then for every industry, you'd really truly have those specifications that are super difficult to read, so not only regulations, but also the ways of working and business models. They can be so different that not going into those might mean that you always will stay on an abstract and general level and you don't actually know how to apply it best. So I think that that balance is definitely important.

Speaker 2 29:45

The good thing I found, though, is that, also even within Dharma, that you have industry specific groups that you could also create right, like, let's say, only the banking community within Dharma, or like only the manufacturing community. They can hang out with each other too, right, and then they can build in Dharma, build that kind of networking and exchange about it. I think that still doesn't replace to be up to date about the industry itself, right To know what the newest trends in I don't know Internet of Things is, or in cars and automotive or something right, if you're in that. So that still requires you to go there and to understand which it is from a business point of view. But at least there are nice ways to segue them now.

Speaker 1 30:28

And I mean we kept this as a more or less an open secret, but we have established a CDO network in Norway as well, from a gamer perspective. So it's also about the executive role in data and how do we talk about the issues we are facing across sectors. So you can go in a lot of different directions with that community and networking, and I think it's important to have, as you said, that certain balance, and you can even take it a level further and I mean you've been doing it on LinkedIn social media. You can really find a broad audience that goes across both the data community and the domain community. It's a bit tricky, though, right, it can easily get a bit too high level or too abstract. What's the right place for LinkedIn and social media?

Speaker 2 31:30

Oh, that's a huge question. I would say right. So I can say that personally what I think LinkedIn has helped me with, right, and besides my posting itself of what that is and more on that maybe later when I look at other people's posts, I feel some of them they might not be exactly the one instructional post that I need to exactly do my job, but they provoke thoughts right, and it's more about being really conscious about what you're reading or what you're seeing and to see what they mean to you and for me to then think about how I could apply that. Some of them are really good visualizations of things, like a certain diagram of different tooling around data governance, for example. Some of them might be just a really good way to phrase something too right. That would help me potentially to adapt it for my stakeholders to use so they get the message right, and all of that think is really helpful. So that's more about learning, just about how to communicate better and how to use it, and I would rather always see it as a jumping board to go on and then from there, if I want to go deeper somewhere, I need to go somewhere else to learn it right. So buy a book or go to another blog or just really go deeper somewhere else.

Speaker 2 32:46

And the other side is really, I would say, still the entertainment factor, right, and I think it's underestimated how humor can actually heal a lot, too, right. And when something is really frustrating for you and it actually makes you upset at work, and then you go on LinkedIn and you see somebody make a good joke about it that you can closely relate to, then you start smiling and chuckling about it, which is, I think, really therapeutic too right. So really go from the pain to, uh, humor, and that is what I'm aiming for a lot too, because I know a lot of people are going through things so by me making a song or a meme about it addresses a lot of that pain, but in a way that they know, oh, somebody really understands what I'm going through. That's exactly how I feel, right. So this is kind of also the message there. So, yeah, I mean right. So, in a nutshell, right. So that means basically more about impulses and more about, just like, entry points to something new and then taking it further yourself, I think, platforms like LinkedIn.

Speaker 1 33:46

They have an idea of themselves of being a content platform rather than a social media platform, right, I think that's why it supports that process that you described of ideation, finding new ways of thinking about a topic and I think that really is there's a value in there ways of thinking about a topic and I think that really is there's a value in there. For me, it also has been. If I have an idea and I'm not really sure about it, I can post it on LinkedIn and I get the smartest people worldwide quite easily to comment on it, and this is fantastic.

Speaker 2 34:21

Right, oh, that's a great way to look at it and that's a great opportunity too. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 34:26

Really, there's a certain. There are two kinds of people on LinkedIn, I feel like creators, and there are followers. Yeah, and it shouldn't really be that way in my mind. It should be easy for everyone to share their ideas publicly. You often feel like it has to be a certain way of not perfect, but if you share something, it should be right Even your bosses on LinkedIn, right. But that kind of hinders that really that ideation and sharing of ideas. If you share things that are not perfect but it's an idea worth discussing, I think that's something that you should do.

Speaker 2 35:05

Yes, sure, I mean. Mean, there's, of course, still the nature of people, right, and no matter what platform some people would be, they would never be comfortable posting, right, it's just not in their nature to do that. I feel like, um, also writing a post and using the right picture is it's art on its own. It might be easier for people like you and me, but for some people it's like creating high levels of stress to even think about how to write things and to choose a picture as well. So I would say, um, yeah, not everybody needs to be a big public poster, right? If they enjoy commenting more and want to engage that way, that's also fine. If they want to message people more one-on-one and set up virtual meetings with them, that could also be fine. But don't completely shy away from it. Use it for the opportunities that LinkedIn gives you, for example, and build the connections and the right knowledge exchanges your way and not everybody has to do it publicly.

Fostering Community Engagement and Support

Speaker 1 35:59

Social media and LinkedIn is for everyone. There's a place for everyone there, and it's about finding that place right. Yeah, so we are already at the end of it. Thank you for a fantastic conversation about a topic that is really important, and we didn't talk much about data, but we talked about how we can talk about data in our organizations, in our networks and beyond, and I think it's important to have that communication part and entire episode dedicated to it. So thank you for that, absolutely. Before we finish off the episode, do you have any key takeaway or call to action?

Speaker 2 36:37

Yes, I mean. I think my easiest or my most practical advice would be to not wait to start thinking about community, not only for yourself, but also for others, right? So do yourself a favor to join communities and to get that sense of a community whenever you can. And if you feel sometimes frustrated and you don't know who to share your frustration, or that work with Community is one piece of the solution, right, get yourself to share with others and hear from others how maybe you don't have to worry about it too much, or what solutions you can apply. And also, if you feel others might be lonely or others might be too frustrated, be helpful and maybe point them to communities or help them to find the right communities to do so, and this way you can also make your environment, the people around you, feel better about it.

Speaker 1 37:30

And there's always an open door at DEMA. Exactly yes, thank you so much. Thank you.