And here we go. Hello and welcome. My name is Shannon Kemp and I'm the Chief Digital Officer of Dataversity. We would like to thank you for joining the latest installment of the monthly Dataversity Webinar series advanced analytics with William Pinkbite sponsored today by Zen Optics. Today, William will be discussing is our information management mature. Just a couple of points to get us started due to the large number of people that attend these sessions you will be muted during the webinar. We will also be collecting them by the Q&A section or if you'd like to tweet, we encourage you to share highlights or questions by Twitter using hashtag ADV analytics. And if you'd like to chat with us or with each other, we certainly encourage you to do so to open the Q&A panel or the chat panel, you'll find those icons in the bottom middle of your screen for those features. And just to note the chat defaults send just the panelists, we may absolutely change that to network with everyone. Hopefully we'll send a follow up email within two business days containing links to the slides, the recording of the session and any additional information requested throughout the webinar. Now let me turn it over to Hina from Zen Optics for a brief word from our sponsor. Hina, hello, and welcome. Thank you Shannon. Good morning, good afternoon everyone. Am I clear. Coming across. You are. Yeah. Okay, perfect. Let me share my screen. Let me bring up our presentation. And I will just ask that you confirm. It says host disabled participating participant screen sharing Shannon. Oh, yeah. All right. Can everyone see my screen. Looks good. Yeah. Okay, great. So, you know, really excited to be here and kick this off today. The, you know, there is our information management mature. I think that question is very important into where we are sort of in the overall ecosystem and sort of the time in terms of the genesis of data and analytics. Right. And so, when you talk about information maturity and where we are today. It's a journey that we've all been on over the last few decades that has seen an explosion in basically the building of, you know, large data pipelines, analytics, assets and tools out there self service bi. And all of that sort of ties into, you know, not just your data strategy, but also your information strategy right and that's where you know today organizations are spending a large amount of effort to figure out, you know, is the information management really mature right now when you think about, you know, the explosion of self service bi and analytics that happened as a result of the explosion in the data world. We've created a ton of content out there. We've created dashboards and reports and need these KPIs available. We've created tons of assets that are spread across the organization, but truly to understand sort of where we gain value out of that and really is, is the maturity in how that information is really being consumed is it really being used to make the decisions the way we intended to use the data and the information to make those decisions. We tend to find that across the organizations and larger enterprises, a typical challenge is lack of visibility. On sort of both ends where it's for the business users as well as for the teams that are actually supporting those business users, you know, the analytics teams, and, and these challenges are interrelated but they're sort of unique to each of these personas, but sort of a feed off of each other right. The business user is really struggling with, you know, lack of awareness because there is just, you know, so much out there as a result of the sprawl that has been created that there's limited knowledge on what is available, really to use in terms of, you know, access to that information, unsure of where to get it. Is it really the right set of information? Is it the right content? And then obviously leading to sort of experience issues right with aligning those assets with business context. Now, when you talk about sort of what the challenges are on the IT or the BI and analytics team side, the sprawl is, is evident, right, we all deal with that. And it's just a factor of this growth and explosion in the, in the, you know, just the maturity of data and analytics and self service BI, but really the processes around managing that, you know, are there large rails to really manage that, you know, so there's obviously constant, you know, requests to create new content leading to obviously duplication of content redundant content being created. And as a result of which people wasting time to go find that and you're also adding to that technology debt, right, that we all inherited as a result of, you know, the legacy BI stacks sort of evolving into the modern analytics and BI stacks as a result of the overall growth in analytics data and information management. So, so when we talk and we look at this and really help organizations achieve that information maturity and sort of identify even where they are in the various sort of information maturity stages that we're going to talk about within that framework, which is really simple and really will help sort of tie it back to understanding, you know, where are you today, what's as this and where do you need to get to be or where do you need to be. Our goal really is to unlock that power right off. Basically, BI and analytics and really empowering those users. So, how do we do this how does an optics do this. Zen optics is a bi and analytics hub. Our goal is really to simplify the discovery of those assets right help you immediately attack, you know, your as is information maturity stage and really help you understand. What do you need to do to go to that next level, right, it's not just about discovery. Once you've discovered the content, our goal is really to empower the teams that work with that content to use the information and collaborate along that information right and then actually help, not just the content. You know, the end users or the business users, but also the people that are responsible for that environment to really align efforts with objectives. We need to be in the value out of those investments scale the investments right and ultimately design a really easy simple consumable experience to drive usage and adoption. That's really the goal of sort of what we see as adding, you know, the values and optics in terms of what enterprises are trying to do to align with their information strategy that directly leads into delivering information maturity. We have, you know, a really, you know, I'm going to obviously pass on to Shannon and William, but just to kind of leave you with something we have a very interesting webinar coming up on the 22nd of June where Donald Farmer and Peter are actually going to talk about, you know, why your analytics strategy and not your BI tools need an update, right. You can also use the URL here to a case study with one of our customers, Janie, and learn more about sort of their journey on, you know, driving adoption and actually achieving, you know, larger or greater information maturity. And if you have any other questions or you'd like to sort of connect, you know, more than happy to do so my personal information is included here. So I'm always available to set up a call and connect. I'll hand back to Shannon I'm going to stop sharing. Hina, thank you so much for kicking us off if you have any questions for Zina Hina or about Zen optics. Feel free to submit them in the Q&A portion of your screen she'll be joining us at the end of the webinar with for Q&A. And with that to let me introduce the speaker for the series William McKnight. He's one of many of the world's best known organizations he strategizes his strategies, I can speak today for the information management plan for leading companies in numerous industries. He has a prolific author and a popular keynote speaker and trainer, he has performed dozens of benchmarks on leading database data lake streaming and data integration products. And with that, I will get the sort of William to get his presentation started hello and welcome. Hello, and thank you Shannon. Thank you especially Hina as well. It has been great getting to know Zen optics in the course of building this presentation and if you ever be I problem out there I do encourage you to take a look at what they have because I think it's unique on the market and I think it really speaks to a lot of situations. Anyway, today we're here to talk about one of my favorite subjects is our information management mature now it didn't used to be one of my favorite subjects, because I used to think well it's kind of a bad question. Let's just talk about what your next steps could be, but an information maturity model actually advises what those next steps could be. And I think trying to keep up in terms of maturity is actually a good thing, and I think it's highly correlated to the bottom line of the organization, not just I think there's been studies that show that. And so, let's start with a philosophy beyond the mountain is another mountain. And you may have heard me say this, I like to say it a lot it's a Haitian proverb. What I say here is let's take one mountain at a time, and do know that there are more mountains after you get over the one that you're on today and that's okay. And guess what, more mountains are being unlike the picture more mountains are actually being built beyond the mountains that we can even see. So the future is looming. The future is different. And I was observing to Shannon in the pre call that I don't really recall any period where there's been so much innovation so much happening in the broader space of data and analytics. It's really like that today and I've been in the space a long time so, hey, it's all good, as long as we're keeping up. And so let's get into seeing if we can measure where we are today and get some next steps going. We are in the business of data, no matter what company you're in, you're in the business of data today. The volume is exploding. It's becoming more real time. Big data is actually essential today to get under management it's not an option. Information usage differentiates the competition, how we use our data is really what the basis is for differentiation in the competitive marketplace quality is important information is reused. Even seldom use data like big data sometimes is essential to be under management, and to be accessible, well performing, and have good high non functionals and things like that third party information is essential to use. And that just explodes the information possibilities for us. We've all heard about the data marketplaces. And there's a lot going on there there's a lot of data there. I'm sure there's data there that you could use that you're not using, because there's so much data there. And some people are just beginning their journey on that and we'll see where that is on the maturity cycle as well as probably about 2425 other things as we go along here. This is sort of a presentation that's going to try to stay at, I don't know 5000 feet, because if I dare dive down into any one I will not get through all the topics so that's just how it's going to be today information is a key business asset. Yeah, I hope you believe that by the way I hope you feel empowered by that the fact that you work on a key business asset for your business. I hope you feel like you need to share that news share the good news, if you will, with the rest of the organization in an appropriate way, and kind of push the organization up push up the maturity, because that is really where it's at today here's some other quotes about data. I won't belabor them all but you see some of these prominent people saying like big data is that the foundation of all the mega trends that are happening. Yes, and every company has big data in its future and every company will eventually be in the data business so says Thomas Davenport I couldn't agree more. So for the first time really we have this economy that's based on a key resource information that is not only renewable but self generating running out of it is not a problem. Not a problem, and nobody's nobody's 100% you're going to find the very few people are going to be at my maturity level five.  So, let me talk about the data that's coming into focus here in this presentation data on data maturity. Okay, so what we do here at McKnight consulting group we look at our last 30, what I call intimate enterprise projects these are mostly in the course of your client, we get to know you pretty well, we can grade you out across our 50 questions pretty well, sometimes we don't even have to ask, we already know, because we've been told that's how we do our projects and otherwise. We look across, you know, many other enterprises that aren't clients we're just talking to them their prospects. We find that we've already have we already have 25 questions answered in the course of getting to know you. And so why don't we ask the 25 more and get through our questions so in our questions we asked for probe we do probing answers, not just we accept your answer, because everybody's a little bit different if you don't know yet in this business. The data, I mean, the terminology is all over the place it still is, and it's hard to keep up and certainly that's something that you want to be sure that you're on common basis with whoever you're talking to, before you dive in too far, because you could be talking past one another I see it all the time. So for probing answers 40 of them are on data topics, 10 of them are on business success and for publicly traded companies we use public information as well now we're not always looking at the full company. When we do this, if you're a fortune 50 company. We, we, you know, we don't take in the whole company we take in your division, your department what have you, and we look at how well that is doing because that's what we can get our arms around here. The question in data topics does approximately equal data maturity is what we found. So that's what that's a basis of what we're assuming here. So if, as you get further along in your data late get further along in your master data management your data governance etc the things we're going to throw on the table here. That is what we are considering maturity, you're doing more, not less with important things. The, the questions and answers are always under NDA or friend DA so I'm not going to be identifying individual companies, we've probably done this for close to 50 companies at this point. And we try to keep it on a rolling 30 basis here so it's a it's a bit it's a bit of a journey. And when we started out, we had everybody into nice 20% buckets right there was a 20% at the low end 20% at the high end and three of them in the middle right. What we have done over time is we interview new companies, and we add them in, we find out well their profiles really more aligned with this one, this bucket or that bucket. So we don't, we didn't rejigger if you will, what the different buckets meant. Now, we could not hold everything else constant, but figured that this all shakes out over the course of the 50 data points, and the questions get updated to so it's a moving target. I wouldn't spend any more time on the approach, I wouldn't get to the meat of it so I won't. And I will say though that here we have the fit the 30 companies and how they were graded out on data maturity and business success. And there's all sorts of mathematical things we can do about it but I thought I present the raw data, and you can think about it as well you can see that there is a correlation. Now line right up the right in between here and it's going to be approximately a nice straight line from low data maturity, low business success, high data maturity, high business success. Now you also see that there's a bit of an overweight in terms of the data maturity being low. Like I said, we took the business success and we held that constant, and then we looked at the data maturity factors. There are more companies in the low categories the one in the two, then there are in the higher categories as a matter of fact we only have two of them in category five, but hey, they really do represent a unique profile so we had to create that, create that space for them. And I think it's going to be continued to be pretty hard to get up there. So where are you. Where are you in your journey. Well, you can say after today, where you might be in this so if you get out of pen and paper or pencil if you will. Write this down category strategy architecture technology and organization. So we're going to make a little ticking marks. After these number after these categories, as you learn about them and learn what category one or level maturity level 12345 mean to you. Find yourself in there. These capabilities emanate from the presence of the item shown this is not a capability model, although it is sort of indirectly one, but we went to we went beyond the capabilities we know what you need. Technically, architecturally to achieve those capabilities today. If you want to be on top of predictive maintenance you have to be on top of your big data and and that probably means a data lake so let's we measure out your data lake maturity, and that from there, the possibilities explode. So this should give you a sense of priority. Why should it give you a sense of priority, because William didn't sit here and just think about Hmm, what is 12345 look like it's based on data. And we have found in our walk here as consultants that companies do tend to follow a pattern of going up the maturity cycle from 12345. What's next is probably what's next for you, depending upon where you are today. You can't skip levels, can't skip levels, we don't encourage you to even think about it. If you're a one. And you want to be a five you have to go through 234 sorry to say but you can go fast, you can go fast, and it can probably take as little as for a good organization that's focused maybe six months or so to bounce and that's really aggressive. And that's really keeping the focus there maturity levels tend to move in harmony. We didn't find too many companies that were very divergent between these categories. If you're a one in strategy, you're not going to be a five in technology. If you're a foreign technology you're probably not going to be a one in organization, you have to bring that up in order to get to the foreign technology and so on so very infrequently did we find organizations were more than one number differing across the categories midsize and smaller companies. Yeah, if you're in one of those, what you consider a midsize or smaller company you can add plus one so you go ahead and give yourself a ticking mark right down the, right down the pike there right down the column. I would get one because I am these are progressive approaches progressive elements of maturity that a midsize and smaller company probably is not going to get to momentum is paramount. I can't stress this enough. It's about momentum. If you're a one, don't fret, but get moving, get moving up the maturity cycle today and get that momentum going again, you can move from one to two quickly. If you got the focus and I did not give all these maturity levels 12345 anything but a number.  I think, though, for most organizations, you're going to need to be at my three. All right, some of you need to be at four because you're in a an industry that is more aggressive about data. So what about all this stuff. Well, the information management professional what I found and I've managed quite a few of them on an interim and longer term basis. It kind of comes down to this user satisfaction we are internal consultants that's how I like to look at information management professionals inside of organizations, we have to have high user satisfaction, sometimes that's a much more dominant piece of the puzzle than the other two. Over time, I have found that that gets kind of pushed a little bit more to the background, and these other things are becoming pretty important and by the way if you manage information management professionals out there. I encourage you to think about how you're grading out those professionals. Are you just using user satisfaction, because you should be using other things as well. Business ROI. Business ROI. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Since when is the information management professional been responsible for business ROI. Well, since about maybe two years ago. And now we're bringing the ideas to the table that the organization can use to deliver that because we have the ideas. Okay. Again, I want you to feel proud. I want you to feel assertive about your role in the organization as a data and analytics professional. Finally, are you growing your data maturity. So you're going to learn about that here today. And you can definitely expect your professionals to be pushing up the maturity in their level. That's what that's what I do inside organizations. I say, Okay, next year I want to be at the next level you're an ETL or your data integration professional, what have you. We're out of three. Next year I want to be at a four no matter what else, you know, comes get thrown in the way, no matter what the prior, how the priorities change, et cetera, et cetera. You got to think about that next level because we can't keep doing what we're doing today. We have to move it up. So here's your score sheet here. Here's a full score sheet for you. I didn't bother giving you a downloadable file just make it look like this. Hopefully you've already started. So you're going to get a score, and then you're going to get some next steps. That's what's really important here. What do you do about it? What do you do about your low score? What do you do about the fact that you're trying to achieve higher maturity. So keep your score, grade yourself by category, strategy, architecture, technology, and organization. So, and another thing I'd like to say is everyone is a maturity five congratulations.  Okay, are you maturity five for 1990 or 2022 we want you of course to be higher maturity for the present time. So maturity number one, this is kind of fun. I have a little fun with this. When I when I have given this class in person and I give it as a full day class, or one hour webinar like this or session like this. I get a lot of heads nodded when I talk about maturity level one infrastructures overwhelm cloud cost out of control I'm just throwing out some characterizations of maturity level one. So you saw my data you can know that you're not alone. If this is you organizational silos, multiple overlapping data stores so maybe the same piece of data is stored 10 times, just because, just because number 10 didn't know about number numbers one through nine, or it just wasn't right, or they didn't know how to work with what numbers one through nine did so let's do it again. This is true for data stores this is true for reports. Kind of where Zen optics comes in by the way, one vendor mentality we're going to get everything we need everything we possibly could use from vendor XYZ from our favorite vendor. That may or may not be the best approach as a matter of fact I say, Okay, you can bring them into the circle but that is not the best approach today. There's too much differentiation going on. There's too much leading edge stuff that you probably need to be availing yourself of that you won't find in your current vendors stack. And I can say that, be not even knowing what your current vendor is because I study them all. That is true for all of them. Some of your tools might be outdated. Hopefully they're not out of support that's really outdated, but by outdated I don't necessarily mean just out of support. I mean that they're not keeping up with the demand anymore, and maybe, maybe you're in a situation where the users don't demand anything anymore because they've just been kind of put in their place. They've just lost the data, and that is not where you want the users to be. And if that's if they're sitting on their hands, you've got to change that resistance to change is replete at maturity level one. Everybody's scared of change. They're scared of the 25th person out there that's going to say why did you do this. That is holding things back so we got to get over some of these things so I had a little fun with maturity level one, not trying to make fun of anybody's environment I never do that. I always just talk about what the next steps are on the journey. And that's what's important. And I don't talk about, I don't belabor, how did we get here. Today's a new day. Today is day zero. Okay, you're going to learn some things today today's day zero now tomorrow's day one you got to start putting things in action. Okay, no more excuses, we got to start moving forward because again, the information management professional is going to be judged based upon that so for each of these levels that was one. Again, I'm going to get a little bit more refined now as I get into two three four and five don't worry but for each of these levels team, I have found to get to the next level, there has to be a light bulb that goes off and that's my little light bulb here and on the slide right. There has to be a light bulb that goes off in order to get you to the next level. Frankly, there's probably quite a few, but the one that stands out as I think about those organizations that have made the jump from a one to two is that they understand, they find the understand that you have to raise data maturity, while you accomplish business goals, because there's too many organizations out there, the sitting on their hands are not moving forward, because well I don't have a budget to raise data maturity. Nobody's asking me to raise data maturity. You know how many in 25 years of consulting you know how many times I've been asked to raise data maturity, probably zero, probably zero. Oh, I've been asked to raise it while I do something else, and that I do, but just come in and raise data maturity. No, that doesn't happen you don't get a budget for that you get a budget for targeted marketing you get a budget for predictive maintenance. You get a budget for fraud detection, etc, etc supply chain management customer management etc. Okay, so while you're doing all that, you don't always do it the same way that you did everything else before. This is not the time for cookie cutter approaches to applications this is time for progressive approaches to application so the next initiative that is put before you think about doing it in a different way than you have been doing things. Now, this is how I'm going to structure maturity levels 234 and five there wasn't much to say about one so I didn't do it this way. Okay. So I'm going to take each block strategy architecture technology and organization, and I'm going to talk about it. So let's start with data strategy and this is where you get your pencil. Get your get your pen and I don't see if you can give yourself a ticking mark and raise this from a one to a two okay data strategy and these are the main things. These are the, these are the things suitable for a slide is more where this came from you might say but I think this gives you the essence. And I think this is enough for where you can give yourself the mark. Okay, emerging data standards. I didn't say they were complete at this level, but they're emerging. You're even think you're thinking about it whereas you work before data decentralization, you're getting data more out to the masses. There is executive awareness of data. Sometimes at maturity level one there's no executive executives are aware of data. They're only aware of business things and applications and oh yeah they work on data, by the way, but data is a thing, and that starts to emerge. When you get to level two partial self service BI didn't say total partial self service BI it professionals are starting to get out of the way between a user and their data cloud first direction. Yeah, this wasn't maturity level two last year. That was more like a three. Now it's a two now it's sort of expected that an organization has a cloud first direction. And again I'm not sitting here championing any anything here. I'm sitting here telling you that a material level to organization has a cloud first direction. I happen to think that's a good thing. Architecture wise central data warehouse says way hard warehouse or warehouse is emerge at maturity level to believe it or not there are some organizations out there that don't don't have what any reasonable person, I guess, would call a data base, but they do at maturity level to there's emerging platform heterogeneity, meaning you get the fact that in 2022. It's not one size fits all. Everything doesn't go into an Oracle database everything doesn't go into a SQL server database, necessarily, you think about it. You don't have you don't you don't have right fit platforms across the board, but you do have emerging platform heterogeneity, you have a data lake and development and this again this is another thing that wasn't here last year. When I talked about this that was a maturity level three thing. Last year but now we find that. Hmm, just about everybody out there is getting into a data lake at maturity level to and beyond so notice the asterisk here. What I when I say central data warehouse to me that's in a relational platform data lakes in a cloud storage platform none of this other fancy stuff.  You're starting to get that concept technology wise third party data is utilized and by the way sometimes the category is difficult to assign for some of these things. Machine learning chatter I'm not saying machine learning algorithms are in place and running the business, but machine learning machine learning chatter has begun data integration ETL and ELT, which I think we've mostly found is a better form of data integration I didn't say streaming. We'll get there. And there's a lot of dashboards which will go away as we go up the maturity cycle by the way organization wise there is data governance I didn't say full data governance, not for the entire enterprise not for every subject area. This data governance doesn't necessarily meet every month, etc, etc. But there are pockets at least of what they're calling data governance pockets of business interests, trying to get their arms around this important asset. You're finally using an agile methodology at level two, and you have data specialists, not just simply application people that we happen to do a little data on the side. You know that data requires data specialists and I'm not saying some of those application people can't be great at data. It's just their focus might not be on it. So you have great people that are data specialists doing the data work the modeling the architecture, the data integration, etc, all the DBA work, etc, etc. So that's matured level two.  If you if this if this is you at least, okay, maybe you're beyond but if this is you at least give yourself a ticking mark for level two in these four categories, and we'll see where we are as we go along here. The big idea to move to level three is that you have to attend to both the data and the data access ecosystems. You have both. And we finally, I think, learned that we have to attend to the data ecosystem. Most people on this call would know that not everybody does. Some people focus completely on the BI. Well, that's okay as long as somebody else in the organization focuses on that data layer under the waterline. But you also have a BI ecosystem. Yes, you do. You have a BI ecosystem, and that's not going anywhere. And that can be great. And that could be doing special fancy things, even AI upon data across the organization so you have to get that under management to not just the data. All right, so when you get that realization you move into maturity level three again I said that this is where most of you need to be. So hopefully some of you can give yourself some some marks for maturity level three and data strategy you have a knowledge that there is not just data in the organization. But there's a data layer to the architecture, and that data layer is special. That data layer is heterogeneous, and that data layer is managed by data professionals. You have reactive AI now for some automation so you got some AI in place and maturity level three the most basic type of AI is reactive AI. This is programmed to provide a predictable output based upon the input it receives reactive machines always respond to identical situations in the exact same way every time, but it doesn't it automates. It automates whatever and so when I get asked well how do we start our AI journey, look for things to automate, look for things to automate self service is now the dominant model. And that's how far self service has come in the past few years to be at maturity level three. Not four, not five, but three architecture wise, you have not just your current architecture but you have multi year architecture direction and plans. You have an idea you have a goal we have a vision for where the architecture needs to go in let's say three years, and let's say five years. It's not just where we are today you understand it's fluid. The architecture is flexible. It's not rigid. And this is well understood when you have those types of plans in place the data lake is in production now wasn't not just development but you have a data lake. You are using data virtualization at maturity level three. You understand that sometimes you need to run a report and snowflake needs to reach out to Oracle and get some data or SQL server needs to reach out to terror data and get some data for the report and that's okay. Notice it's not the dominant model, but you bring that in. You have measured data quality levels at maturity level three. You can say our data is that quality level three just like I'm doing the maturity level here for your overall data and analytics, you do that for your data quality. And you, you raise that number for awareness. You're managing many data types at one and two, it's alphanumeric that's the dominant model, you haven't got into other things like JSON, XML, Avril, parquet, but at maturity level three, you're into it, and you're able to deal with all these data types. There's some different ways you might be dealing with it, but you're dealing with it, you got it under management, and you have some data lineage that's starting to seep in now as being pretty important in the days that we're in now of compliance. And all DUIs, your data warehouse is in the cloud at maturity level three, it's no longer on premises, it's in the cloud. You have a graph database for all your relationship data. So relationship data, you're not force feeding it into the data warehouse anymore, you're actually doing real graph things with it. You got master data management of a major subject area. So you're well into development if not in production now of your customer, of your product, of your whatever is a major subject area to you, you got at least one under your belt or almost under your belt at this point. You got master data management, that's how important master data management has become. You're using the data marketplace. Now we hear a lot about that I don't need to belabor it, but you're using it you're bringing in that data. You're using the data catalog. I didn't say it was fully populated. I didn't say everybody's bought into it. I didn't say, you know, you have your business metadata in there complete, but you are using it. It is starting to provide value. That's where the data catalog has come. You see how much. See how, see how the stack has grown here from maturity level three integration now you're using streaming integration now you're using reusable components. You're just creating every integration from scratch you're going to a company maybe that has the plethora of integration routines that has already been done at your disposal organization wise data governance now is by subject area across most major areas so data governance is pretty advanced at maturity level three organizational change management now has been added to your data projects.  You, you have organizational change management to bring people along with your data projects that's how important data projects are. You have to have that component you have a chief data officer. You have data scientists, you have strong DevOps. I didn't say MLOs, but you have strong DevOps. You know your path to production well. And it's documented. And you exercise it on a regular basis. That's maturity level three. Give yourself some marks. If you're at maturity level three. Now the big idea to get to four is that the data profile will drive the platform selection. The data profile will drive the platform selection you understand heredity already. But you make much more wiser decisions as you get to level four and you look at the data profile is it unstructured data is it alphanumeric data. Is it going to be accessed in just reporting. Is it going to be used in machine learning. Now these are some of the things that drive a platform selection again it's not one size fits all anymore. We're talking maturity level four, we're way, we're way past that now. We're not trying to cram everything into SQL server databases Oracle databases, DB two databases, except for what have you. You know that today in 2022 you can't do that. Now maybe down the road maybe in 2032 there might be one size fits all there. There is some signs actually on the horizon I won't I won't get into that too much right now. The science that there may be some translitical databases that might make sense for some consolidation, which would be nice. But anyway, I got to move on maturity level four data strategy. Now your data is an asset and financial statements it's on the, on the in the vernacular of the executives, they talk about data predictive analytics now you're, you're not just looking at the rear view mirror, you're looking ahead, you're predicting with reasonable certainty what's going to happen, and you're able to get in front of that and change it because of data AI, you're doing data parsing this is. I would recommend recommendations, as in for data quality that you should pursue, which data you should use automatic classification of data and automatic parsing of data. These are things that we don't have to do anymore AI can do that, and you're doing it at maturity level for AI is also coming up with curated insights. I'm not just using AI as bi, we're using it for what it's ultimately good for AI curated insights insights that you're bringing into the business architecture wise Kubernetes. Yes, why am I bringing up an application thing, because it permeates data as well. It has started to permeate data at maturity level for you are using identity management. And basic security identity management tools, rest API's, you're accessing data through API's now, you're also probably at this point, using a service that provides you with dozens or hundreds of API's that you can choose from data lake house data, it's kind of a loaded term, I know, and for some reasons I hate to use it, but you know, it's the data lake and the data warehouse are now married. Okay, they're now working together. And to get them to work together. It's not just you create a lake and you create a warehouse and introduce them to one another. There's some work to be done, but you've done that work at maturity level for you can now run queries through the warehouse that will reach into the lake, the data lake, and get the rest of the data there seamlessly. For example, and you have full data lineage, full data lineage at maturity level for technology wise master data management is now beyond one major subject area. It might be two, it might be three, but it's gone beyond your customer your product what have you and you've you've you've got the vision, you got the value. You got the excitement of master data management you're moving on data catalog is now populated, maybe not 100% at this point, but maturity level for organizations have a well populated data catalog, it's not just sitting there. The data catalogs unfortunately are just sitting there, but not a maturity level for they're actually using it. And you're doing data observability, not just data quality, but data observability through the pipelines, you have visibility to the pipeline, your search is augmented. And it's interactive it's not just running sequel. It's not just whatever you can think of in the moment.  Your analytics are live. They're not on day old data, they're on data that's happening in the background and changing as, as we speak, right. You're under API management tools, kind of like what I was saying before, but technology wise you're there with API's amateur level for organization wise, you have comprehensive data governance now. And oh by the way, I found in level four and level five there's a predominance of legal owning data governance in the organization that surprised me a little bit. And that is a trend that I see, probably worth talking about the chief information architecture equivalent maybe nobody with that title, but the data architecture is recognized at the chief level at the seed level. Now, not just a CDO, the CDO typically doesn't get into architecture too much. The architecture has a seat at that table at maturity level four, and you have strong ML Ops, you're beyond DevOps now you've applied those principles to your machine learning it's that far a long. Wow, good stuff hopefully you've been able to give some of you have been able to give yourself a mark or four for maturity level four. Now let's go on to maturity level five this is the Holy Grail, if you will. It doesn't take more time or budget to do it right. It takes knowledge and focus. And that is what maturity level five organizations have realized it's it's we can do this. We can do this we can get the knowledge, we can get the focus and we can do it. It's, it's, we don't have to, we don't have to go back for these ridiculous budgets, because we have to add on to our inefficiencies. But we're adding to efficiency at this point, we're adding our knowledge in our focus. So hopefully I'm giving you a few things that you need to go and build up your knowledge on. Okay, data strategy. Now we're into hyper personalization. We're getting into prescriptive analytics, not just the predictive predictive said oh this is what's going to happen. And remember I said maturity level four we've been able to get in front of that a little bit. In level five, the machine is helping us get in front of that by telling us what we should do by prescribing the next best tasks for us producing information products. Our information is turning into a real ROI Center for the organization, you found a way, and you have limited memory AI this is learning your AI is now just not just doing automated stuff. It's using the past and building experiential knowledge by observing actions or data. It's using historical observational data in combination with pre programmed information to make predictions and perform complex tasks. So this is great this shows real progression in AI architecture wise your data is fully discoverable. Maybe it's fully populated, the catalog is fully populated now users are able to use it. Your data self describing, you have a microservices and a containerized analytical architecture, not just application architecture, but your analytical data is also in this model. And you are using databases for multi model usage, you're using that capability is probably it's possibly just sitting there right now, as a possibility in your database if you're not at five, but at five they're using, they're using multiple data types to their usage within their databases. What does technology look like well. Now you have complete enterprise MVM close the loop I'm not saying your journey is done with MVM it's never done. But I am saying at that point you you have all major subject areas, mastered with high, high data quality and real time distribution, your data you have databases and processing at the edge. IoT if you have an IoT architecture, you don't just have a flat file out at your edge, you have databases and you have processing at the edge and I'm pretty sure the next year. The slide is going to say artificial intelligence at the edge because that is possible now to special chips, but it's possible. You have embedded databases inside of applications embedding is not just for vendors. You have data prices as well. And you have policy management practices within your organization probably tools to help you with that organization wise pervasive data governance. It's not questioned. They have a seated all tables, they've been providing value to have been sitting off in a corner, saying you know throwing off, you know, rules from the from the hill, but they've been integrated into applications, they being the data vendors right they've been integrated into applications, bringing value to the applications as well as to the enterprise for the longer term, raising level maturity for the next application, and the next generation, if you would all be on. We see a creep in of FinOps into organizations. And we find maturity level five organizations are there now I also threw in multi hybrid cloud. Yeah, that's why you need FinOps, so that you use the right cloud. Okay, for the right application, however, I'm not saying that it's not till you get to maturity level five that you're using multi or hybrid cloud by no means. That's probably a two or one. Okay, but I am saying that for FinOps, you need you, you put your FinOps over multi and hybrid cloud environments, and I'm not, I'm not sure that multi or hybrid cloud is a real factor in maturity so I've left it off. I'm not saying that more mature organizations are multi hybrid cloud. And I'm not that and if they are, they probably are because they're doing more with data right but that I don't think it's necessarily a factor in being mature, it just is something that happens. So that's 2022. There you go, hopefully you put some, put some more markers on when I talked about four and five. And if we had time for interaction I would ask you what your scores were, and, but you know now, you now know, and grab this presentation if I went too fast, come back to it, look at what that next level is so if you're a two in data strategy, what does three look like, hmm, what do I need to start putting into my timelines, what do I need to start putting on my roadmap. Next year, by the way for artificial intelligence, we're going to see machines with theory of mind AI that's going to, they're going to be able to understand and remember things like emotions, and then adjust the behavior based upon those emotions with people so really getting things done. And you know, to get things done you have to go through people, and people have these things called emotions, and theory of mind AI will be all over that. And then there'll be, I don't know about next year. I don't know how much of this will happen next year but self aware AI is no doubt on the horizon. But if you're saying wow that's so far out there I just don't know when possibly my organization will get there. Well, I've already given you the answer. You go, you go from wherever you are to the next level to the next level to the next level to the next mountain. Get over that mountain. And then you're on your way. It's kind of like, if you've never swung a baseball bat when am I going to hit a home run. How about, how about you just make contact with the ball first and then we'll go from there. That's what I'm saying. And I have just some final words of advice as you go on your information management journey. There's more maturity and moving in perfectly than a merely perfectly defining the shortcomings and saying oh we're not doing this right we're not doing that right. So let's define what we can do right. Build your credibility. Build credibility that that greases the skids for your recommendations to your organization. If you don't, if you don't have if you're, if your recommendations aren't getting residents in the organization. Think about that bully. Do you have the credibility yet to deliver it. And don't fret, just build it. Don't be afraid to fail. Have an open mind. There are different paths, by the way. And people can have different opinions. And this is something that in my consulting I encounter all the time. I might have a way forward, but it's going to take, I don't know 100 person hours to convince the organization that that's the way forward whereas somebody else has a way forward that's different. And we'll get us there, but it will take, I don't know 50 more person hours to for it to happen well do the math. Probably easier just to do it their way and we get to the same result. That's what I'm talking about. No plateaus are comfortable for long. You'll have to re score yourself next year come back. And let's see how you are doing. Keep in mind that you got to get you got to get on the path, the journey, the resistance that you might be feeling either personally or within the organization. It's maturity level five who doesn't want to be maturity level five. It's the journey. It's the pain in the journey it's the setbacks in the journey. It's the this and the that in the journey it's the do we have the right people. Can we actually do this. Build your focus so that you can move forward. Hopefully I've answered your question is your information management mature. Get your scorecard now and answer that for yourself, and hopefully you have some actions there to move you forward in something very important information management maturity. I'll turn it back to Shannon now and get your questions. Thanks so much for another great presentation just to answer the most commonly asked questions. Just a reminder I will send a follow up email by end of day Monday for this webinar with links to the slides and links to the recording. So diving in here William with regards to slide 12. Who defines this and industry body. That last word you said Shannon and industry body and industry body. No, I guess I would say you defined it, you being in the enterprise, because this is reverse engineered from what enterprises are doing. This was originally what the second lowest profile, or what's the word for. I would say Dessau, but that's for 1020% second lowest 20% whatever that word is will come to me after the presentation. The second lowest look like this. And so this is this was not defined by me or an industry body is defined by you in the enterprise. I invite you to jump in here where whenever you feel whenever you want to jump in. So to so where do you see the data ball and the maturity model. Okay, so I'm going to say that I'm not sure that that's necessarily correlated to maturity. I find that some organizations are doing it some organizations are not. It doesn't preclude you from being at any level of maturity. If you do a great. I think it enables some of the other things. So I'm not I'm not saying don't do it or anything like that I'm saying that if it's an enabler or some of the other things I talked about that are more correlated to maturity then great. If you do data vault great.  Perfect. And what are the dependencies between the four categories that impede progress progressing to the next level on one category before maturing to the other. Those those were the slides that I that I had in here. So this is what get this is what you this is the light bulb that goes off as you go from one to two. You realize that you can raise data maturity, you must raise data maturity, only while you're accomplishing business goals. That's what maturity level one they don't get that. And so you have got that in order to get to the next level, and so on, and so forth. These are the big ideas that you need to get to the next level. Yeah, I just want to add to that I think you know what William said earlier about, you know, focusing on the people really and it's about the change management, as you go through those levels, really empowered the people, right. You know, you know, you're defining these models you're actually scoring yourselves so it's really about empowering yourselves to sort of move through those different maturity levels I think. Yeah. Perfect, I think we have time for at least one more question here. What do you mean by embedded database in applications older applications were based around a database. I mean that the, the database is. I don't want to use the word embedded be wrong, but the database is exclusive to the application, the database has sort of cash the data that's important to the application is not just reaching out with SQL calls to a database obviously you know most applications do that. But when you build applications for your user community, you build them with the databases that are maybe, maybe there's an extraction from the main database like the data warehouse that's appropriate and cashed for that particular need. And that database is embedded maybe you have your users are accessing through the devices, like mobile devices, and you are caching a database at that, at that level at the edge. That does have a lot to do that statement did have a lot to do with edge architectures, but it has to do with really all applications as well. Perfect. Well, that does bring us right to the top of the hour here. And William, thank you so much for these great presentations and thanks to Zen optics for sponsoring today's webinar and hoping to make these webinars happen. And thanks to all of our attendees for being so engaged in everything we do always appreciate it and love it. And again, just a reminder, I will send a follow up email by end of gay Monday with links to the slides and links to the recording. William, thank you so much. Thanks everybody. Bye. Thank you. Bye bye.


My name is Karen E. Forester My father captain Ron Forester United States Marine Corps is Still missing in action in North Vietnam He is only one of 1621 Americans who are still missing from the war in Vietnam 104 of them are also Texans He is only one of 3,417 Texans who sacrificed their lives in Vietnam But he is the only one that I call daddy My family like all in my a family's still wait for answers In my a family's like our gold star families miss their loved ones every day And we greatly thank our Vietnam veterans for it is you who stand by our side and hold us up Even though many Vietnam veterans still work to resolve their own demons And we can't forget the veterans families because they serve too For POWMA families Gold star families and for many of our veterans the Vietnam war is not really over It really never can be with the empty chair at the holiday table The what-ifs and the constant struggle for closure and healing This is our reality This is the cost of war As a board member with the national league of POWMA families I have the honor of working with other families like mine And representing them and talking with our government and foreign governments as well I also share in the celebration that comes with the any answer to an MIA's fate And answers do come they just come very slowly I'm also a proud participant of run for the wall Which is a cross-country pilgrimage That focuses on promoting our veterans healing Calling for a full accounting of our POWs and MIAs Honoring the ultimate sacrifice of those killed in action And to support our military personnel around the world Our outreach program looks to embrace MIA and KIA families along our route So that we can let them know their loved one is not forgotten And that we appreciate and understand the family's sacrifice Now sacrifice is no stranger to any of your panel members here today While I have just shared with you The reality of life after the war Your panel members will share with you the reality of the war So please allow me to introduce your panel for this afternoon's session The troops of you from the front lines Liz Allen is a graduate of Ohio State University with a master's in psychiatric nursing She joined the united states army to help men like her own brother who were serving in vietnam She requested frontline duty and was assigned to the remote twelfth evac hospital in kuchi In the winter of 1967 she was transferred to a field hospital in play coup Soon to come under attack during the ted offensive Completing her tour of duty in april of 1968. She went on to serve 14 years in the us army reserves John Sibley butler was drafted in the united states army shortly after graduating from lsu He served two years in vietnam and was awarded a bronze star for valor in combat An author and professor in the management department at the macomb school of business at the university of texas at austin His prolific writings include the book all that we can be which he co-authored with charles moscos He also researched the involvement of african americans and the vietnam war isaac camacho enlisted in united states army in 1955 He served as an airborne jump instructor before becoming a member of the newly formed 77th special forces group He served two tours in vietnam one in ashile valley and the other in the province of weyden guia In 1963 he was captured and imprisoned by vietcong forces and became the first gi to escape a vietcong pow camp He earned the silver star and distinguished service cross for his service in vietnam ken wallingford entered the us army in 1969 He was sent to vietnam in 1970 as a sniper with the 25th infantry division A year later he volunteered for a second tour as a military advisor with the military assistance command vietnam In april of 1972 he was captured and imprisoned in the jungles of cambodia for more than 10 months before being released at the signing of the paris peace accords He was awarded the silver star and the bronze star He is currently the senior advisor to the executive secretary of the veterans land board Your moderator today will be dr. William adams William bro adams Formal education was interrupted by three years of service in the us army Including one years of first lieutenant in the vietnam war He credits his experience in vietnam as part of what motivated him to study and teach in the humanities He went on to serve as president of colby college from 2000 to 2014 When in 2014 he became the 10th chairman of the national endowment for the humanities Please join me in welcoming your panel to the stage Well, good good afternoon, and thank you all for coming. We're glad you're here and we're delighted to be here and we're looking forward to this Uh hour or so of conversation about our experiences. This is the moment as President finbas said that we have a chance to talk about the experience Of being in vietnam and that is of course one of the most important dimensions Of this summit and that's what we're going To do today. So thank you again for being with us as we remember and recall some of the Experiences that that we had I'm going to start with that very question and ask starting with liz and going down Uh the line here. I'm going to ask each of the panelists to talk a little bit about daily life In their units. You've heard described their assignments When they were in vietnam generally what they did But I think it's important to talk a little bit more about what the actual daily life in those units was like And so i'm going to start with liz and you can kick us off I was hoping you was going to do him first. No, no i'm doing you first Ha ha Let me tell you there was no Regulation on daily life it depended on what happened in the field How many body bags did you get? How many helicopters came in and living was hell Excuse me for saying that word, but that's what it was The temperature was hot and as those troops came in How do you come to grips With 150 body bags in one day I had two stations in vietnam koo chi Which you know at the tunnels The little guys got to do the tunnels Because the big guys couldn't get through the hole But the real thing about the tunnels Were the spiders at the end Of the tunnel And as those we got them And there was no psychiatric service to help them There cannot possibly be anything worse Than a spider On your face Part of the things that we have to deal with in war are supplies There were days that we thought nothing was ever going to come How do you run out of ammunition? Blood transfusions and water in a war zone That day after day You dealt with it Talk to don't let me talk too long Because I love to talk I'm ain't gonna lie to you Because you don't see many women Who know about war And I did koo chi which you know at the tunnels and play koo which was the Which took the first bomb of the tet offensive And I tell my friends don't ever call me at night Because the first rounds came in at night and There was nothing to do and I knew That the phone was going to ring And I was going to have to go and the chief nurse calls and she says captain allen. I says yes I said what do you need me to do She said you have to go to the unit And the unit was further than this wall and that wall and I said is somebody going to go with me And she said Captain allen I am so sorry You have to go alone And as I opened the door The two nurses that were there with them The guys were on the floor because they were bringing them in You can never imagine the carnage Of that kind of war And I say that to you Because it's not something that I talk about How In the hell Can you deal With 40 Young men Some with no legs Some with no arms Some with their chest open And you have nothing To give them but love And I'm on pass I know you were in the medical side of things as well Or had a pretty good view of that Maybe you could Send this View of what Liz has said Absolutely when I think about it I think of helicopters and blades I think of Body bags and support and I think of guard duty I think of My first flight To americale I was in the americale division And we supported the first of the six The area was shula fuba induct four I think it was very very important for us to Think about what we call mission And that mission was Very very simple We had a war to fight And it was a war that was There were no really front lines I thought that everything was a front line From the pulling of guard duty at night To taking the rounds From the vcs At night also So I think that when you think about the faces And you think about What you've done Think about how do you get a person From the battlefield if you will To an aid station Or to a hospital As quickly as possible And I think america cut that down from Career to vietnam I think it was like ten minutes or so I think about The kind of injuries in vietnam were traumatic Amputations When I say that I mean not only legs But also arms And I think that The idea in terms of the day to life Is to get through And make it to the next day We all had a saying about I can't wait until I go back to quote Of the world So getting through The day to life And remember we didn't have The whole idea of cell phones We didn't have skype We maybe had mail call twice a week So it was very very Isolated What held me together Was understanding that I was part of A tradition that went back to The revolutionary war And I think I belong to a great Faternity of soldiers who served And I think that when you look And think about the day to life Which I really haven't talked about Since I left vietnam It is about services About putting up with just the Continues of war Which in my case is the Of helicopter blaze And we also didn't met caps To the vietnamese people So when I think about that That is what I think about You had two tours I understand So a variety of experiences And a variety of contexts Yeah well my daily life Was different from the first tour To the second tour Of course I was a prisoner of war First tour was mostly combat missions And combat patrols And reconnaissance of the Ho Chi Minh trail Interdicting the enemies lines Of communication And of course trying to stay alive But the Second tour when I was captured I would just try to find ways To mess with the enemy Even though I was a prisoner of war I became the prisoner of war cap Scamp according to them Because I was always doing crazy things For example I broke the rice mill And they found out that it was me But I wasn't about to mill All that rice that they had there And I got pretty tired So I mean the other thing About daily life is just really Trying to stay alive and survive Trying to beat the odds We were affected By the Jungle-born diseases I had malaria, hepatitis, berry Berry And a big strong case of dysentery So We were just trying to survive In prisoner of war cap I always kept my mind Very open And develop a plan to escape And I finally escaped Ken I know you were a POW As well for a period of time Tell us about Well I did do tours also Similar to IC That the military Can do its best to train you But in the end result It's not like OJT You know when I landed at Cameron Bay And got off that airplane It was so hot and dry And said Cameron Bay is a beautiful, beautiful place In Vietnam And then eventually Flew down to Cu Chi And was there for a couple of weeks While I was in processing You know I went to Vietnam I'm a military brat And I went in the military afterwards And we all know how controversial The war was Literally divided this country And you know but I felt As an American citizen It is my duty When Uncle Sam calls You serve Irregardless Of what the conflict is And a lot of people chose to You know run off to other countries President Carter let these guys back in But You know I went because Duty called duty served And so on my first tour of duty I was a sniper And we go out on five to seven men Teams and this is a war too Remember number one Was never declared by Congress We fought it with one hand Tied behind our back For example we weren't supposed to be in Cambodia We were in Cambodia The first unit I was with After six months tour of duty From Cambodia And all they did is really delay the inevitable But when we go out on these Five to seven men teams and sit up In the jungle environment We never fought a jungle warfare in our lives So this is a new experience And so when you're sitting there And you're waiting for the enemy Because there's intelligence that the enemy Has been moving through this area And then I tell school kids this Killing is never right But I was military trained And government issued To do a job And I did it pretty good But when you sit there And see the enemy Cross on a path And you squeeze that trigger And you see them drop That really sets a tone For the rest of your duty And after a while it just became natural And then so I said I like this military stuff Extend and come back And I had to come home for 30 days And then all I had to do was another Seven months of tour And then I would get out of the military five months early My second tour is with McVeer military assistance command Vietnam station out of South Vietnam which is 75 miles North of Saigon And so Six days before my discharge My camp of four Americans Two hundred south Vietnamese soldiers They were here with 30,000 North Vietnamese And Vietnam soldiers This was in 1972 They had the goal then during the spring Offensive of 72 to go to Saigon Like they did in 1968 We just happened to be in their way But We held that camp for three days Before driving Russian tanks And they literally overran the camp And I lost two men On my five man team And we went to the helicopter's land Because it's just too hot And so we went into hiding They found us the next day, started pouring gasoline On top of the bunker we were in And of course you know if you start smelling gasoline Well on top of cocktail, those kind of things So we exited and then And you know probably I can maybe couple people in this whole program That have fought against the enemy And we have lived with the enemy And so we have And I'm not saying this boastfully I say it very humbly And we learned What communism is all about From the enemy's perspective So it literally changed my life Because I went to Vietnam Because I was supposed to But what literally changed my mind And even to this day I was agnostic when I went And on that second day Of a three day battle When I realized And I can remember this day That day as I'm sitting here today Praying And we've all heard the adage There's no atheists in foxholes Battlefield conversions Ladies and gentlemen you are looking at one of them Because there was nothing I could physically do To get out of there And you start praying You raise a very interesting question That might be a good thing for us To explore a little bit I too was with the Vietnamese I was an advisor To a regional The Mekong Delta So my daily life was spent with the Vietnamese I was with an advisory team But it was a small team And our interactions with the Vietnamese Were ubiquitous and they were daily And they were constant I went to training At Fort Bragg Learned some language Some other things But I have to say when I got there I didn't feel very well prepared For what I found I wonder how you all felt about that In terms of your own activities Did you feel well trained Ready for what you saw Or were there things that Surprised you fundamentally And made your experiences Much different from what you expected The real deal Is you can't See here What you saw there One of the things That The most difficult for me Was how do you handle An 18 year old With no legs And no arms How do you handle that And that is a one shot wound And it always happens On tanks Because they sit With their arms Down And as the missile hits This side Both arms and both legs And remember This is an 18 year old With no arms And no legs And I'm the one thing Because I'm going to get to talk again Trust me But When I look at What happened here Because I have to tell you I had two brothers in Vietnam At the same time They told them to give me up My grandmother Almost lost it She has three Grandchildren My grandmother raised us In war at the same time And that was a very difficult Place for her The other thing And I am going to bring race Into the issue You know When a young male Gets into trouble They offer him the military Rather than prison And so Here he comes 18 years old And gets assigned To the wolfhounds Or he gets assigned To An outpost Area Where they sat in that boiling sun All day The movie What was that movie About Vietnam The one that really got to me Where they carried everybody Off in the little bitty white bags And stuff It didn't happen like that Because the plane would come in And they would throw off All of the body bags Because he got to go pick up some more We Actually With as much money As much skill And as much Stuff As we have We ran out of bandages We ran out of water We ran out of medicine Some slip on the floor And I always used to think If you all would quit that damn marching And get something done So that we can do something That we need to do Because All of those people All of those guys Belong to somebody Before they came And there was nothing We could do about that And I'm going to talk About Ted Because it was Our guys in the north That knew about Ted The south did not know About south About Ted And when the first rounds came in We did not know what to do We did not have the supplies To handle that And Being as I Had the surgical units When you see that much carnage And no way to stop it And you look at it Every day Every night And you look at it And it makes sleep Real difficult For people like me And this is the first time I understand this is the first time They've asked a female Who was in Nam On the front line To have something to say Because we Act like We didn't have Let me say one little thing When I came back An adult came up to me And says can I ask you a question And I said sure what She says were they really shooting Real bullets I thought And what did you do during the war John were there things that Surprised you that you didn't feel Prepared for that came to you As a kind of out of the blue I don't think there's Any way to prepare for war I think that the training that we went through Was what most soldiers Are going through that is we were fighting An enemy and we were there To kill the enemy And I think that training meant that Whether it was whatever War that you don't see them Necessarist people You have to have a renegotiation In the training of you know I'm on my way to Vietnam I'm on my way to kill a Charlie Con And I think that Training is almost Wrong but like my colleague Said here it becomes second nature And I think what We did well Was to train in terms of On the weapons side But it was a different kind of war That we had fought over the Year that was different from World War II Plus we had the rotation system Where we went there as individuals Rather as units So if you divide the training Into the psychology part You are a soldier And your deal is to Not to ask why but to do or die And then you add the training Of what you need to do Whether it's in my case learning how to do Bandages Learning how to do guard duty Learning how to go on med cap Learning how to take people in And out of helicopters And I think that became good So I think that In terms of the preparation I think that the American soldiers Did extremely well I think that we had problems Back at home with the Demonstrators and the Congress So I think that if you look at What we were trained for because I think we won Every Ballot So I think that the Training itself was good but there's Absolutely no way To train for being a prisoner of war There's no way to train For all of the mass kinds of Destruction that you see Whether it's standing there And watching a beautiful field And when the marine pilots Do their jobs and the Air Force Is just all ballering So I think that One of the training that we went through Was understanding that although You were fighting the Vietnamese We had a med cap that she had to be kind To the Vietnamese people Of that kind of war And that training for me I would go to villages And I would engage the Vietnamese people But I was always aware that everybody was the enemy Because At Liz and I were talking in the green room It was the kids who would also Blow you up So I think that's important So the training was good for what we knew But I think that we've learned more about That kind of warfare Sort of outside of your expectations I came from a different outfit than these guys Here but I thought I was in special forces And we do Some extensive Area studies before we go into Whatever country we're going to go To include survival language Study of the terrain The mountains, the river, the flow of the current On the rivers, which way they're headed Who we're going to see, who we're going to meet What they talk, what they like, what they don't like And so forth For about six months Before we deploy So our special forces teams Are pretty well prepared Unless they know the mission changes When you're en route out there But most of the time we'll land And go ahead with the mission to our designated Areas We had the The problem with the Mountaineers was that everything That we taught those people We had to go to the interpreter And then that interpreter would go into French The French would go into their lingo Their dialect And so when we trained For example Camp defenses You're talking to an English To a guy that speaks Vietnamese In English and so forth down the line Well a lot of that stuff gets lost In the translation But I think that we were Very well prepared To do our job in our mission And Some of these other units I later learned Thought that they were going to go in Country And find some little Oriental guy With a third world class weapon But they were probably Thinking about the Viet Cong, the VC But you can't differentiate The North Vietnamese From the South Vietnamese They all look alike I kind of had it a little bit closer And I got into them kind of tight The color of my skin Those guys would pull up their arm And put their arm against me And they'd kind of say, hey, we're the same same We're kind of like buddies But We were very well trained To Encounter the mission that we were in But in reality The North Vietnamese soldiers Were the best fighting soldiers Of In this entire world And they had hunger For victory Because in the long run up north They had told them, Ho Chi Minh's dream Is to unite North and South Vietnam And the staff was also told that way So in case Ho Chi when he died Then this guy in command Would do that and they promised themselves that Until the last man standing there Was killed But they were going to reunify the country And so they did And they fought very hard Compared to the soldiers in the South They were nothing These kids were trained to drop their guns And run Leaving us there, the Special Forces guys To defend themselves Against an enemy That was very well trained And it happened in a lot of instances We talk about the tanks When I came back I was given some good intelligence Because I was the first president of war To come back and really explain to them What I had found out I had realistic And truthful intelligence And I told them about the tanks And the little kid from the AMI He said, how do you know they weren't ours I said, my God man What kind of fool are you You can hear a tank right there At the president of war camp Would have been long gone into Cambodia And by the briefing I told them about That they had armor Bill Craig, another Special Forces soldier Was at Lang Vey And when the tanks hit Lang Vey They knocked out those three Russian tanks And down the road Bill thanked me a lot He said, you know what, I read your report And thank you for the intel Nobody was prepared to fight some tanks But when the tanks came over They had 3.5s and all 57s And of course the mines To repel the tank attack So they come up smelling like a rose Ken, what surprised you What was outside your expectations That you had to deal with You stop and think about Vietnam The location 10,000 miles away From the United States of America Until the war started No one had ever heard of We weren't the first There If you look at history Genghis Khan Before them and for them So time was on their side They figured they could out wait us If you will How many lives are we willing to spend In a futile effort As a result But I can remember going through villages And keeping in mind Some of you that maybe were in Vietnam $400 a year Is all they lived off of And they're living on Dirt floors, grass huts No electricity, no indoor plumbing Just hard working Dedicated people All the local South Vietnamese people wanted Is just to exist And they got caught in the crosshairs And you see kids That the Viet Cong had shot And wounded But they wanted to hang out with us Because they didn't like the NVA or the Viet Cong As I said I could always tell the difference between The NVA and the Viet Cong NVA war uniforms the Viet Cong did We kind of said they were the farmers by day Fighters at night And so When we got to prison camp in Cambodia Deep in the jungles of Cambodia And I was putting a five by six tiger cage With a ten foot chain locked around My ankles I had been there probably in 17 shrapnel wounds The first time I was interviewed Now keep in mind there's five tiger cages There's a guard stand with a kid Probably about 14, 15, 16 years of age With an AK-47 And so the guy that took care Of his smoking was fairly well And he came and took me and we went a long story short I went inside for about an hour And a half sitting on a tree stump About six inches off the ground And this guy sitting at a bamboo table In a chair And of course generally speaking Some Vietnamese people are short in stature So as soon as he sat down I immediately figured out This guy's got superior position on me Because I'm having a look up at him So over the next hour and a half During that first session They go well we wish you could go home But there's a war going on and yada yada yada And so he starts getting down to Who are you with, what units are you in So you start making up stuff But it was enough for him to say And it wasn't true or accurate He said well is it with this unit Now this guy is speaking English Better than most Americans And so we do this I call this a little dance because I try to put a positive Or a negative situation I knew someday I was coming home I didn't know when But I made the mental Decision I'm going to beat this thing I don't know how long But I will go home So I live every day Every day is a great day If you're thinking you have it a bad day Let me tell you one day is a PO day But I say that humbly But after we finished this And he asked me about some propaganda Material that they shared with me About some battles that I'd actually been in And I said well I have to Disagree with you on this One particular battle You guys didn't win He looks, leans forward And looks at me with all seriousness No, you've been misled By that propaganda machine We've got in this country called the free press Now I'm 25 I'm kind of cocky But I'm in no position to be cocky In that environment And I'm thinking to myself You've got to be kidding me And that's when it really sunk in Because they reiterated it later on Even if something is false If you repeated a thousand And one times it becomes true And I said to myself Wow So as I mentioned before You're fighting with them Living with them seeing their perspective And knowing that Maybe someday we'll go home Not sure when Like Ike he was fortunate to escape I couldn't figure out how to get out of there Get off the chain, get out of the camp That had punchy sticks on the inside Plus it was late in the war President Nixon was taking 10,000 troops out a month 50, 183,000 troops in 1972 So we said we're going to give it a year And see if it works out And then we try and anticipate escape John, you and Ken Have both raised the important question Of what we heard and knew About what was happening in the United States And how that affected Daily experience I think that would be a good thing to explore I would just remind everybody That as somebody has already said There was no television There was no regular contact Letters took about a week There were no telephone calls There was Vietnam radio In Saigon And made famous In the movie Good Morning Vietnam And in that story Most of the information came slowly And it was difficult To know immediately what was happening At home But we did hear, ultimately Everything that was going on And there was a lot going on When I was there in 1968-69 The anti-war movement was Really becoming very powerful So we heard More and more things about what was happening In the United States And of course it had an effect on us I'm wondering how it affected each of you Liz, if you could talk a little bit About how that news To the degree that you had news How that affected your daily life Answer that question intelligently We didn't get no daily news What daily news The only kind of news we had Was about the people marching over here That's what I mean We heard that all the time And I'm being a lady so I'm not going to cuss today I'm going to hold that back You know what I'm saying We didn't Get any of that kind of stuff There was some radio stuff That we got That We knew what music Was going on in the States But there seemed to be no way To get any information back To the States So that they could get off their duff And do something that was helpful Does that make sense? And so we didn't really get that much radio Especially Because I was always out In the field I didn't want to go to Saigon They wanted me to go to Saigon to work I could stay at home and do this And so radios Didn't work So we didn't get any of that Kind of stuff Most of the stuff that I heard Because I have to tell you I had two brothers also In the war at the same time So there were three of us in the war at the same time Really wore my grandmother down But they were Navy And I was Army And so we just Didn't get that kind of thing And there wasn't the kind Of wiring In the heavy war zones That Would allow radio And that kind of stuff to come through So we didn't know much Until the very, very end About what was going on Here And I have to tell you I was sort of Glad we didn't get to hear it Because when you got 30 guys with their bellies Opened butts broken Eyes blinded I don't want to hear Any about that mess Because I really did have Something to do Does that make sense? I had something to do And I sat around And talked about what I wasn't going to do Because The 25th Infantry Was a mighty infantry group It really was And we had special forces The 25th And they were always In battle I don't think there was one day That I was there That they were not Well But my grandmother would let me know What they were saying here And what I understood Was saying here Didn't have A damn thing to do With what was going on And I used to think If y'all would get From in front of that television And send us some supplies I sure would be thankful John how about you We had to start the stripes But of course You're not too concerned about Debating that And the reality came When I was in Seattle and I got the briefing And the briefing was Take your uniform off and watch out for the hippies In a different kind of situation And I think that The war divided itself And it also divided itself between GIs Who thought that People should serve People who were protesting And going to Canada I had my undergraduate school There were not lots of protests Against the war I went straight from From the military To Northwestern University To graduate school And I wore my jacket Because it was cold And I think that The idea of serving in Vietnam Always put in a forefront When I have it on my resume now My favorite story is I was a veteran of the game For the Kansas State game here at the University of Texas And the veterans called me and asked How could a decorated Vietnam veteran Be a professor at the University of Texas So I think that Paul Woodruff Another good friend of mine Is also a decorated veteran But I think that I really didn't Begin to think about it Because when you're there you think about your duty But I tell you when you got home You had a different kind of vision But it wasn't too interruptive when you were there There wasn't a... I looked at it personally About people who did not want to serve From an academic point of view I thought that the country was changing You go back to the Revolution In a war you had the same kind of Dynamics but a different level And the resentment Is that my hero Are the people that I served with And not the people who demonstrated But that's okay, that's my personal Kind of resentment I know it's a free country and you can do what you want to do But in terms of what I've done And what I did My heroes are the people who did not come home And the people who were main And the people who were traumatized Rather than the people who refused To fight for America And I also have reservations About President Carter Allowing people to come Back in full citizenship But I think that kind of attitude is indicative When you begin to cut Through the layers of what The experience of Vietnam was But I think that the reality Of what happened in the war And the reality of all the demonstrations That took place I think it's a historical question As to what went on I went to Houston to give a talk in Southwest Houston And I was pleased because there was a statue In the Vietnamese Community of an American soldier So I think that It didn't affect me there Because I was Solidarity was with the troops And certainly was not with the protesters How about you? Were you aware Of what was happening? I think we had an edge over the conventional units Because we used Morse code Our commemoration with each one Of our teams has a communicator That's an expert in Morse code And he would get the message And I'll give you a good example President Kennedy was assassinated Minutes after he was shot We knew about it The message came in He deciphered it President Kennedy was shot In Dallas More to follow When he passes away in the hospital We get the message that he's gone With just a small amount of time But conversely The enemy Had very good communications To the Chicago Tribune Washington Post Times It hurt me real bad Because I had BS my way To tell them when they were Interrogating me that I was just a supply man All I do is Give them forms Whenever they need boots I give them boots and all this stuff So I kind of sold them on that story And I said well I think I got over on these guys You know One day they called me in And like Ken said here You're sitting in a little stump like that That guy's way up there He said you've been telling us That all you did that you were a supply man That you gave them boots and uniforms And all this stuff He said yes So he picks up a copy of Time Magazine And he says you know Are you familiar with this publication I said yes Time Magazine He saw Magazine He threw it at me He says turn to page 19 Page 19 There was a picture of my camp Burning Right after the attack And on the bottom caption of that photo It said we're starting in first class I said Kamacho was teaching Anti-Gorilla Warfare I didn't know how to respond to that thing But only one thing I said you know I said well you can't believe everything There's your brother And we then he said now We really want to talk I bet they did And I mentioned to him I said remember in the first days When I was here with you guys I told you that I had seen a bus That was exploded by a mine That you guys looped the bus With civilians and it was About five miles south of Kantube I read that in the Saigon paper And he told me He said well you know Your Americans are so ignorant It's just propaganda And you know you're not supposed to Believe everything you read And so that was my second comeback Remember you told me not to believe Everything you read And it left me alone Ken I wonder if you could talk a little bit About what you were hearing And did it alter your experience To influence your experience Like a lot of these folks You know you got the stars and stripes You were back in base camp When I was in prison camp My parents wrote me letters I wrote a couple of letters They give you a little five by seven Piece of paper with five lines on it What are you going to say I'm deep in the jungles of Cambodia Things aren't going real well Everything's fine The food could be better but I understand I knew those letters were never going to leave Every afternoon and again Every afternoon after siesta time They would come back and unlock the cages Now I had a ten foot chain Around one of my ankles Locked the cage itself and never came off Unless I went to the bathroom or bathed every ten days This I'll call my little friend to be nice Would come in the center of the camp And play this transistor radio The voice of Vietnam Straight from Hanoi Of course it wasn't biased or anything And I can remember very clearly Because This was during 72 When you had the presidential elections going on You had a guy named Richard Nixon On the Democratic side you had a guy named George McGovern Well, again going back What I said earlier They distort, as Hikes said The truth Because it sounded like this young lady From Hanoi That George McGovern was going to win The 72 election I think maybe he carried three states One of them wasn't even his own But it talked a lot about the protesters The anti-American sentiment But you had to kind of filter that stuff out Even though And I'm going to be nice You had a guy on the program The other morning that was married to a famous actress I have a different word That I will not share in public For that individual She Tom Hayden And Fonda did not Help our cause In fact, they played Jane's recorded Message for 30 days And I will never forget When she ended her transmenu These are poor innocent people There was Peo Debes in North Vietnam As you already know that were tortured That refused to meet with her She never did come down to South Vietnam Cambodia or whatever But her ending statement was Who I talked to Your mother, Lucy and Linda Who was embarrassed that the attorney general Under your dad went over there But I go to bed crying Every night thinking of the damage We have done to these poor Innocent people I said really I know she's apologized I'll leave it at that But we talk about Vietnam veterans being recognized today Because we didn't start the war We served each and every one here today And those around the world That wore the uniform during that time period Should be applauded Should be assluted And thanked for your service Because if you were drafted You went some didn't Obviously I volunteered because I felt It was my responsibility and duty But I tell you what, lessons learned And I talked to a guy last night With a San Antonio paper Lessons learned going forward They had to a certain degree I don't necessarily agree with what's going on Militarily But the men and women serving today 12 to 15% of the people serving today Are females which I think is great and wonderful Number two They all volunteered There's no draft And Vietnam veterans, older veterans And even the public in general Is thanking these young men and women When they come through airports Or they're in a restaurant I think we've come a long way And hopefully we can take some of those lessons Forward Besides, let's not get into something That the country is not fully committed There's no vital interest in the United States Let's not play political politics with it Let's not find with one hand Died behind our back And let's go in and win it Immediately I think you're right, we are doing a lot better I think the other part I'm sorry babe She gets one minute We've only got a couple left So I'm only taking one Because I want to piggyback On what you have to say And that is This country here Just got so Flared up When a kid was killed A Vietnamese kid Was killed But we never said a word When The Vietnamese kid Would Hold up a Coke can To a U.S. Soldier And that can Was a bomb And we got them All the time They would throw those Coke cans And to this day Vietnam Vets Who were in prison And I do a lot Of work with prisons The one thing you cannot do Is hand them A Coke can And say here Because It pulls back That memory Of that kid But we could get all Pissed off About About A U.S. Guy Killing a Vietnamese kid But we never said a word When the Vietnamese kids Through those Bombs In the tops Of those APCs And tanks And guys riding on the sides of the truck And we tried To take care Of those kids But those kids blew up A lot Of U.S. Treats. And we have to think About What we think about kids Because kids do What their parents tell them to do And that is not always What Kids do that you know about And I have taken care Of a lot of GIs Who Were wounded Who lost their legs Who were blind From a Coke can And I still have trouble with Coke Thank you I'm going to take the moderator's prerogative And have the last word here Because we're very close to the end I think one of the Difficult things Surely one of the very difficult things Of being there Was that Even people there in the field Executing their mission In the best possible way they could And with great integrity And bravery Had very divided feelings About what they were doing Some people were very supportive Some people were in the middle Some people weren't so supportive One of the complexities of the legacy Of this war I think Of people who fought it There was A hugely divided sentiment About the experience What it meant, what it was for Its purpose And going back to what Ken said I think that For me coming away from that The most important lesson Is that we have to make sure That there's a people in a country We understand what the ultimate meaning Of our engagement is Because without that certainty The price is too high And the Pain is too great And so if there's one thing I think probably we all agree on Is Veterans of that conflict Is that going forward we have to make sure That that's where we Find ourselves when we're making these decisions I want you to join me in thanking These panelists for their excellent work And thanks all of you for coming