InterWorks recently attended CDAO Melbourne 2024, a three day event that took place on September 2-4, 2024. Featuring keynote speakers, panel discussions and interactive workshops, the conference addressed topics like data governance, culture and transformation. 

We had a great time there, and loved to interact with the over 600 registrations, with more than 400 attendees — from directors, heads, managers of data and analytics, and practitioners from across sectors in Australia working in the data field.

What Was the Conference About?

The conference’s key themes included: 

• AI & Analytics
• Governance 
• Practical Data
• Scale
• Business Generation 

If your goal was to integrate intelligent data solutions and AI into your business, this was the conference to attend, for sure.

The first day of the event was a “Focus Day” with two different streams (the descriptions of which come straight from the organizers):  

• Data Governance: “This Focus Day will dive deep into modern data governance practices, explore the latest privacy regulations and delve into the ethical debate around AI and data.”
• AI & Analytics: “This Focus Day will explore the key steps needed to incorporate AI into business. From best practices in AI and analytics to using AI to help with business decisions and insights, this is the place to engage for all things business AI!”

Bill Clarke, our Strategy Director, spoke on common data challenges and how to solve them. His talk was largely derived from a recent white paper we put out regarding the most common data challenges our clients were seeing and what solutions we recommended them. If that white paper sounds interesting to you, feel free to check it out! He also touched on data governance and how to maximise return with reduced investment, which we also talked about in a recent webinar.

 InterWorks at the Conference

We were happy to be in person at the conference with an interactive booth where attendees would answer the question, “Where are you on your data path?” Specifically, we focused on AI readiness, unified data and data governance as the areas we focused on with the attendees. We had numerous participants, which resulted in a lot of pin stickers on our booth walls. 

Here are the results we gathered from our booth. The answers were on a spectrum of entry level to expert, being “Just Getting Started,” “Slow & Steady” and “Trailblazing” for those who are already rock stars in their prospective fields. The highest percentage answers are bolded:

Unified Data

• Just getting started: 19.23%
• Slow & Steady: 73.08%
• Trailblazing: 7.69%

AI Readiness

• Just getting started: 51.92%
• Slow & Steady: 34.62%
• Trailblazing: 13.46%

Data Governance

• Just getting started: 30.77%
• Slow & Steady: 57.69%
• Trailblazing: 11.54%

As you can see, when it comes to unifying their data or managing their data governance, most participants were about middle of the road on their journeys, but the majority were just starting out with their AI readiness, which is no surprise given the recency of the AI buzz.

For swag, we were giving away InterWorks-branded wooden models, which caught a lot of attention. We always hate going to conferences as participants with uninteresting or unmemorable swag, so we took it up a notch. Rocket ships? Check. Cars? Check. Airplanes? Check.

 What’s Next for CDAO?

Coming soon, we will be at CDAO Perth on October 22, so if you’re going to be there, feel free to say hello! The key themes for Perth:  

• Innovation: We will explore the critical role data plays with emergent technologies like generative AI, the return on investment (ROI) in LLM’s and generative AI, and much more. 
• Data Governance, Integrity, Protection and Management: Effective data governance with AI is crucial, encompassing data accuracy, integrity and access controls, all while ensuring responsible use, high quality outputs and reliability, aligned with ethical guidelines and regulatory requirements. 
• Data Leadership: Uncover why success at this pivotal time starts with great leadership that is willing to embrace emerging technologies and understanding their business implications. 

Thanks for the great time at CDAO Melbourne, and we’ll see you at CDAO Perth!