Susan Etlinger

Social data has proliferated within most large organizations and is creating significant opportunities and threats. Consider that:

• 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute
• On WordPress alone, users produce about 64.8 million new blog posts and 60.4 million new comments each month
• 500 million tweets are sent per day

In this talk, using proprietary research gleaned from Global 2000 companies and technology innovators, industry analyst Susan Etlinger presents a view of the market for digital data, shares industry case studies, and demonstrates how the most advanced organizations use social and other types of digital data to enhance brand reputation, drive revenue, improve customer experience and drive competitive advantage.

Earl Warren, former chief justice of the United States, once said, “In civilized life, law floats in a sea of ethics.” As data becomes ubiquitous, more integrated and more portable, the morass of ethical issues will only grow. Leaders who are versed in these issues will be better prepared to address them head-on, and, in doing so, protect the trust and loyalty of their customers and shareholders, and the good will of their communities.

In engaging language and with relevant, timely examples, industry analyst Susan Etlinger distills the discussion of digital ethics and data privacy into a clear framework that leaders can use to address existing digital ethics issues and plan for emerging ones. She brings together perspectives from academia, law, policy, corporations and data scientists to shed light on the current and emerging legal and ethical issues related to data collection, aggregation, analysis, storage and usage, and the way we communicate about these practices.

Every day, we hear new stories about data: how much there is, how fast it moves, how it’s used for good or ill. Data permeates our organizations, our educational and legal systems, and our society—even our dinner-table conversation. Now that we live in a data-rich world, we need to educate ourselves about what we can do—as leaders, citizens and consumers—to use it to our best advantage.

As leaders, we crave insight that we can use to make decisions, yet we fear the risks associated with data collection. As individuals, we crave utility and convenience, yet we simultaneously fear loss of control over our privacy and our digital identities.

In clear and engaging language and with relevant, timely examples, this talk explains just why we struggle with these topics, and proposes a framework to better understand and address how we extract insight from data; and how we use it in such a way as to earn and protect trust: the trust of customers, constituents, patients and partners.