EMLA2026 – INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

Artificial Intelligence • Data Science • Biotechnology

April 11–12, 2026 | New York City

PITCH DECK – EVENT EDITION

1. Event Vision

To convene global leaders in Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, and Biotechnology for a transformative gathering that bridges innovation, medicine, and humanity.

2. About the Event

EMLA2026 is a high-level international conference organized by EMLA INC (501(c)(3)), bringing together scientists, physicians, AI experts, investors, policy leaders, and artists. Hosted in New York City with global digital participation.

3. Founder & Host

Prof. Dana York, DDS, MS, PhD

Pioneer in AI-integrated healthcare & photobiomodulation

President, EMLA INC

President, Lions Club New York Agape Foundation

4. Why This Conference Matters

AI is transforming medicine and global health systems. Biotechnology is redefining healing and prevention. Data science is shaping decision-making at scale. Yet access, ethics, and integration remain critical challenges.

5. Conference Focus Areas

– Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare

– Data Science & Predictive Medicine

– Biotechnology & Light-Based Therapies

– Ethics & Global Access

– Humanitarian Applications

6. Flagship Innovation

AI Nurse Initiative designed for underserved populations with multilingual capability including Swahili.

7. Event Structure

Day 1 – April 11: Opening, keynotes, AI sessions

Day 2 – April 12: Biotech panels, workshops, awards, closing

8. Gala & Charity Evening

April 11, 2026 – 6 E 87th Street NYC

Black-tie dinner, technology & art auction supporting humanitarian initiatives.

9. Humanitarian Impact

Programs supporting orphans, victims of violence, and underserved communities through Lions Club NY Agape Foundation.

10. Audience & Reach

Global scientists, healthcare leaders, innovators, investors, and international audience via livestream.

11. Partnership Opportunities

Diamond Partner – Title recognition and premium visibility

Gold Partner – Speaking and branding opportunities

12. Closing Statement

EMLA2026 is a global platform uniting science, art, and humanity to shape the future of innovation.

The post Dr. Dana York, helping the world through Science, Lions Club, Event April 11, Anniversary of America appeared first on Good News!.

HERE TO TALK ABOUT THESE IMPORTANT FINDINGS AND HOW THEY MAY HELP ADDRESS AN ONGOING AND UNMET NEED IN THE HIV COMMUNITY IS DR. HARMONY GARGES (GAR-JES), CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER FROM ViiV (VEEV) HEALTHCARE.

BIO:

Dr. Harmony Garges is the Chief Medical Officer at ViiV Healthcare – the only pharmaceutical company 100% dedicated to HIV – where she is responsible for Regulatory, Safety and Medical Affairs across the company’s innovative pipeline and portfolio. Just like the company she works for, Harmony’s guiding mission is to ensure that no person living with HIV is left behind.

After obtaining her MD degree and completing her pediatrics residency at Duke University, Harmony pursued her interest in infectious diseases further with fellowships in Pediatric Infectious Diseases and Medical Microbiology at Duke, along with her MPH in Epidemiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Following her training, Harmony maintained an active clinical practice, providing care to children and adolescents living with HIV and other infectious diseases.

In 2005, Harmony joined GSK’s HIV program in the Infectious Diseases group, working on global development programs as a project physician leader. In this role she oversaw three successful New Drug and Marketing Authorization Applications and provided medical leadership and strategy for the development of various other anti-infectives including the first human trials of dolutegravir – the most prescribed HIV medicine in the world.

Subsequently, Harmony joined the Global Clinical Safety and Pharmacovigilance team at GSK, where she provided safety strategy and governance for several large global clinical development programs in the pharmaceutical space. She then led a large, global team overseeing the safety aspects of GSK’s large Classic and Established Medicines portfolio. From there, she joined the GSK Consumer Health business, where she spent three years as the Chief Medical Officer. She then joined ViiV Healthcare in 2016 and has held several roles in Global Medical Affairs before assuming her current role of Chief Medical Officer at the company in 2019.

#hiv #disease #aids #clinicaldata #dailypills #viiv #drharmonygarges #cabenuva #healthcare #medicalofficer #infectiousdiseases

The post IT MAY SURPRISE YOU TO LEARN THAT EACH YEAR, TENS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE IN THIS COUNTRY ARE DIAGNOSED WITH HIV. WORLDWIDE, ROUGHLY 39-MILLION PEOPLE LIVE WITH THE DISEASE. RESEARCHERS AND SCIENTISTS STUDYING HIV RECENTLY ATTENDED A GLOBAL SUMMIT… appeared first on Good News!.

Incredible advancements have been made in HIV care since the beginning of the epidemic, and today, people living with HIV who have access to medication can expect to live as long as the general population.1 With nearly half of people living with HIV in the U.S. over the age of 50, HIV research and treatment efforts have shifted to consider how to optimize care over the long-term and reduce the number of medications in a complete regimen.2

New data at AIDS 2022 will focus on innovative treatment options that address these considerations and meet the evolving needs of the HIV community. Data include two-drug regimens that reduce the number of antiretroviral medicines people are exposed to every day and treatments for long-term survivors who have developed resistance to other HIV therapies.

Dr. Harmony Garges, Chief Medical Officer at ViiV Healthcare, discuss key data from the conference, HIV care as patients grow older and where treatment may be headed next.

Interview courtesy: ViiV Healthcare
https://www.dovato.com/
https://www.rukobia.com/

#hiv #hivcare #aids #scientists #advocates #drharmonygarges #communitymembers #research #viivhealthcare #health #medication #treatment #drugs #therapies #medical #patients #data #harmonygarges #viiv #healthcare

The post HIV CONFERENCE, THE LARGEST, UNDERSCORES CONTINUED INNOVATION IN HIV CARE appeared first on Good News!.

I’m being asked what I think about an mRNA vaccine. It’s a brilliant strategy and the data appear to show efficacy and safety. I used to work for a pharmaceutical company and present data for FDA approval of drugs. I am familiar with the rooms full of paperwork and the multiple studies that go into approval.
What’s great is that this vaccine doesn’t rely on a killed virus or a part of a virus. It relies on mRNA. What is mRNA? It is just a transient, short-lived copy of a gene. Consider that your body has this blueprint in its genes (in its DNA). The DNA tells the cells what proteins to make. But DNA is stuck in the cell nucleus and can’t go anywhere. So the cells make a copy of the gene, called “messenger RNA” or mRNA. (It’s just slightly different from the DNA so that the cells can tell the difference). This strand of mRNA gets sent the part of the cell where the protein will be made and the cell makes the proper protein based on this code. The mRNA, having served its purpose, gets destroyed in minutes or hours. The protein is also eventually destroyed.
Scientists have gotten a lot better over the years at figuring out this code and working with the mRNA. They isolated the mRNA for one particular protein on the COVID-causing virus, mostly commonly the “spike” protein that is important in infection. The vaccine contains mRNA that enters cells, gets made into the protein, the protein goes to the outside of cells, the immune system recognizes it as “foreign” and starts an immune response against it. The Spike protein doesn’t seem to cause damage. After all, it’s all by itself, lacking all of the other components of the virus that caused it to infect cells.
Once the body has started its immune response, it keeps some immune cells in reserve that recognize this Spike protein. Then, if the virus enters the body, its Spike protein gets recognized, the proper immune cells gets made, and the body destroys the ability of the virus to cause infection.
This mRNA vaccine technology is relatively new but has been studied for a decade. What is so promising is that there is no virus present, so there is no infection and since there is only one thing for the immune system to react against, it greatly reduces the chances of a hyper-immune reaction. Sometimes when the immune system is doing its thing, there are effects like aching from the increased blood flow, etc. but these symptoms can be signs that the process is working. These side effects are reported to be rare, short in duration and mild. But most importantly, the vaccines have shown extremely high efficacy in preventing infection.
I see absolutely no reason to not accept this vaccine. It has been shown to be highly effective and safe. For all you “You never know” types, safety concerns show up in trials. Many trials have been done. I am not an insider, but CEOs and people on the front lines all say that the only “rush” has been in that they have made this vaccine a priority, the FDA has made it a priority, and the companies have skipped over all the wrangling with management about the financial risk. I believe the reports that say that the science has not been rushed in the sense of skipping steps. The same FDA standards have been used as apply to all vaccines. Also, multiple companies using this approach have had very similar results. I plan to get the vaccine as soon as I can.
If you are someone who has concerns about vaccines, I would tell you that from a simple position of risk assessment, this COVID-causing virus has FAR FAR greater risk. It is one bad virus, has taken many of my friends and loved ones and has caused a planet-load of heartache and inconvenience. It has been relentless at using the body’s enzymes to make copies of itself and infect others. It contains a “proof-reading” enzyme that keeps its genes from mutating very much. Many viruses fade out because they accumulate so many mutations that gradually reduce the virus’ infective capabilities. Not this one. If you are fearful of a vaccine, my advice would be to weigh the risks. There are some unknowns, such as how long it will protect, but I don’t see these as obstacles. I am not qualified to give medical advice, but as a scientist, I am confident that the strategy is sound, the FDA has a robust procedure and that opposing the vaccine based on fear or ideology could harm yourself and others.

The post Update on… appeared first on Good News!.

“Gray Matters invites readers to reexamine what they think they know about growing old. Offering succinct close readings of richly diverse cultural texts, Lem’s book presents literature as a resource for dealing with the practical and existential concerns of aging. With its interdisciplinary grounding in age studies theory and sociological data, Gray Matters is itself a valuable resource for readers ready to reorient their view of later life.”

—— Erin Lamb, co-editor of Research Methods in Health Humanities

Aging is one of the most compelling issues today, with record numbers of seniors over sixty-five worldwide! Gray Matters: Finding Meaning in the Stories of Later Life examines a diverse array of cultural works including films, literature, and even art that represent this time of life, often made by people who are seniors themselves from all walks of life from the rich and famous to the everyday person in our towns and neighborhoods.

Ellyn has been on multiple programs such as “The Morning Blend” (TMJ4TV – Milwaukee), and she can speak on topics focused on aging such as:

· How people’s personal stories of aging connect with writers’ portrayals
· Senior parents and their adult children
· Housing options
· Memory Loss
· Intimacy
· Men and Women (Differences and Similarities)
· Money, Work and Retirement
· Dealing with the challenges of social isolation during COVID19.

This thought provoking analysis is certain to challenge your audience’s perceptions on aging, as Professor Lem engages in dialogue with others on the recent research exploring how “stories” illuminate the dynamics of growing old by blending fact with imagination. GRAY MATTERS: Finding Meaning In The Stories of Later Life (Rutgers University Press; Paperback; August 15, 2020; $29.95; 978-1-1978-80631-3) will shine light on the fascinating real life experiences of seniors gathered from over two hundred in-depth surveys with a range of questions on growing old, not often included in other age studies works.

Gray Matters combines cultural texts, gerontology research, and observations from older adults that will give all readers a fuller picture of the struggles and pleasures of aging and avoids over-simplified representations of the process as all negative or positive.

“Creative, wide-ranging and well-written, Gray Matters offers a many-sided, complex understanding of late-life. It demonstrates that this period of our lives interweaves our past and present, takes grit, and offers opportunities for positive experiences. For some, learning becomes more enjoyable, as the phrase ‘senior college’ indicates. Gray Matters also skillfully shows that aging occurs in a social context, a fact often overlooked when the process is understood as solely an individual matter.”
—— Margaret Cruikshank, from the foreword

“Gray Matters invites readers to reexamine what they think they know about growing old. Offering succinct close readings of richly diverse cultural texts, Lem’s book presents literature as a resource for dealing with the practical and existential concerns of aging. With its interdisciplinary grounding in age studies theory and sociological data, Gray Matters is itself a valuable resource for readers ready to reorient their view of later life.”
—— Erin Lamb, co-editor of Research Methods in Health Humanities

“Lem draws examples from literature, film, television, and a survey of older people to support a wide-ranging and accessible examination of contemporary culture. Especially helpful to those who are new to the field, this book is a welcome addition to age-studies scholarship.”
—— Valerie Lipscomb, author of Performing Age in Modern Drama –This text refers to the hardcover edition.

“Ellyn Lem’s research wasn’t just from gerontology— she surveyed over 200 real people over the ages of 65…. making the experience of reading this book heartfelt and personal. Census facts were fascinating as well. Added pleasures for book lovers, screen lovers of movies, Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Showtime, Amazon Prime, and other network watchers, will be smiling! There are so many fun tidbits and commentaries from literature, film, and television: many favorite authors, books, and screen entertainment is explored and examined throughout!
I found it exciting to read about books & authors I’ve read -and exciting to learn about books, authors, shows, I’ve missed – but now must add to my desire to read & watch lists.”
—— Elsye Walters, Advance Reader from Goodreads

Ellyn A. Lem is a professor of English and Gender Studies at UW-Milwaukee at Waukesha. She teaches a variety of composition and literature courses, including a course, Women in Popular Culture. Her publications include articles on The Hunger Games, Like Water for Chocolate, Arthur Miller and Anzia Yezierska and the book Gray Matters: Finding Meaning in the Stories of Later Life. Lem received her PhD from New York University.

Series: Global Perspectives on Aging
Paperback: 288 pages
Publisher: Rutgers University Press; None edition (August 15, 2020)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1978806310
ISBN-13: 978-1978806313

Gray Matters: Finding Meaning in the Stories of Later Life, will be out Aug. 15th and is available for pre-order now:
from Rutgers University Press, Local bookstores like Books and Company, Barnes & Noble, Amazon and other fine book retailers everywhere.

Read her book Gray Matters on Kindle!

#book #ellyn #lem #gray #matters #kindle #later #life #paul #sladkus #stories #erin #lamb #health #humanities #reexamine #growing #old #richly #diverse #cultural #texts #resource #practical #concerns #grounding #theory #sociological #data #view

The post Gray Matters: Finding Meaning in the Stories of Later Life By Dr. Ellyn Lem appeared first on Good News!.

ORIGIN of the Bill:

1. B. Tina Ebey – citizen of San Jose, California

2. To my knowledge no similar bill has been introduced in any previous session.

1. PROPOSAL SUMMARY.

The proposal will authorize bonds to fund live feed satellite coverage into every fire station in the state to cut the response time of our honorable firefighters and increase speed and accuracy of advance warning to affected citizens.

2. PROBLEM.

At present most firefighters are on call. Based on research, firefighters too frequently lack access to the latest data regarding fire movements. This results in unnecessary delays for the firefighters to reach critical areas. It also results in firefighters not being able to alert citizens in a timely and efficient manner.

3. SOLUTION.

This proposal addresses the need for immediate live feed coverage into every station so that the firemen can carefully monitor their geographic area. Surveillance will include computer signaling of potential trouble spots to be investigated. In response multiple approaches can be initiated including surveillance drones, alerts through smartphone apps or live crews for additional protection.

4. COST.

TBD

5. ORGANIZATIONAL SUPPORT.

Firefighters

Silicon Valley Technology Leaders

US Government Weather Satellites

Citizens

Medical Professionals

Teachers

6. ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT.

Global warming is increasing the potential for longer, hotter summers, droughts and more fires in California, putting firefighters and citizens at greater risk. The proposal would:

1. Employ use of existing technology used to protect our State, the people and the firefighters.

2. Enhance the effectiveness of current methods of fighting fires with comprehensive live feed coverage.

3. Gives the firefighters the ability to respond more efficiently by being deployed to target an fight fires in their geographic area.

7. ORGANIZATIONAL OPPOSITION.

None at present.

8. ARGUMENTS IN OPPOSITION.

1. We have enough fire protection in the State.

2. The State can not afford any more expenditures.

3. Fires have become a fire hazard we have to learn to live with.

9. BACKGROUND INFORMATION.

Notes enclosed below.

10. CONTACT.

B. Tina Ebey

408-216-0278 home office

The post Concerned Citizen B. Tina Ebey shares her solutions for the Fires in California. appeared first on Good News!.

An artist’s concept of Kepler 452b orbiting its star, 1,400 light-years from Earth. The planet’s size puts it right on the edge between being rocky like Earth and a gas ball like Neptune. CreditT. Pyle/Jet Propulsion Laboratory/NASA

Inching ahead on their quest for what they call Earth 2.0, astronomers from NASA’s Kepler planet-hunting spacecraft announced on Thursday that they had found what might be one of the closest analogues to our own world yet.
It is a planet a little more than one and a half times as big in radius asEarth. Known as Kepler 452b, it circles a sunlike star in an orbit that takes 385 days, just slightly longer than our own year, putting it firmly in the “Goldilocks” habitable zone where the temperatures are lukewarm and suitable for liquid water on the surface — if it has a surface.
The new planet’s size puts it right on the edge between being rocky like Earth and being a fluffy gas ball like Neptune, according to studies of other such exoplanets. In an email, Jon Jenkins of NASA’s Ames Research Center, home of the Kepler project, and lead author of a paper being published in The Astronomical Journal, said the likelihood of the planet’s being rocky was 50 percent to 62 percent, depending on uncertainties in the size of its home star. That would mean its mass is about five times that of Earth.
Such a planet would probably have a thick, cloudy atmosphere and active volcanoes, Dr. Jenkins said, and twice the gravity of Earth. Describing the planet during a news conference, Dr. Jenkins lapsed into lines from John Keats’s poem “On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer”: “Then felt I like some watcher of the skies / When a new planet swims into his ken.”
The star that lights this planet’s sky is about 1.5 billion years older than our sun and 20 percent more luminous, which has implications for the prospects of life, Dr. Jenkins said.
“We can think of Kepler-452b as an older, bigger cousin to Earth, providing an opportunity to understand and reflect upon Earth’s evolving environment,” he said. “It’s awe-inspiring to consider that this planet has spent six billion years in the habitable zone of its star, longer than Earth. That’s substantial opportunity for life to arise, should all the necessary ingredients and conditions for life exist on this planet.”
Asked if any radio telescopes had pointed at the planet to try to detect extraterrestrial radio broadcasts, Dr. Jenkins said, “I hope so.”
To determine whether Kepler 452b deserves a place on the honor roll of possible home worlds, however, astronomers have to measure its mass directly, which requires being close enough to observe the wobbling of its star as it is tugged around by the planet’s gravity. For now, that is impossible, as Kepler 452b is 1,400 light-years away.
The planet is the first to be confirmed in a new list of candidates unveiled by Kepler astronomers on Thursday. It brings the number of possible planets discovered by Kepler to 4,696, many of them small like Earth. “We are the bread crumbs of the universe,” said Jeff Coughlin, of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., who compiled the catalog.
The spacecraft, launched in 2009, spent four years staring at a patch of the Milky Way on the border between the constellations Cygnus and Lyra, looking for the dips in starlight caused by the passage of planets. Its pointing system failed in 2013, but astronomers are still analyzing the data Kepler collected. Every time they sift through it, new planets pop out.
In the meantime, Kepler has switched to a different mode of observing in a mission called K2.
The NASA news conference coincided with a major anniversary: It was only 20 years ago this fall that Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, of the University of Geneva, discovered a planet circling the star 51 Pegasi, about 50 light-years from here. It was the first planet known to belong to a sunlike star outside our solar system, and its discovery ignited an astronomical revolution.
Dr. Queloz, now at the University of Cambridge in England, said at the news conference, “This is a great time we live in.”
“If we keep working so well and so enthusiastically,” he went on, it is not too optimistic to think that in the future, “the issue of life on another planet will be solved.”
Astronomers say they now know from Kepler that about 10 percent of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way have potentially habitable Earth-size planets, Kepler 452b probably among them. This means that of the 600 stars within 30 light-years of Earth, there are roughly 60 E.T.-class abodes, planets that could be inspected by a future generation of telescopes.

The post NASA Says Data Reveals an Earth-Like Planet, Kepler 452b appeared first on Good News!.

“A fascinating book!”
–Dillard’s Chairman and CEO Bill Dillard

“An enjoyable and engaging book written by a man
it is a privilege to know and work with.”
–Madison Murphy, chairman of Murphy USA

“It’s a story as American as apple pie.”
–Gen. (ret.) Wesley K. Clark, former NATO
Supreme Allied Commander

“The book’s prologue, in fact, opens on Sept. 14,
2001, and Morgan describes the building of The
Bad Guys Database. Passages like the following
make the book a page-turner: ‘Data mining is the
new gold rush, and we were there at first strike,
dragging with us all our human frailties and
foibles. In this book’s cast of characters you’ll find
ambition, arrogance, jealousy, pride, fear,
recklessness, anger, lust, viciousness, greed,
revenge, betrayal—and then some.’ There’s
more—oh, so much more—to the memoir,
including juicy bits about a fierce proxy battle with
Acxiom’s largest institutional shareholder”
–ArkansasBusiness.com

Corporations, marketers, and governments are exploring the practical and legal limits of collecting and utilizing Big Data. One man began thinking about its value decades before anyone else, and he’s revealing his professional insights, personal experiences, and career triumphs in a new book, Matters of Life and Data: The Remarkable Journey of a Big Data Visionary Whose Work Impacted Millions –Including You (Morgan James, ISBN: 978-1-63047-467-6; Cloth; 320 pages; $24.95; July 6, 2015).

“The man who opened your lives to Big Data finally bares his own,” reads the introduction to this most stirring memoir. Indeed, he has much to share, as Morgan, 72, should know a few things about Big Data. The company he helped grow into a technology and marketing powerhouse, Acxiom, is a world leader in data gathering and its accompanying technology, and has collected over 1,500 separate pieces of information on some half a billion people around the globe.

His book recounts and celebrates a journey from his modest upbringing in a small town on the Arkansas River to his role as one of America’s all-time Big Data visionaries. During his 36-year tenure, Morgan grew a small data processing firm of 25 employees into a global juggernaut by becoming one of the largest aggregators of data and consumer information in the world. He transformed the small data processing company into a publicly held, $1.4 billion corporation with 7,000 employees and offices throughout the world.
Other topics covered in his book include insights from his current experiences as a serial entrepreneur – founding, leading, and serving his many ventures that include PrivacyStar, a technology solution to support consumer privacy in mobile, and Querencia, a luxury golf and residential community in Los Cabos, consistently named a top course in Mexico by Golf Digest.

Morgan is available to discuss the challenges of Big Data, including:
* How he mined Big Data to assist the FBI in a post-9/11 terrorist investigation
* How to strike a balance between a company’s needs and a consumer’s interests
* How to maximize value from data
* How to serve the government’s security needs while protecting a citizen’s privacy
* How to integrate Big Data technology with existing infrastructure at a company
* Ways to balance and address risk and governance issues

He also addresses some unique approaches taken at Acxiom, including how he:
* Tore down 13 layers of organizational management and did away with all job titles
* Helped the company avert bankruptcy by imposing massive temporary pay cuts
* Made Acxiom the first technology company to create the position of Chief Privacy Officer (after a
breach with Citibank)Led the database giant’s transformation into a digital marketing company

His book explains how he was inspired by his hardware-store-owning great-grandfather, and how he learned about running a business when he worked as a boy at his parents’ motel after school and on weekends. After getting his degree in mechanical engineering in 1966, his first job was at the Little Rock office of IBM, where he quickly became the state’s top systems engineer.

Morgan also shares scores of leadership tips, insights on handling growth, managing a corporate culture that continually expands through acquisitions, and stories of how his growing database company once ran the most advanced data mining system of its time. Its then-revolutionary List Order Fulfillment System (LOFS) helped manage the subscription mailing lists of Fortune and Life magazines and helped 14 of the 15 largest credit card companies reach out to consumers to sign them up for millions of credit cards. In 1994, the Sales & Marketing Executives Association named Morgan Manager of the Year. In 1996, Fortune named Acxiom one of the “100 Best Companies To Work For,” and in the late 1990s Working Woman named it one of the nation’s “Top 100 Companies.”

Morgan took the company public by age 40 and oversaw significant growth. Annual revenue grew from 7 million to 90 million dollars from 1982-1992 and then it grew to more than a billion by the end of the 1990s. Morgan retired from the firm in 2007 after a buyout deal with Value Act and another private equity firm fell through.

His book also speaks with surprising candor about his messy divorce—so messy that Oprah invited him to discuss it on her show (he declined). After his divorce was final, he married his present wife of nearly two decades, a former Miss Arkansas USA. He also discusses his other love—racing cars. Though he crashed and landed in a trauma unit more than once, he was willing to pay the price to get the rush of going over 200 miles per hour. He also won 19 races, including the 12 Hours of Sebring and the 24 Hours of Daytona.

Though Morgan candidly admits to “wrestling with questions of leadership” and “making bad decisions,” he brings forth an honest look at a legendary career, a successful company, and a passionate private life.

Charles D. Morgan
Biography

Charles D. Morgan is the CEO of First Orion Corp., a private company that developed and markets PrivacyStar, an application that helps protect mobile phone users’ privacy. He is also an equity owner of Bridgehampton Capital Management LLC, for which he also serves as chairman of its advisory board and co-manager of investments.

His memoir, Matters of Life and Data: The Remarkable Journey of a Big Data Visionary Whose Work Impacted Millions (Including You) will be published by Morgan James (July 2015).

Morgan has extensive experience managing and investing in private and public companies, including Acxiom Corporation, the information services company where he served as CEO from 1972 to 2008, and that he helped grow from an early-stage company to an international corporation generating $1.4 billion in annual revenue. The New York Times cited Acxiom as “a top performer in the late 1990s” and both Fortune and Working Mom said it was “one of the best places to work” at that time.

Morgan has served on the board and in various leadership roles with the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), including as its board chairman in 2001. Prior to joining the company that became Acxiom, Morgan was employed by IBM as a systems engineer, and he holds a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Arkansas.

He is on the board of INUVO, Inc., a public company focused on simplifying performance-based advertising. He also serves as a member—and is the past chairman of the board of trustees—of Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas. Morgan is also chairman of the board of Querencia, a private golf development and golf course in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

A lifelong lover of auto racing, Morgan has participated on both the amateur and professional circuits. He has built and driven his own race car, competed against the best in the world, and has driven to 19 professional victories. He and his wife, Susie, a former Miss Arkansas USA, live in Little Rock, Arkansas. They have three children and seven grandchildren.

For more information, please consult http://www.mattersoflifeanddata.com/

Charles D. Morgan
Q & A
Matters of Life and Data

1. How can we protect the privacy of individuals but still allow companies to benefit from the use of Big Data? Big Data has the potential to do a great deal of good in our world today and for many years to come. On the other hand, Big Data will create a lot privacy issues. Today, much more data is being recorded about each of us than you might imagine. In February 2015, for example, Samsung admitted that their new TVs will be collecting data about the people who watch them. That data will include voice data (what you say about what you are watching), picture data (your expressions as you watch), and viewing data. Samsung of course claims that this data will only be used to improve the quality of the overall experience of using their product. Do I believe them? I don’t doubt that this is what they intended these data-collection TVs to do, but it sure doesn’t take much imagination to see a great potential for misuse of such data. We will never be able to write enough laws to totally solve this problem. We cannot stop companies from using data that improves the quality of products and services. However, we must somehow protect ourselves from misuse. At Acxiom, our motto was “consumer privacy is a state of mind.” It didn’t matter if something was legal; the question should be posed, “Is this right? Is this the way we would want to have our data collected and used?” Companies have to have education programs for their employees and create that state of mind—that the security of people’s personal data is important to our whole society.

2. If you were to advise an entrepreneur looking to launch a company today, what three things would you share? By their very nature most entrepreneurs are very optimistic people. When they have an idea, they believe that it can be developed and made commercial with much less effort than it generally takes. My executive summary is this: It’s going to be a lot harder and take a lot longer than they could ever imagine. First, entrepreneurs must be sure that the product they have is real and the plan they have is real. By that, I mean that the product and plan can be converted into a commercial success. It’s very easy for people to fall in love with their own ideas and to want to ignore all the pitfalls and the downsides. A product plan and a marketing plan are essential to test the basics of whether this thing that they’ve come up with is even practical. Marketing is where most plans fail to be realistic. For example, be sure the cost of acquiring new customers is real. Second, I would say that when you’ve convinced yourself that this new idea of yours has potential, then try to enlist the support of others. No person by himself is going to be successful developing an entrepreneurial idea. It takes a lot of people, and all those people have got to believe strongly in the concept that is being developed. If enlisting others is impossible—or even very difficult—then examine once again the practicality of the whole business idea. Finally, and most importantly, the developer has to be sure that he or she has access to adequate capital to develop the business. All too often people think they’ll be able to get more money after they show how cool their idea is. Most often that additional money is never found and the team just wasted a lot of their own money and some of their friends’ money. Best rule: Line up two times the money you need to get to phase 1—and you will be lucky to squeak by with that much.

3. You say that Acxiom Corporation, a world leader in data gathering and its accompanying technology, has obtained some 1,500 separate pieces of information on over a half-billion people worldwide. How do we make sure the information is not used wrongfully? I had great concerns about the possibility of data misuse at Acxiom. We had literally hundreds of thousands of data files with extraordinary amounts of in-depth information about everyone who lived in the United States and many in Europe. I developed a philosophy that we could not create enough rules at Acxiom to solve the problem. Eventually I came to believe that creating an atmosphere and culture of data protection was the best answer. We chose to educate our people and to create a simple set of rules. For example, the “do right rule” taught our employees to think about the data that they cared for as data about people just like themselves—in fact, it could even include their own family members. So treat that data like you would want your own data to be treated. Of course there were more complex rules that applied in all of our data practices. There were—and still are—laws that protect people’s credit data. Credit data could only be used for preapproved credit offers and not for other kinds of marketing. To help oversee all this process of education and oversight with our employees and our customers, in 1991 I appointed a chief privacy officer. Jennifer Barrett became the first chief privacy officer in the United States, and today she still holds that position at Acxiom. Jennifer has become a global leader in marketing data use and data protection.

4. You helped build your own race car, having won numerous races including the 24 Hours of Daytona and the 12 Hours of Sebring. What kind of rush did you get going 150-160 miles per hour? Did you ever crash? At the ripe old age of 58, I was driving at Daytona in my last event before retiring from professional racing. I was in a Ferrari 333 SP in the middle of the night, and on the front straight I was regularly hitting the rev limiter—a device designed to restrict the maximum speed of an engine. I came into the pits and asked the engineer how fast my car was going when it hit the rev limiter. His answer was about 205 miles an hour. Admittedly, that was quite a rush, but most of the time as a race car driver you’re totally unaware of the speed at which you’re traveling. Your goal is to go as fast as you can without crashing or tearing up the car. In my heart I’m a geek and an engineer. I liked designing and building cars as much as I liked driving. My son and I drove several races together, including a major race in Canada that we won in a car I designed. That was as big a rush as going 200+ miles an hour at Daytona. Other than the fact that I occasionally went 200 miles an hour, I was a pretty cautious driver. If I crashed I had to pay for it, and we might not have enough parts to fix the car at the racetrack, ending the weekend for me. As a result, I didn’t have all that many crashes. But you can’t drive race cars for 25 or 30 years and not be involved in accidents. I had my share of driver errors and mechanical failures that resulted in some pretty serious wrecks. I hit the guardrail at Watkins Glen racetrack doing nearly 150 miles an hour. Earlier in my career I hit the wall at Road Atlanta and was helicoptered off to the trauma center. Fortunately, in neither case was I seriously hurt. The Road Atlanta accident had an amusing sidebar. I was in the trauma center all by myself, plugged into all sorts of stuff. The door to the trauma center kept opening and closing with hospital personnel sticking their heads in the door—only to quickly turn around and leave. Finally, I heard one complain loudly, “That’s not Paul Newman.” Paul Newman was racing at road Atlanta and the rumor had gone around the hospital that he was in the trauma center, but to the staff’s disappointment they found only me.

5. You’ve also raced motorcycles and flown jets. How does the adventurous side link to your business life? Some amount of measured risk-taking occurs when you race cars, drive motorcycles, and fly jets. By the same token, most successful entrepreneurs are by their very nature risk-takers. They would never have started that business or risked their family fortune without being able to stand a certain amount of risk. Also in business, you have to believe that you’re going to be successful and overcome those risks. By the same token, you don’t enter a race and think, Oh goodness, I might crash and hurt myself. I always wanted to manage my risk to the greatest degree possible. I’ve never raced so hard that it was win or die, and I’ve never bet everything on a business venture. Well, almost never.

6. You are the CEO of your latest tech venture, PrivacyStar. It’s been seven years since you stepped down as chairman and CEO of Acxiom. What did you still find rewarding—and challenging—in trying to grow another company? Creating and building a small company is a lot more fun than trying to manage a much larger company. Sometimes at Acxiom I felt like I was trying to herd cats as I provided leadership on a multitude of fronts. Many parts of the public company CEO’s job are really not very enjoyable. You have to deal with lawyers and boards as well as many other distractions, like unfriendly press. I always wanted to spend as much time as possible on new product development and leadership activities at Acxiom. Down deep in my heart, I felt like life was being sucked out of me by activities that were beyond my control. There were things I just had to do and couldn’t get out of but I sure didn’t like them much. I felt like I didn’t have enough time to do the job that would contribute most to the growth and success of Acxiom. In a small company like PrivacyStar, I am able to spend much more of my time working on things like new product creation and development. We are doing things that no one else is doing in the mobile space. We built ourselves from a big money loser to a profitable company. That is fun. There’s still a lot of work and worry, but the overall satisfaction level is a lot higher for me when I feel more in control of my destiny and doing things that I enjoy. If we miss a quarter at PrivacyStar, it’s only us who are disappointed, and there are no newspaper headlines.

7. While working at your first job at IBM as a systems engineer, you were called back just a few days into your honeymoon due to an urgent office matter. Was this the beginning of your career consuming your life? I was shocked, only a few days into my honeymoon, to receive a call from my new boss who said, “Charles, we need you back in the office.” He knew where I was because he had come to the wedding in Fort Smith, all the way from Little Rock. Without too much protest, my wife of just a few days agreed that we could go back to Little Rock and I could start work. My first job at IBM was to get involved in a troubled installation of a computer on which I’d had absolutely no training. I had to teach myself what I needed to know in order to help get these problems resolved. I did that in a number of other situations that seemed to follow one after another. I was working all day and studying many nights to try to figure out how to achieve a good result for one customer or another. That was the story of my early experience with IBM. I was either working at a customer’s office—sometimes all night—or off on a trip to learn about some new machine or learn some new skills. In those early days, IBM sent new people off to school in the first two years for about 20 percent of the year. During that time, I recall having at least two one-week schools, two four-week schools, one six-week school, and one seven-week school. Those first two years were a compressed learning experience. And my job was far from purely technical. Besides learning about programming and design, I became very involved in the selling process, as well as in the organizational process of being sure customers were properly prepared for their new computers. The downside of all this is that I became quite one-dimensional. It was all work and I had little time for family or other activities. I was very successful at my job but not nearly as successful at home and with my kids.

8. Early on your company was in debt and couldn’t make payroll. You asked people to cut their pay in half for a period of time in exchange for paying them a more once you got past the dark period. How did that turn out? We got to a point in 1976 when we were losing money and were in danger of not being able to make payroll. Our principal owners, the Wards of school bus fame, were in terrible financial shape and they had no ability to help us out. There was no one to fire and no way to cut expenses that I could see. So I came up with the crazy idea that if we could make our payroll a third smaller, we could survive. All we had to do was to get the top six most highly paid people, including myself, to take a 50 percent pay cut. I can’t imagine going to a management team today with such a scheme. We were working on some new very promising opportunities that would make the company profitable if we successfully completed them. I told everyone that they would get two dollars back for every dollar of pay they gave up, should we succeed. I must’ve been very convincing because they bought it and no one left. And not only did they double their money, but through this crisis we also developed increased levels of trust and a stronger bond within the top leadership team.

9. To what do you attribute your success in becoming a dominant force in the market database world? Several things. We had a number of principles guiding our business strategy and execution. One was to hire outstanding people—we recruited intensely at area colleges and universities and were able to attract the best and brightest young graduates. Another was to provide world-class service to our customers, which helped us both acquire and keep customers. Take Citibank—it became a customer in 1983 and is still a major customer of Acxiom’s today. From our earliest days we also put a premium on designing and creating leading edge software, and that gave us a leg up in the marketplace. In the mid-1970’s, for example, we created a revolutionary way to manage and deliver mailing lists for the Direct Marketing industry. The List Order Fulfillment System (LOFS) was faster, better, and cheaper than existing mostly manual systems were at the time; more importantly, LOFS was more accurate. Another game-changer was called AbiliTec, introduced around the year 2000. AbiliTec made large-scale name and address data far more accurate than ever before, and to this day it remains a key component of Acxiom’s technology arsenal. We created a business culture and an organizational strategy that helped us be more nimble—and more efficient—than most other companies our size. We instituted formal initiatives that emphasized leadership, and we provided our people with training in the qualities of effective leaders. We also did some pretty radical things, such as doing away with corporate titles. When I gave up the title of CEO and introduced myself simply as Acxiom’s “Company Leader,” I got more than a few puzzled stares. All of these concepts worked together to create an effective leadership team and to achieve solid results for our customers, over many years. But satisfaction wasn’t limited to customers—employees liked the atmosphere at Acxiom as well, and the company is full of people who have stayed for decades.

10. You struggled with time management. What advice do you have for those consumed by any distractions and desires but who seek to manage and grow a company? Being leader of a large organization is a study in frustration for the top executive. Much of the CEO’s time is commanded by the corporation and the duties of his position. Boards of directors, top customers, and the company’s leadership team can eat up a significant number of hours in a CEO’s day. Over my 35-year career at Acxiom, I struggled to learn to be more effective. In my early years, I thought I had to be involved, at least to some degree, in virtually everything. But I knew I wasn’t very good at things like accounting and administrative work, and in time I figured out that there were people who could do these things better. At first I was worried that they would screw it up and maybe I should stay more involved. And of course I was right—they did screw up many times. Finally, though, I figured out that if I delegated things to the right people and showed them that I trusted them even though they occasionally failed, they would end up doing a better job overall than I could in those areas. That was one half of the equation—to shed the tasks where I could provide limited value to the corporation. The other half was to develop techniques to allow me to spend more time on the activities in which I could create the most value, such as research and development.

11. What challenges did you need to overcome as a leader during the number of acquisitions and mergers your company participated in? Acquisitions are always very difficult. When you finally get the deal done, which often takes months or even years, the work is just beginning. Every situation is different and none of them are without their challenges. A small one can be every bit as hard as a big one. Technology integration, cultural differences, and distance are all barriers to the smooth successful merging of two companies. I really don’t think we ever got it truly right. I know that my being involved always helped. Leaving small deals to others was often a bad idea. If a deal is worth doing at all, the CEO should take an active role to be sure that the integration of the two companies is accomplished successfully. With smaller acquisitions, probably the biggest challenge was forcing myself to spend enough time with the management teams in these acquired companies to make them feel part of Acxiom as a whole. The leaders of acquired companies are always nervous in the best of cases. They’re not sure how they’re going to be accepted by their new bosses. They’re not sure what to expect or even how to act and respond to various things that they are told or asked to do. They need to know that they’re considered important and that they’re being listened to, especially by the top guy. I found I couldn’t just move on to the next deal until enough nurturing had gone on to ensure the long-term success of the previous acquisition. Some of that nurturing could only be done by me.

12. When you took your company public, what opportunities and dangers did this open up to you? When Acxiom went public in 1983, it opened up many new opportunities for us. For example, it helped give us the credibility that we needed to be able to deal with large banks and other companies on the East Coast. The money created by the initial offering gave us financial freedom and the ability to build buildings and buy computers that were critically needed. On the downside for me, I now had shareholders and a public company board looking over my shoulder. For the first 20 years of being public, that was never a terrible burden for me or for Acxiom senior leadership. But when Sarbanes-Oxley was passed and the new activism by shareholders began, our lives changed forever. Ever-increasing amounts of my time were devoted to board matters and dealing with shareholders. Sarbanes-Oxley wasted a tremendous amount of time for us and created a great deal of unnecessary expense.

13. What is your hiring and firing philosophy? My philosophy was very simple—hire the very best people you can find. That philosophy extended to the concept that you hire people when you can hire them, not necessarily when you need them. Over the years I’ve hired a number of people that I really didn’t have a job for at the time, but I knew they were so good that we would eventually find a great spot for them. They were generally some of the very best hires and made the biggest difference. Another key component of my hiring philosophy is that the senior leadership of any company needs to be very involved in the hiring process. Stars hire stars and duds hire duds. People doing the hiring have to be sure they’re putting good people in the right places. If you hire a superstar and put him or her in a dull and boring job, it usually ends in failure both for the company and the individual. Really good executives don’t like to fire people. If they hire a person, then they feel invested in him and want to see him succeed. When a hire isn’t succeeding, the tendency is to give that person numerous chances before resorting to the pink slip. And then the most common first statement after that firing is, “I should’ve fired him six months ago.” So my philosophy, often not followed by me, is that you know when it’s time for someone to move on. Take action, make your decision now, and realize it’s the best for the person and for you. Generally, you’re both in misery over it and know it’s coming, but you keep putting off the inevitable while hoping for a miracle. I have to admit I still do that. The upside of that is that you get a reputation for not making snap decisions about people who work for you. I guess it’s a good thing, and something that others respect you for, because you give a person multiple chances. At the same time, others will say, “Charles took too long to make that decision. I wish he was more decisive.”

14. At one point you eliminated everyone’s office title. How did that go? Eliminating titles came about at Acxiom through a complex set of circumstances. We had multitudes of titles just like most companies do today. We had directors, senior directors, and associate directors. We had levels within levels. Acxiom in the early 90’s was in desperate need of simplification. We had way too many bosses in our organization, and management structure was getting in the way of getting work done. It was just too hard and took too long to get anything accomplished. So we had to get rid of all those titles and layers of management. We redefined the company into three layers and replaced titles with roles and responsibilities for each person in the company. At the highest level you had me—I was now the “company leader.” Working for me were division leaders, and working for them were business unit leaders. That’s about as simple as you can get, but it left an awful lot of people that once had management titles, such as director, possibly with no title and nobody working for them. As you can imagine, that was not an easy transition. We lost a few people. All I can say is, we got through it and we became better for it. It gave us a great deal more flexibility to move people around in the company where they were needed. Things got done faster because there weren’t so many signatures required.

15. Is this a good time for database marketers? Now is the best time ever to be in database marketing. Today all successful marketing programs have a significant component built around the database and database marketing. Companies have access to much more data than ever and a myriad of wonderful tools to help them analyze that data and create successful programs. Still, it’s not magic. Database marketers have to be sure they have the right software for their needs and have to apply that software properly. That software must have access to accurate and relevant data for the kinds of problems being solved. The old adage still applies—garbage in, garbage out. Most people don’t realize that Acxiom’s true value-add during all those years was just getting the data right so that marketers had good data to work with. Many of our large customers employed some of the brightest database marketers and analytic specialists money could buy, but before Acxiom their results were spotty, at best, because of bad data. There’s a great deal of opportunity in today’s world for people who possess a good blend of the skills to get the data right and to apply the right tools to database marketing. As more specialized skills are required, a number of subspecialties have grown out of database marketing. For example, today you can have an entire career in just getting the data right. To that end, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock now offers a PhD in Data Quality.

16. Do you think the laws will change with technology as it relates to what information is gathered, shared, and used? Controlling the gathering and use of data has always been a complex problem to administer. The Internet is making this problem almost too big to comprehend. Certainly laws will have to be written and old laws amended to give basic protection to citizens of the world. On the one hand, people say, “I don’t want anyone using any data about me without my permission”—even as those same people post everything about their private lives on Facebook. On the other hand, companies say, “We’re going to protect the consumer and their information”—even as those same companies are putting cameras and listening devices in their TVs to collect information about viewing habits. Much of the data that companies collect for a specific reason is used to benefit consumers. The problem is that the quantity of the data that is being collected, by electronic devices and over the Internet, is growing exponentially today. Access to the data that companies collect is usually carefully protected, but not always. There have been a number of widely publicized situations in which well-respected companies have gotten in hot water for collecting and using data improperly. Additional laws are going to be complex to write, but are certainly needed to cover potential Big Data abuses. We do have examples of successful laws, such as the Fair Credit Reporting Act—25 years and counting, and that law is still serving us well. The best way to solve these problems is not to rush to a conclusion, but to get industry involved in making recommendations in new areas like the Internet. All I can say is, I’m glad I’m not a legislator or a lawyer, because I really don’t have great answers in this area.
Selected Excerpts
MATTERS of LIFE and DATA

A Honeymoon Cut Short
In jokes, the punch line usually comes on the third beat. So it was with our honeymoon. After a couple days, I got a phone call from my new boss. “I need you back here.” He said, even as I protested that I was on my honeymoon. He couldn’t be swayed. So after only three nights and two days of our planned weeklong vacation, Jane and I packed up and drove to our new apartment in Little Rock. The digital future beckoned.

Out Of Money
But as 1976 faded into 1977, I faced that the moment I had dreaded—had tried my best to stave off—was upon us: We would soon be out of money. Between payroll and the debt on the new computer, we would be in a negative cash-flow positon until we started generating income from the LOFS project. And there was nothing I could cut, nobody I could lay off—everyone was working 60 hours a week and we needed all their projects just to stay where we were. And I thought I’d known the meaning of the word dire before.

Then a brilliant, if radical, idea came to me—what if we executives take 50 percent salary cuts? That was the starting point; from there I worked out a formula for eventually making them whole again, and then some.

When the crew showed up for my impromptu meeting, first words were, “I see no choice but to cut everyone’s salary in half.” That, I promise you, is a real attention getter. Now there was silence in the room, all eyes and ears trained on me. I explained the circumstances that had brought me to that decision; then I went on to say that if this scheme kept the company afloat long enough for us to start making money, I would pay them back double what they had given up. In other words, if someone earned $3,000 a month and we cut that to $1,500, when this was over I would pay that person $3,000 for every $1,500 he had forfeited during the three- or four-month period I expect this belt-tightening to last.

Once the shock subsided, most of the executives went along with this emergency measure without serious qualms—they believed that much in the potential of LOFS. But no matter how fervent their faith in our project, it was their ability to survive for months on half salary that determined their response.

Racing Cars
In time I would learn that, for the most part, car racing isn’t quite as intense as motocross—even though you’re going much faster. Maybe it’s the nakedness, the physical vulnerability in motorcycle racing that greatly increases the intensity. But car racing is intense, and the zone transfers from the bike seat to the cockpit. When you’re successful in car racing, you’re almost totally unaware of the coming corner—and you’re not aware of the next one at all. You’re thinking, I’m going to go to there and brake. You’re just doing it from somewhere outside yourself. Instead of driving the car, you start feeling it: I feel the car slide. I feel the front end doing this. I feel the car getting looser. It’s like you’re aware of what the car’s doing, but not thinking about what you’re doing to drive it.

Big Banks, Big Data
And when Acxiom was getting started with the banks, most of the data was structured credit bureau data.

The big banks were marketing credit cards, which would become the basis of our great success. But it wouldn’t all happen overnight—in fact, it would take us some 15 years to give the banks everything they wanted to achieve. Because in the early ’80s, their voracious vision of the power of data surpassed all capabilities of the time. Computers had to get faster and cheaper. And even with our literally acres of computers, we had to embark on a long-range program of building the tools to reach their goals. From the start we had their end games as a concept, and we could slowly add to it. But along the way, we had to develop new techniques for managing unprecedented volumes of data, combining that data, updating that data, cleaning that data, maintaining that data. Those techniques and processes just didn’t exist on this scale on the early ’80s. So there was a huge amount to be invented to realize the big banks’ dream.

So accuracy of information is what it’s all about. And that’s the reason we had so much success with the banks—our whole business strategy was directed toward building computing systems, and software, and tools to allow our customers to create their models on these huge data assets. A model built on faulty data is junk—garbage in, garbage out. We had a computer strategy the banks needed, a software strategy they needed, and even our organizational strategy was directed toward working with Citibank, say, to find out exactly what they needed. For us, the bank work wasn’t just some add-on; it was what we did. We might not have been able to achieve the banks’ whole goal immediately, but even by the mid- to late 80s we could get to step one—then to step two, step three, and beyond—faster and with more accuracy than anyone else, and at lower cost. And we kept getting better and better. The banks tried occasionally to get other people to do it, so as to test us, but we were the guys who produced the best quality data—allowing them to create models that were highly predictive. So we dominated this industry. We dominated because, thanks to our unique computer strategy, we could process Big Data. Nobody else could.

Wiping Out All Corporate Titles
“We went from thirteen levels to three,” says Cindy. “And we eliminated all titles so that people didn’t have that competition thing going on.”

Ah, but humans will be humans—won’t we? “In hindsight,” says Cindy, “we should’ve done it a little differently. Because what we realized was that to some people when you lose your title, you lose your identity. So it rocked the organization. Thirty percent of the people were, ‘I don’t care.’ But seventy percent were, ‘Oh no!’ so we did replace it eventually, but not with traditional titles. We came back with you’re a team leader or you’re a business unit leader. We put leader in the title and that was intentional, because we wanted people to start leading. And we kind of adopted a motto—you manage things and you lead people. And if you can’t lead, then we’ll let you go manage things. But you can’t manage people. So that’s kind of how it started. That was a pretty big turning point, organizationally.

The Divorce Oprah Wanted To Televise
Being the former bookkeeper she was, Jane had kept every scrap of paper—every canceled check, every check register, every bank note, every IOU, every tax return, every ledger book—from the 60s on. So she and Steve had a veritable field day sifting through all those documents and building a case claiming that Jane was the power behind Acxiom’s success—that without her, I wouldn’t have happened. It was absurd, between 1991 and the end of that decade, our annual revenue would grow from $100 million to $1billion—and that was thanks to Jane?

“The Oprah show called to invite Dad on, “ says Carrie, “because the question in the legal culture in that period was, does staying home and raising children and taking care of a household entitle you to fifty percent of what in Dad’s case was then about $100 million? That’s what Steve saw at the time—lets go back and show what Jane’s contribution through the years was…besides the well-adjusted children!”

We were in no way contesting the Arkansas law that said she gets half of all community property. The question was, how do you define half? Half of what?

But what really made my attorneys nervous was that it looked she was trying to build a case that she could get more than half—because, as we interpreted what we of her argument, she came into this marriage with money, which she put in, but she never received stock, so I really ripped her off. That was the reason for all the depositions. I think it was a negotiating ploy mainly designed to inflict pain on me, because we certainly couldn’t ignore her claims that she should be getting more than half. Of course this ploy also created big legal bills.

King Of Big Data
Understand, even then Acxiom was starting to be known as “the Big Data guys.” We were getting talked about as this relatively low-profile company in Arkansas that had data on everybody—especially bank data. Among our clients were 14 of the 15 biggest credit card companies; seven of the top 10 auto manufacturers; and five of the top six retail banks. We analyzed consumer databases for such multinational companies as Microsoft, IBM, AT&T, and General Electric. So as the Internet increasingly became a vast, interlaced world of infinite promise, it naturally attracted opportunists the ways gold mines once attracted prospectors and con men. Data became the new currency. And if you were the kind of person who preferred to steal data rather than mine it yourself, where did you go? To the mother lode.

First Chief Privacy Officer
“The result was that, in 1991, I named Jennifer to the newly created post of Chief Privacy Officer. As a dedicated monitor ensuring the responsible use of all data in our possession, Jennifer Barrett broke new ground – she was the first such privacy officer of any company on the planet.

There was nothing at all altruistic about this appointment. I just knew that if marketers kept saying screw the public, one day we would have a big blow-up, and somebody would write a big privacy bill that would virtually shut down the industry. I decided to be proactive in confronting that possibility. I could already see that without a strong code of conduct, there were increasing opportunities for us to make the wrong decision and get into trouble. Jennifer’s new job was to keep us away from that.”

Holy Grail Of Big Data
“The Decade of the 2000s began brilliantly, with AbiliTec being touted as something akin to the data industry’s Holy Grail. In 2000, the year the dot-com bubble burst and sent the NASDAQ into a 30-percent plummet, Acxiom stock was up 65 percent. Clients using AbiliTec included such giants as Microsoft, Citicorp Credit Services, Mercedes-Benz USA, Palm Inc., Rodale Press, Bank One Services Corp., and American Express. In the first quarter of our2001 fiscal year (April 1, 2000 to March 31, 2001), earnings from AbiliTec amounted to an estimated $5 million; in the second quarter, the first time AbiliTec’s contribution was separated out from other earnings, the figure was $40 million. AbiliTec, I told the business media, “is changing the heart of Acxiom.”

The Beginning Of The Cloud
Today, the grid system we created would be called “cloud computing,” except ours was a private cloud, just for Acxiom’s use. We were the first to develop such a system, though there was this small company out west called Google that had a similar idea. Today when you Google something, you’re using that very secretive company’s acres and acres of linked computers.

About Acxiom

Acxiom, described by Forrester Research as one of the largest database marketing services and technology providers in the world, has annual revenues of $1.15 billion, representing more than 12% of the direct-marketing services sector’s $11 billion in estimated annual sales.

As the world’s largest processor of consumer data, Acxiom has identified 70 types of consumers with its segmentation product Personic X. In addition to collecting data on people, it helps marketers anticipate the needs of consumers, according to the documentary, The Persuaders.

Founded in 1969, the Little Rock, Arkansas-based marketing technology and services company trades publicly on Nasdaq (ACXM) and has offices in the United States (Chicago, New York City, Nashville, and Foster City, CA), Europe, Asia, and South America.

Acxiom offers marketing and information management services, including multichannel marketing, addressable advertising, and database management. Acxiom collects, analyzes, and parses customer and business information for clients, helping them to target advertising campaigns, score leads, and more.

Its client base in the United States consists primarily of companies in the financial services, insurance, information services, direct marketing, media, retail, consumer packaged goods, technology, automotive, healthcare, travel, and telecommunications industries, and the government sector.

In 2003, the Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a complaint before the Federal Trade Commission against Acxiom and JetBlue Airways, alleging the companies provided consumer information to Torch Concepts, a company hired by the United States Army “to determine how information from public and private records might be analyzed to help defend military bases from attack by terrorists and other adversaries.”

The FTC took no action against Acxiom.

In 2005 Acxiom was a nominee for the Big Brother Awards for Worst Corporate Invader for a tradition of data brokering.

On May 16, 2007, Acxiom agreed to be bought by leading investment firms Silver Lake Partners and ValueAct Capital in an all-cash deal valued at $3 billion, including the assumption of about $756 million of debt. On October 1, 2007, however, a press release announced that the takeover agreement was to be terminated and Charles Morgan would retire as Acxiom’s company leader upon the selection of a successor.

In 2013 Acxiom was among nine companies that the Federal Trade Commission is investigating to see how they collect and use consumer data.

September 11
by Charles D. Morgan

Tracking 9/11 terrorists was the farthest thing from my mind in the days after 9/11. It was one of our associates who came to me and said his team had found some of the 9/11 guys in Florida. This was right after the Justice Department had released the names of several of the terrorists, including that of Mohamed Atta. I insisted that we do more checking and was advised to call the FBI as soon as we were sure that the data could possibly be useful to the federal authorities. That started the process of chasing the bad guys, and it went on for several months.

We engaged with the international terror experts from the FBI, who came to Arkansas and worked out of our building. We assigned a team of some 30 of our people to build what we called “The Bad Guys Database” and to do analysis to see what we could figure out. I was quickly drawn in myself and became a key member of the team looking for any information about the terrorists that might be helpful to the authorities. Law enforcement was particularly interested in knowing who and where the terrorists’ associates were. We assembled a massive amount of data from our customers, from the credit bureaus, and from the federal authorities, and we secured permission to use this data through the use of subpoenas.

We then went on a massive manhunt that would completely consume me for several months. By 2001 we had developed a product called AbiliTec that was of tremendous help in this effort. It allowed us to link people with different names and even at different addresses so that we could comb through all this data and come up with accurate answers. We found all the terrorists who had lived in the U.S., as well as most of the places where they’d lived. We used that data to look for other possible conspirators in the locations where we knew the terrorists had lived. The apartment house in Florida and another building in New Jersey were places that many of the 9/11 conspirators had spent time. The FBI and the Justice Department told us that the work we did was tremendously beneficial to them. The whole experience was quite surreal for me. I could never have imagined that I would be working with the FBI to track down terrorists.

My only regret is that there’s still a lot of the 9/11 story that has never been told. For example, we located a Saudi who made trips in and out of the U.S. and always had a different destination for his stay here. All the while, he owned a house in the Washington DC area and a car that was registered to the same apartment house address in Florida where Mohamed Atta had lived for several years. I never found out what happened to this guy, but I’m quite sure he was in some way associated with them—most likely as one of their sources of funding.

Sadly, I also learned some things I wish I hadn’t. I discovered how woefully inadequate law enforcement’s systems and technology were at that time in this country. The FBI agents we worked with used extremely outdated equipment, if they used any equipment at all. Several of the international terrorist experts didn’t even know how to use a laptop computer in 2001. The laptops that several of them carried were more than five years old and weren’t compatible with any of the tools that we were using in our process. For example, I couldn’t even transfer spreadsheet data to their PCs. Much has changed since then, as the exploits of NSA demonstrate. But it was certainly an awakening for me at the time.

As a dedicated team of researchers pursued the suspects, we were able to learn a number of things about the way the government brought information together – mainly that there need to be significant advancements in that area.

So even as we hunted down the bad guys – we began thinking about techniques and strategies that, if implemented, could increase the probability of heading off terrorist attacks in the future. And we began formulating a plan to put our special capabilities on the table, in front of the people who needed to know such things. They could then decide whether or not they wanted to take advantage of them.

We made some phone calls and took some meetings. Tim Griffin, then an assistant U.S. Attorney and later a U.S. congressman from Arkansas, was very helpful. So was retired general Wesley Clark. Former President Bill Clinton came to town with Mack McLarty and spent an afternoon with is going over our findings. Our two U.S senators, Blanche Lincoln and Tim Hutchinson, had more of an in with the Bush Administration, and it was through him that we secured a private meeting with Vice-President Dick Cheney.

The meeting took place in the summer of 2002, in the Vice-President’s room at the United States Capitol. Our team included General Clark, Senator Hutchinson, Jerry Jones, and me. Cheney was accompanied by one of his senior aides. Cognizant of the Vice-president’s time, General Clark opened the meeting and got right to the point—that government agencies had embraced information technology over the past 30 years, but that as the individual agencies’ systems had grown, the ability to share this information within and between agencies had not grown with it.

Then General Clark introduced me. I made a short presentation explaining how government could solve its massive data integration problem in a manner that would be respectful of individual privacy rights, which was critically important and technologically feasible, and at a cost that we thought would be acceptable, all things considered. The Vice –President seemed to find this plan quite intriguing, and in fact the scheduled 20-minute meeting stretched on to nearly 45 minutes.

At the end of the presentation, we left the Vice-President with a 13-page single-spaced memo called “Data Integration in Government Agencies”—subtitled “Facilitating Information Sharing While Protecting Privacy and Agency Autonomy.”

Long before 9/11 we knew that data could get out of hand and be abused. And that was just reinforced for me recently as I began following the NSA’s secret exploits. Before 9/11 I never thought about using our data and technology for the purpose of national security. But those in the Justice Department and the FBI with whom we interacted were amazed at our capabilities—so much so that we had a chance to present our ideas to Vice President Cheney in Washington DC. In the aftermath of 9/11, we actually did decide to design systems using our technology to benefit national security. And we struggled mightily over how to put the right safeguards in place to keep from creating a monster.

I’m proud to say we came up with some very innovative ideas that required processes to protect people’s information and abuse. Sadly, very little of that seems to have been picked up by the NSA. We have an opportunity and a problem with Big Data. The opportunity is that many things can be done to potentially prevent another 9/11 from ever occurring. Data analysis tools today can scale to the point that every phone call into and out of this country can be monitored at some level.

It’s not hard to imagine some enterprising technologist saying, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we actually captured the conversations in some of the suspicious situations.” The problem is, one thing leads to another and another and another, and before you know it you’ve got a situation that further compromises our individual privacy. The NSA could build a capability for scanning every telephone communication from the United States to foreign countries, as well as all other electronic traffic, including email. But where does it stop? The answer is that it will never stop unless we put adequate controls in place through Congress.

Big Data
by Charles D. Morgan

Today we hear the term “Big Data” all around us, and I want to clarify what we’re talking about. The term Big Data generally refers to extremely large masses of unstructured and partially structured data that typically has some kind of content that can be used for marketing, or for business decision-making, or even—as you see in my book’s prologue –for tracking bad guys. Unstructured data only started becoming a factor in the late 1990’s, and very much so in the 2000s.

Back in ’70s and ’80s, though, we didn’t even use the term Big Data. We talked about “massive databases” or “huge data problems” or something like that. And even if we had used the term Big Data, it would’ve referred to something much different from what we mean by that term today. The data then was different both in body and form. First, there just wasn’t as much data available. We didn’t record what came into a call center, and business wasn’t done by email; it was done by phone and letter, and we didn’t have any way of translating it.

Big Data is just what it implies—a lot of data. Typically big data also indicates that the data may be both structured and unstructured and come from a multitude of sources. The growth and diversity of data in this country has increased in all dimensions due to the internet and the millions of devices around the world that collect data of all kinds. Big Data is useless without the ability to organize and glean information from it. In the past, we relied on traditional relational database architecture, which has turned out to be quite inadequate in the world of Big Data.

A multitude of new tools and capabilities are being developed by vendors around the world to effectively extract true information from Big Data assets. Some of these new companies, like Splunk, are very successful with their efforts. It concerns me personally that the quantity of data collection about our daily lives is increasing exponentially. With all this data collection going on, the opportunity for misuse is ever present.

Thanks partly to Edward Snowden and the NSA’s excesses, today’s ubiquitous Big Data is a concept that many people respond to with suspicion or outrage. It’s absolutely true that some holders of information misuse it – I’ve met some of those people over the years – and others don’t give a damn about your privacy – I’ve run across those types, too. But in telling my story, what I hope to show you is that data itself, as well as data gathering, is neither good nor bad; it’s how it’s used that matters.

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Janrain’s Customer Identity Management Platform Featured in New Book Unlocking the Keys to Successful Enterprise Brand Interaction and Engagement

“BIG SOCIAL MOBILE” Reshapes Enterprise-Level Digital Initiatives and Drives Results. David Giannetto comes by the Good News TV Studio and shares his wisdom with Paul Sladkus, Founder of Good News. David knows his stuff! PS
PORTLAND, OR, January 22, 2015 – Janrain, the leading provider of Customer Identity Management technology, is featured in David Giannetto’s new book BIG SOCIAL MOBILE: How Digital Initiatives Can Reshape the Enterprise and Drive Business Results. Giannetto offers insights to integrate social media, mobile technology and big data into traditional enterprise objectives, process and information to create personalized experiences and tangible improvements in revenue and profit.
“Most companies have not changed their business model to fully embrace the impact social and mobile have had on consumer interaction, nor have they taken advantage of technical advances that could significantly improve the customer experience and their own bottom line,” said business thought leader and author, David Giannetto. “It’s imperative they change how they play the game and starting using these digital initiatives to create tangible results. Technology and methodology must be blended together, one enabling the other to meet the evolving demands of a new social consumer in a new social economy. Janrain is exactly the type of company facilitating this change.”
In the book, Giannetto explains how the ease with which today’s consumer move seamlessly between the physical and digital environments they inhabit creates an exponentially more complex relationship between them and the companies seeking to turn them into customers. However, technology, when used properly, allows companies to overcome these challenges. Janrain does this by simplifying the complexity, enabling companies to truly understand their customers and personalize every interaction via social login. This allows companies to acquire new consumer information and recognize these consumers across all digital mediums and devices, collecting accurate customer profile data that drives marketing effectiveness through improved segmentation, personalization, targeting and interaction.
“Consumers are bombarded with irrelevant information and offers, with nearly half ignoring or abandoning a brand after receiving just two mistargeted communications. As a result, companies must deliver tailored experiences for each and every customer,” said Larry Drebes, Founder and CEO of Janrain. “David Giannetto understands the complex landscape and how Janrain delivers increased interaction and engagement with consumers.”
The future of how enterprises operate, market and interact with their consumers is changing. Where the industry once relied solely upon sales transactions and customer relationship management updates, they must now create consistent and personalized marketing messages and customer experiences from one interaction to the next, across both digital and physical touchpoints. BIG SOCIAL MOBILE not only explains the benefits and risks, the tools and techniques, but also provides a step-by-step program for how companies can become Big Social Mobile Enterprises.
Learn more about Janrain’s platform at janrain.com. To learn more about David Giannetto, visitwww.davidgiannetto.com. Order your copy of BIG SOCIAL MOBILE at Amazon.
About Janrain
Janrain makes it easy to know your customers and personalize every interaction. Our Customer Identity Management Platform helps companies build a unified view of their customers across all devices by collecting accurate customer profile data to power personalized marketing. The platform encompassessocial login, registration, customer profile data storage, customer insights, single sign-on, and user-generated content. Janrain powers customer identity management for brands like Universal Music Group, Pfizer, Samsung, Whole Foods, Fox News, Philips, Marvel, Mattel and Dr. Pepper. Founded in 2005, Janrain is based in Portland, Oregon, with offices in London, Paris, Frankfurt, Singapore, Bangkok and Redwood City, CA. For more information, please visit www.janrain.com and follow @janrain.
About the Author:
David F. Giannetto is widely recognized as one of today’s most influential thought-leaders working at the intersection of all things information, helping today’s leading brands adopt both the technology and methodology necessary to create, understand and utilize it to improve performance. He has been listed as a thought-leader by the American Management Association, Business Finance Magazine and Consumer Goods Technology Magazine and is the author of three books, including the award-winning The Performance Power Grid (Wiley, 2006), a writer for the Huffington Post and the AMA, and an SVP of Salient Management Company. More information at www.davidgiannetto.com or on twitter at @dgiannetto.

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Dimension Data believes in the power of technology to transform your organisation, make things work better … and take your business to the next level. Over the last three decades, we’ve established ourselves as global leader in the provision and management of specialist IT infrastructure solutions and services. With operations in over 58 countries, over 23,000 employees and over 6,000 clients – coupled with our deep understanding of the global business and technology landscape – we help accelerate the achievement of your business goals.

Dimension Data’s passion is to find ways to use ICT to make our clients’ businesses work better.  We turn your ambitions into achievements.

We will position you to respond to today’s challenges, with targeted, pertinent services and IT SOLUTIONS.  We ensure your business is supported by a robust networking platform and help you optimise the performance and availability of the UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS and collaboration tools that run on it – including DESKTOP and contact centre technologies. We can also assist to put in place a next generation data centre, support your move to CLOUD COMPUTING, and ensure that all elements of your infrastructure are SECURE.

These capabilities are underpinned by a full lifecycle of IT services encom​passing consulting, professional, support, managed, procurement and supply chain and IT OUTSOURCING services. The result is a stable yet agile technology estate – one that sets you up to embrace business change with confidence.

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