Data Governance Matters

The Summer of Love and the Hippie Central Data Repository

Guest Host: Darwin

I like many things. A glass of good wine after a bad day, an intellectual challenge, honest music and anything paisley or tie-dye… but things I love make up a much shorter list. I love my Old Friends. It’s my contention that until a relationship ages, you cannot count the person on the other end of it as more than a close acquaintance.

Gwen Thomas, the DGI President, is an Old Friend . She’s younger than myself, but we still go back aways. We don’t get to spend ‘face time‘ often anymore, but when we can, we make the most of it.

I spent quality time with Gwen the end of last June in San Francisco, after the Data Governance Conference. There was absolutely no way I was going to that wonderful city without a pilgrimage to my old stomping grounds, so Gwen, myself, and the rest of the DGI crew spent a day in Haight Ashbury. We joined a walking tour groupt, I traded memories with the entertaining, informative and attractive tour guide, and then…

I saw it.

The Message Pole. It was more than just a landmark for myself and many others there during the summer of love in ‘67, it was the center of our existence. It was simply a telephone pole, at the time emblazoned with personal notes, flyers and posters. We would all check the pole for our messages and community announcements at least daily. Today, the Pole stands empty except for its glaze of rusting staples, one of Haight Ashburies most treasured landmarks, a monument to the culture of the Hippie.

The Pole revolutionized communication in the Hippie Community. Prior to the Pole, messages between Hippies travelled many paths, were handed from friend to friend, often ending up at the wrong destination or at the right destination polluted with errors. After the Pole, Hippies posted and received information from that one central repository. The results were predictable; less delay in delivery and less introduction of user error which resulted in much cleaner information.

I was in my mid teens that fall in 1967. I was stapling a ‘crash pad available’ notice to the Pole when my epiphany struck. I was floored by the sheer magnitude of the Message Pole concept; that the path information takes can be as important as the information itself.

For the first time, in my life I saw the inherent beauty in design. That moment undoubtably influenced the path I’ve taken; I like to believe the sum of who I am, what I’ve accomplished both professionally and personally, has been shaped in no small part by the existence of the Message Pole.

And it’s still there…

Kumbaya,

Darwin