Hey everyone. I'm Doug Laney, your instructor for this course. After over a decade as a senior data and analytic strategy analyst, with the leading IT research and advisory firm Gardener, I'm now principled data strategists with the consulting firm Coursera, working with organizations around the world, to put in phonetics concepts to work for them. Throughout the year, I meet and speak with hundreds of companies and their executives, help them define and align their data and analytic strategies, and help them understand and take advantage of best practices and emerging trends. More specifically, for years I've been researching and developing ideas on how organizations can monetize, manage, and measure information as an actual corporate asset, a concept I call infonomics. Recently, I published our best selling book on this topic, that we'll be using for this course. Previously, I spent years in the software industry leading the professional service organizations within them, mostly with early stage companies, and the artificial intelligence, and data management space. But I also took time to launch and run a startup company. Unfortunately, we ran headlong into the Great Recession, bad timing. After graduating from the University of Illinois in 1986 with a combined degree in software engineering and business administration and a love of performing stand-up comedy, I decided to do something, and not very funny. I joined Arthur Andersen Consulting, now Accenture, where I worked on large-scale application development projects for Chicago Title, Series, Canada Post, General Motors, John's man Bell, and others. After moving about from Chicago to Denver, to Ottawa Ontario, to Sydney Australia, to San Diego, I'm currently back where I belong, a few blocks from Wrigley Field in Chicago with my wife and son when he's not at Vanderbilt and a couple of cats. In my spare time, I enjoy biking, hosting dinner parties, exploring the city, competitive tennis, and non-competitive gulf. I look forward to getting to know each of you and exploring this new and exciting concept of infonomics together.