A fish out of water, having a lovely swim, thanks for asking

Earlier this week, it was my very great pleasure to attend a day-long conference titled “Data Insights 2025”. Very much the domain of a Master Data Storyteller like me, you might think. And you’d be right.

Except … except … except …

You see, this particular conference – in its second year and really finding its feet – was convened and hosted by the law firm, Shoosmiths . And so while the morning keynote was given by the finest exponent of behavioural science in advertising – 奥美 ’s splendid Vice Chairman, Rory Sutherland – in the afternoon, we were treated to a fireside chat with Dr Liza Lovdahl Gormsen , director of the Competition Law Forum at the BIICL (British Institute of International and Comparative Law) ; we’ll come back to her and the class action she’s leading against Meta. And the closing paper was given – well, read – by Ireland’s Deputy Data Commissioner, Diarmuid Goudling, whose content (and style of delivery) was perhaps a little bit niche, even for someone as data curious as yours truly. But horses for courses.

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Data ^ Law = Action

I attended the 2024 iteration of this event online, inspired by my long-standing friend and Shoosmiths’ data privacy pathfinder, Alice Wallbank . Indeed and as a result, last November Alice was a brilliant guest on my podcast, Data Malarkey: the podcast about using data, smarter. As well as the most clear-eyed analysis of the implications of the GDPR, Alice gave us what remains to this day a Data Malarkey first when she sang her favourite private and data related pop song – 1984’s nightclub classic, Somebody’s Watching Me by Rockwell. You can find Alice’s episode here.

What’s more, just last month we kicked of Season Seven of Data Malarkey with an interview with Sylvie Delacroix , the Inaugural Jeff Price Chair in Digital Law at the 英国伦敦大学 - 伦敦国王学院 The Dickson Poon School of Law . Sylvie also runs the hugely ambitious Centre for Data Futures at KCL, and our chat looked at how we might build an ethnical future for AI. We also considered how AI might be rather better, more useful, and more human if it was a little less dogmatic and a little more uncertain. Sylvie’s episode is over there.

Clearly, the legal implications of our bigger and bigger data, AI-driven world are getting more and more traction. Including in my mind and on the airwaves of Data Malarkey.

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A narrative told in numbers

But let’s get back to the Shoosmiths conference. Rather than a laundry list of “she said … he said … she said …”, I thought I’d pique your interest and whet your appetite with some of the choice, data-driven morsels we heard from various contributors.

·?????? The Motor Insurers' Bureau (MIB) – an organisation I’d never heard of until the first panel session – has a data science team of five dealing with six billion data points which help to deliver ￡500M in insurance compensation to victims of UK hit-and-run accidents.

·?????? Mastercard has been using artificial intelligence for years and estimates that AI saved its customers ￡25B in fraudulent transactions last year alone.

·?????? 20% of bees ignore their hive-mates’ waggle dances and go prospecting for new sources of pollen apparently at random. If they didn’t – and all bees followed waggle dances – hives and colonies would have short-term gain but die out medium-to-long-term. To thrive, we need to both exploit what we know and explore what we don’t. That was one of a myriad of great data-driven stories from Rory Sutherland. As our host for the day, Shoosmiths’ partner, Sherif Malak , said: “I could listen to Rory Sutherland all day”. And fortunately, we got almost an hour of his greatest and latest hits.

·?????? Our personal data is worth about ￡26 per person per year to Facebook – calculated by dividing the ￡1.2B class action led by Dr Gormsen against Meta on behalf of the 46M Facebook account holders in the UK. So, not such a shabby value exchange between Facebook (net investment in recompense for personal data to date: $0) and almost half the population of the world. Things weren’t so one-sided til Meta started merging the third-party data we leave as data trails all over the online world with its first-party data to build super-profiles. If Dr Gormsen wins, Meta will be compelled to change its business model. And not just in the UK.

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“Parking his car in a funny way”

I’ll close out this brief run around the Data Insights x Shoosmiths 2025 conference with a bit more Rory. He’s a man on a mission to rehabilitate the power of anecdotes and outliers in the teeth of our Big Data world.

Rory revealed that the notorious British serial killer, Peter Sutcliffe – the man dubbed ‘the Yorkshire Ripper’ – was finally caught because he parked his car in an unusual way – facing out from the kerb, ready for a quick getaway, police-stylee. Two of the biggest problems with Big Data, as Professor Sutherland said, are that (a) it all comes from the past, and (b) it is stored in aggregate. And aggregation – averaging – gets rid of interesting outliers. And for Rory, anecdotage, accidents, and outliers are often the fuel for radical innovation. Just think of the history of the discovery of gravity, penicillin, and Viagra.

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Summing up

Speaking on the opening panel of the conference – “From Guardians to Architects: Reimagining the Data Protection Officer’s role in the era of AI” – Virgin Media O2 ’s James Finlayson revealed that he’d asked ChatGPT to give him a new job title, based on his LinkedIn profile. It came back with both “Professional Magpie” and “Knowledge Pollinator”. I’ve always considered myself to be a Professional Magpie – albeit one who always acknowledges from where he’s stolen his choice silver nuggets. So, I’m having that. And Shoosmiths’ Alice Wallbank immediately adopted the title of Knowledge Pollinator for herself. Thanks James, and thanks ChatGPT.

I loved my mind-expanding day at Shoosmiths’ Data Insights 2025 conference. I might have been a fish out of water. But I had a lovely swim, thanks, and – if diaries and the planets align again – I’ll be back again next year.