Throughout the last few decades, the amount of data that has accumulated on the internet and in our systems has grown by orders of magnitude. Most believe that much of this data is useless. Logs, miscellaneous accounts and lines of code were just floating in the ether, and to many people, that was just fine.

But Doug Merritt was not one of those people. Doug is the CEO of Splunk, which is helping people and companies turn “dark data” into usable, measurable analytical tools that can push a business forward.

It’s not all business, though.

For Doug, the story of data is more than just what Splunk is doing for businesses. In today’s society, the population is giving access to all kinds of data to various companies and third parties, which then go and sell our data to others for profit. Doug believes that we can democratize all of this data and create an economic good that will benefit all people.

Plus, by analyzing big data and partnering with others doing the same, problems like human trafficking are being addressed in a way that’s never been done before. And it’s actually been successful.

“Over a three-year time period, using Splunk and a host of other technologies, Global Emancipation Network has been able to make a significant dent in both identifying victims of human trafficking and the perpetrators. It is starting to actually turn the tide in a positive direction just by being curious enough to begin to ask questions of what would it take to solve a problem like this?”

On this episode, Doug and Chad dive deeper into how that was possible, plus they discuss the ways data can be used to solve all manner of problems, and how we might prepare for a future where data is the key to everything.

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