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New book tells the story of the man behind big data

LITTLE ROCK, Ark., July 6, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- 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 reveals 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.

"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 Charles 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.

His book includes insights from his experiences as a serial entrepreneur. Most recently, he founded a ventures called PrivacyStar, a technology solution to support consumer privacy in mobile. "It could grow to be bigger than Acxiom," he says.

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.

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.

SOURCE Charles Morgan

From the book (http://www.amazon.com/Matters-Life-Data-Remarkable-Visionary/dp/1630474657):

“I didn’t set out to become a collector of your and your neighbors’ information. When I was growing up, nobody but egghead scientists talked about ‘data.’ It was the mechanical age, and I was a gadget geek, taking apart my cousin’s toys and trying to put them back together again. I was especially crazy about cars and engines, and had it not been for a fateful encounter during college recruiting season, I might’ve lived my life as a race car mechanic instead of learning about computers at IBM. As it turned out, pursuing Big Data allowed me the resources to become a professional race car driver on the side, competing against the likes of Paul Newman, who makes appearances in these pages as well.

“Such are the wonders of this journey we’re all on. Mine has taken me from the frontier of western Arkansas, where my ancestors owned a hardware store selling iron tools to westbound travelers, to the frontier of the digital age, where room-size computers have become eclipsed by the power of smart phones. And in a sense, the story you’re about to read isn’t so different from those of the colorful adventurers who stocked up their wagons at my family’s hardware emporium and headed west to make their fortunes. 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."

“It is a messy story. In the big picture, this could be called a narrative of America since World War II. But in the micro telling, think of it this way: The man who opened your lives to Big Data finally bares his own.”



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