OT: New blog for my recipes

I have decided to move all of my recipes to a new blog, Full Contact Cooking. I will try to keep all of my recipes out there - if you are interested in the topic please do check it out. I won't post any more recipes here, though I can't promise that I won't link to them. Instead, I'm looking at what this blog should be and how I can refocus it to provide value to me and those folks who follow it.

Thanks for your patience,

Jesse

ARMA Canada 2010 call for speakers

The 2010 ARMA Canada conference will be held in London, ON from May 30 – June 2, 2010.  The conference theme is “Soaring Higher with Information Management”.

Five tracks – reflecting the domains in ARMA International’s RIM Core Competencies – will be offered as follows: Business Functions, Information Technology, RIM Practices, Risk Management, and a combined Leadership and Communications & Marketing track.  The program will consist of case study presentations, lectures, panels and workshops.

The speaker application form is available at http://www.armacanada.org/documents/2010SpeakerApplicationForm.doc. Applications are due no later than 12/15/2009. 

Before completing an application, please review the background information at http://www.armacanada.org/documents/2010CallforSpeakersBackgrounder.pdf 

For additional information, contact Sheila Taylor at staylor@condar.ca.

OT: Recipe: Chicken with lemon and green olives

Not sure where I got the original recipe. It’s from a cooking magazine but I couldn’t find it just now. I cook it at least every couple of weeks. It's fast and especially in the spring and summer it's just amazing.

Chicken Breasts with Lemon and Green Olives

Ingredients:

4              boneless skinless chicken breast halves

1/2           teaspoon salt

1/4           teaspoon pepper

1              tablespoon olive oil

2              teaspoons coarsely chopped fresh sage

1              medium lemon, cut into 8 slices, seeds removed

2              tablespoons honey

6              tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1              7-oz jar large green olives

Note: increased honey and lemon juice from original recipe because it's so good. :)

Preparation:

1. Sprinkle chicken with salt & pepper. Heat oil in large skillet over medium-high heat until hot. Add chicken; cook 4 minutes or until lightly browned, turning once. Place chicken on plate.

2. Add onion and sage to same skillet; reduce heat to low. Cook 2 minutes or until onion softens slightly. Return chicken to skillet; cover with lemon slices.

3. In small bowl, stir together honey and lemon juice; add to skillet with olives. Cover; simmer 7 minutes or until chicken is no lonver pink in center and juices run clear. Remove lemon slices before serving; discard or use as garnish.

Original recipe suggests to cook rice in chicken broth and then stir fresh spinach leaves and toasted pine nuts into hot rice just before serving. Plain rice works as well.

OT: Recipe: Johnny Marzetti

Not sure where I got this recipe from. Johnny Marzetti is a type of casserole made with macaroni, hamburger, tomato sauce, and cheese. We used to call it "goulash" and the Wikipedia article on American Goulash describes a dish pretty close to this. I make this at least once a month.

Johnny Marzetti

Ingredients:
1 pound ground chuck or hamburger
1 onion, diced
1 green pepper, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tsp oil
2 jars spaghetti sauce (pref with vegetables)
1 8-oz can tomato sauce (plain or spicy)
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 pound elbow macaroni, cooked according to package directions
8 oz. sharp Cheddar cheese, shredded
1 can pinto, kidney, or black beans, drained and rinsed.

Directions:
1. Brown meat, onion, and green pepper in oil over medium-high heat.
2. Drain and rinse meat mixture and return to pan.
3. Add garlic and cook 1 minute, stirring constantly.
4. Add spaghetti sauce, tomato sauce, spices, cooked macaroni, cheese, and beans to pan.
5. Simmer 10 minutes and serve.

Rock stars

Every once in a while I get tagged with the name "rock star". In many cases it's meant to be a compliment. After all,  rock stars get in front of lots of people and share something they are interested in. They perform with passion, and always leave the audience satisfied but wanting just a bit more. And all of us are at least a bit selfish and vain enough to want to know that people like and appreciate us and what we do. 


But there's a down side to being considered a rock star. After all, rock stars are also famous. They are unapproachable. They don't remember who "the little people" are. And they are notoriously difficult to work with. Let me tackle each of these. 

• They are famous. Well, I suppose so - but I put on my pants, drink my beer, and brush my teeth the exact same way you do. If lots of people know my name and what I do, that's nice, but I don't know that that fact by itself does anything for me, and it certainly doesn't do anything for anyone else. 
• They are unapproachable. This one is always interesting to me - because so many of us are rock stars in different arenas, and I suspect that most of us react the same way in those arenas: "Who, me? No, I just saw something that needed doing and I'm doing it." Someone who is on the ARMA Board is doing the exact same thing that someone on the local chapter board is doing - and if you don't think (or act like) you're a rock star to your local chapter, why would you think I'm a rock star or expect me to behave like one?
• They don't remember the "little people." This one has some merit. I think the problem for most of us is that if I speak to an audience of 300, or serve on the Board for an association of 11,000, I have to remember 300 or 11,000 names while you only have to remember one. That's certainly not an excuse, but it makes it more difficult. I do better at remembering names of folks with whom I've interacted more meaningfully - send me an email and I'm much more likely to remember that, and by extension, you. 
• They are difficult to work with. The most famous example of this is Van Halen's notorious request for a bowl of M&M's with the brown ones removed (see http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/vanhalen.asp). The reason for that was that rock shows are complicated to stage and involve tons of equipment, lighting, etc. It was meant to demonstrate that the local production crew had actually read the entire technical rider to the contract. If there were brown M&Ms, the odds were that something else had been missed and the entire contract rider would need to be reviewed line by line to ensure that the floor load limit could handle the weight of the show, etc. Now, if you *are* working with someone who is difficult or "high-maintenance", my question to you is, why? There is nobody so good at anything that you should need to put up with "rock-star-itis". 

This is exacerbated at things like large conferences, when some rock stars are running around with their hair on fire, going from board meeting - to six different social events - to speak - to six more events - to receive an award - etc. etc. etc. And you see us with a badge chock full o' ribbons, pins, and other shiny flashy things and you may think, "I wouldn't dream of taking their important time up with my trivial little question or comment." I say to you, balderdash. 

Again, there is nothing so important at a conference or for anyone at a conference that we can't take a minute to chat. I do try to be on time for the various events, and if I'm speaking at a session I hope you will respect others' time and let me discuss your issue with you after the session. But other than that, don't let the suit or the badge ribbons fool you. If you are a chapter officer, you're every bit as busy at a chapter meeting as I am at conference and yet you probably don't consider yourself a rock star (I hope!). Even if you aren't, you're that busy, that important, and that engaged somewhere else. 

So to conclude this long post, I hope you don't consider me a rock star: unapproachable, arrogant, and aloof. That's not why I do all I do for ARMA, AIIM, etc.; I do those things because they need doing and someone somewhere has graciously allowed me the opportunity to try to provide some small measure of value. If you ever do see me acting like a rock star, I hope you'll call me out on it. I still pay my chapter and association dues every year the same as you do. 

OT: Recipe: Pickle Soup

First, let me state for the record that while this recipe *has* pickles in it, the title of the recipe (and this post) comes from the way my wife asks for it. It's fundamentally a variant on black bean soup.

Ingredients:
1 batch black bean soup - use canned, use your favorite recipe, whatever. I like this recipe from Epicurious.
1 lb ham, diced
1 16-oz jar salsa
1 medium dill pickle per serving (I like either kosher dills or spicy dills)
1-2 Tbsp feta OR cotija cheese per serving, crumbled
1 tsp cilantro per serving
1 lime wedge per serving

Preparation:
1. Make, decant, open, whatever you need to do to get at your soup.
2. Add the ham and the entire jar of salsa to the pot. (Re)heat until it is at the temperature you want to eat it at.
3. Dice the dill pickle and place in individual serving bowls.
4. Ladle the soup into the serving bowls.
5. Top the soup with the cheese and then the cilantro. Squeeze the lime wedge into the bowl.
6. Eat and rejoice.

I sometimes serve this over rice and it's even heartier.

I'm certified!

Yes, I know some readers will read that as "certifiable", and that's not so far from the truth some days. :) And this isn't the first time I've been certified - but this is without question the most rewarding so far.

The certification in question is the Certified Records Manager. If you aren't familiar with it, it's administered by the Institute for Certified Records Managers and validates the knowledge and skills required to manage records and information effectively. In order to take the exams, you must pass an experiential requirement. Once you are accepted as a candidate, you must pass five multiple-choice exams before being allowed to take Part 6. Part 6 is a four-hour essay exam consisting of two case studies.

It's an expensive exam: $100 to apply as a candidate, $100 for each of Parts 1-5, and $150 for Part 6 for a total cost of $750. And because of the nature of the scheduling (the exam is administered only 4x/year) and the requirement to complete Part 1-5 and have that validated before being accepted to sit for Part 6, it takes a minimum of 3 months today to complete the process.

There are two primary requirements to maintain the CRM status. First, there is a continuing education requirement to complete 100 hours of education within a five-year period. CRMs are also required to join the ICRM at a cost of $200/year; CRMs who do not maintain their membership have the certification revoked and may be required to retake Part 6 to regain their status.

This is the certification that I spent the most time preparing for and that I am the most proud of to date. It took a lot of studying on areas that I don't have much experience with, and there are some things I think need to be looked at to continue to improve the exam. But I'm happy to have it behind me and look forward to becoming more active as a CRM mentor to folks I work with and to getting involved with the ICRM.

Want me to speak at your event? Here's what it takes.

I've been toying with writing this series of posts for a long time. This first one will be about how to get me to speak at your event (though some of the points will also be applicable to most speakers and events). Future posts will describe ways to ensure that your event is more successful with regards to the speaker's performance and how to find speakers for events.

The intent of this post is not to be arrogant, a "rock star" or prima donna, etc. Rather, it's to give you insight into how I approach prospective speaking events so that if you do want me to speak, we can work together to get it set up as easily as possible.

Now then. You're the program chair for a local chapter, the coordinator for a region, or just someone looking for a speaker, maybe for a corporate event. You've heard my name and think I might be a good fit for the event. How do you get me to speak at your event?

1. Ask me as early in the chapter year as possible. I try to limit my schedule to an average of one session a month because these meetings are expensive for me and my organization. For a typical chapter meeting (45-60 min talk), it generally takes me anywhere from 2-8 hours of prep time depending on the topic. So a full-day seminar, with 6 hours of contact with attendees, is generally almost a full week of prep time, during which I am not doing client-billable work. Add in travel time and you can see why I cannot speak at dozens and dozens of events.

Many chapters take the summer off to re-energize and do strategic planning, including determining the theme for the year and looking for speakers. Most of them reach out to prospective speakers by about the middle of August, meaning that there is a good chance I'll be completely booked for the chapter year by the time the new year starts. So if I turn you down, it's not that I don't want to go to your event, I just can't fit it in.

2. Have me speak on something I know something about. I want you to follow your theme and do what you think is in the interests of your audience. But there are any number of topics that I just don't know enough about to speak on. So in that case I'm not a good fit for you. I will generally try to suggest an alternate speaker, and I work with some really talented people who simply aren't as well-known (yet). I have a list of topics I've covered and am very comfortable with; you can also look at my Slideshare account, where I post my public sessions after I've delivered them.


3. Determine the date - and stick to it. I've had a couple of instances the last several years where chapters changed the date at the very last minute, which in at least one case almost forced me to cancel because I had another speaking date scheduled the same week and the travel was simply impossible. We worked it out but the point remains.

4. Consider my costs. Generally speaking, I ask for airfare from Denver (advance purchase nonrefundable coach), at least one night in a hotel (Holiday Inn, Ramada, Comfort Inn, etc. I fly in the day before so weather, flights, etc. are not an issue), and a rental car if there is no hotel shuttle (I use Thrifty or Enterprise, where my company has a corporate rate). This is really non-negotiable; later in the series I'll talk about some ways to reduce those costs from the chapter's perspective. But I rarely speak at an event where it will actually  *cost* me money.

I also ask for an honorarium of from $500 to $2000 depending on the length of the session, how much prep time is required, the nature of the meeting, etc. If you are an ARMA chapter, I cannot charge an honorarium as a Director of ARMA International or accept most gifts. 

5. Ask me to do a webinar. On the other hand, if I don't have to travel, be out of the office for a couple of days, etc. I can generally fit a few more in a year. You still have your normal meeting, you just have me speak through tele/web/videoconference. It's pretty easy to set up these days using any of a number of tools and you also get the benefit of allowing people to attend who might not otherwise make the meeting due to travel considerations. This is especially true for those of you in small chapters with big geographical areas to cover

That's pretty much it. There are some other minor considerations - all else being equal, I'd rather do bigger meetings than smaller ones; if I can do multiple meetings or a joint chapter meeting on the same trip that's always nice; warm areas in the winter and cooler areas in the summer, that sort of thing.

Speaking at AIIM 2010

I received confirmation yesterday that I will be speaking at the AIIM 2010 Conference and Exposition, scheduled for April 20-22, 2010 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia. This marks my eighth consecutive year of speaking at AIIM - thanks to Jennifer Marcus and the folks at Questex for selecting me again. 

My session this year is called: "Twitter This: A Gentle Introduction to Microblogging". The session will introduce attendees to Twitter and other microblogging tools. We will begin by describing and differentiating microblogs from other types of tools. Attendees will learn what types of information are particularly suited to microblogging. The session will conclude with a look at the emerging area of enterprise microblogging. 

I might also be teaching the one-day preconference for the AIIM Email Practitioner Certificate Program - details to come once they are available on the Questex website. 

You can find more details about the conference at http://www.aiimexpo.com/aiimexpo/v42/index.cvn (still points to last year's information) - or follow @aiimexpo on Twitter. 

Newsletter articles blog

I have started another blog at http://jessewilkins.wordpress.com. The purpose of the blog is to post articles, either that I have written for chapters, AIIM, ARMA, etc. or those that I have written myself and that I think could make good newsletter articles. The idea is that many chapter newsletters are always starved for content, but it's tough getting someone to write on spec, on topic, and meet deadlines - all for free. I hope that blog will be a resource for chapters.

Here are the rules:
1. No stealing. Please give appropriate attribution to me. A link would be nice but not absolutely necessary. But if you post an article of mine with no byline, I will find it and will first ask you to fix it, then remove it, then I will open up publicly. Be nice.

2. If you want an article but think it's too long, please let me know and give me the first crack at editing it. My content and all that - and I really am happy to do it.

3. I'm posting it with a policy of non-exclusivity. What that means is that ANY chapter, or MANY chapters, could elect to publish a given article. As the body of articles posted there grows larger, this will be less of an issue; frankly, most chapter newsletters are only read by two audiences: chapter members and the ARMA Awards Task Force. And my article showing up multiple times will NOT be the difference between a chapter winning or losing Newsletter of the Year.

At some point I may open it up to like-minded writers. If you are interested in getting (re)published for the same fantastic per-word rate that I enjoy (that'd be $0.00), drop me a note.

OT: Recipe: Pork & Posole Stew

It was chilly today in Denver which got me to thinking about probably my favorite soup recipe, pork & posole stew. I really have to plan ahead to make this, but it's well worth the effort and it's really not that time-consuming. It makes quite a bit but it's even better the next day.


Ingredients

1 lb pork sirloin chops or pork tenderloin, diced
1/2 onion, chopped
1 cup Anaheim or Hatch chiles, preferably fire-roasted, peeled, and diced
1 tbsp chopped garlic
1 tbsp chipotle chili powder
2 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp fresh ground black pepper
1/4 tsp salt
1 29oz can hominy, drained and rinsed
1 8oz can spicy tomato sauce
8 or more cups water
1/2 head chopped cabbage or cole slaw mix
Juice of 1 lemon
Hot cooked rice, optional
Garnishes: crumbled cotija or feta cheese; lemon slices; chopped cilantro

1. Heat 1 tbsp oil in pan or Dutch oven. Brown pork in pan, 5 min.
2. Add onion and garlic; saute 4 min.
3. Add chiles, chili powder, cumin, pepper, and salt and cook 2 min, stirring constantly.
4. Stir in hominy, tomato sauce, and water.
5. Bring to a boil; boil 30 minutes. Add more water as required to give soupy consistency.
6. Remove from heat; add cabbage and lemon juice

To serve:  If serving over rice, put a half-cup of hot cooked rice in each bowl. Otherwise, ladle soup into bowls. Garnish with one or more of the cheese, lemon slices, and chopped cilantro.

ARMA 2010 call for speakers

ARMA has announced its call for proposals to speak at the ARMA 2010 conference and exposition, scheduled for November 5-10, 2010 in San Francisco, CA. The deadline to submit a speaking proposal is October 30, 2009. From the call:

ARMA International education programs are a learning experience. This means:

• Content is informative and relevant, with clear and immediate application to the learner’s work
• Minimal use of PowerPoint slides
• Includes interactive and/or hands-on methods to support the learning
• Corresponds to the required application focused learning objectives
• Handouts which reflect the content and are a resource for later use

Your primary goal should be the learning of the participant rather than a showcase for your ideas, products, and services.

Speakers do not have to be members of ARMA, but the content MUST be vendor-neutral. If you are a vendor, your odds of speaking will be probably be higher if you submit a case study where the client presents the case study. (This is not anything official on behalf of ARMA or the program committee, but I served on that committee for ARMA 2003, 2004, and 2006, and that was the case then.)

Details on the call for proposals, including the full list of topics and presentation modes being solicited, can be found at http://www.arma.org/learningcenter/proposals/call/index.cfm?type=2.

AIIM EMM Certificate Program Outline

Here is the outline for the AIIM Email Management Certificate Program.

Strategy. This one-day instructor-led course addresses the question, "Why email management?

• Introduction to EMM
• Business drivers and the case for EMM
• Roles and responsibilities for EMM
• Policies and procedures for EMM
• Tools and auditing the EMM program

Practitioner. This two-day online or instructor-led course addresses the question, "what is email management?"

EMMP-1 – Introduction

• Introduction to email management
• Terminology
• How email works generally
• Basic principles for email management

EMMP-2 – Inside the inbox

• A tour of the email client
• Email information objects
• Email folders
• Managing the inbox

EMMP-3 – Architecture

• Main messaging applications
• Main messaging clients
• Plug-ins
• Remote and mobile email access

EMMP-4 – The capture process

• Identifying which messages to capture
• Capturing messages
• Capturing metadata and attachments
• Capture and records management

EMMP-5 – Classification

• Introduction to classification
• Classification approaches
• Classification structures
• Automatic classification technologies
• Issues and strategies for automatic classification 

EMMP-6 – Governance

• The email governance framework
• Email policy and processes
• Email roles and tools
• Email standards and audits

EMMP-7 – Security

• The email security model
• Digital signatures and encryption
• Content and attachment restrictions

EMMP-8 – Technologies

• Types of email management technologies
• Implementation models
• Selecting the appropriate solution(s)

EMMP-9 – Archival

• Storage vs. backup vs. archives
• Organizational archival approaches
• Personal archive files
• Archival considerations

EMMP-10 – Email and ECM

• ECM defined
• Capture
• Manage
• Store
• Preserve
• Deliver

Specialist. This two-day online or instructor-led course addresses the question, "How to develop and deploy an email management program?" It also includes several advanced modules on email and discovery, instant messaging, and alternatives to email among others.

EMMS-1 – Business case

• Introduction to the business case
• Benefits identification
• Making the business case for email management

EMMS-2 – The email management project

• Before the project begins
• Setting up the project team
• The project kickoff

EMMS-3 – The email management policy

• The policy development framework
• Research and analysis
• Drafting the policy
• Implementing the policy

EMMS-4 – Requirements

• Requirements definition and management
• Techniques for gathering requirements
• Requirements for an email management solution

EMMS-5 – Implementing email management

• Selecting the optimum solution
• Model office and pilot program
• The EMM rollout
• Post-implementation and benefits realization

EMMS-6 – Email preservation

• Introduction to preservation
• Preservation strategies
• Email preservation
• Media selection and considerations

EMMS-7 – Email and discovery

• Introduction to discovery
• Review of applicable case law
• The electronic discovery reference model
• Email discovery issues and strategies

EMMS-8 – Instant messaging

• Introduction to instant messaging
• IM and email
• Process approaches for managing IM
• Technology approaches for managing IM

EMMS-9 – Alternatives to email

• Introduction
• Blogs
• Wikis
• Really simple syndication (RSS
• Other collaborative tools

EMMS-10 – Web-based email

• Survey of the main commercial providers
• Organizational vs. commercial webmail
• Managing web-based email

Master. This 4-day instructor-led course includes all of the Strategy, Practitioner, and Specialist modules listed plus the Master Case Study.

My ARMA 2009 schedule

Fall is my favorite season. There's just something about the shortening days, the extended twilight at dawn & dusk, and the crispness in the air that really gets me fired up. This is without question my most productive time of year. And so I'm really happy that this is also when ARMA is scheduled - because it's always a busy conference for me.

The last couple of years ARMA has been longer and even more busy because of my service on the ARMA International Board of Directors. We get in several days before conference opens for a couple of days of board meetings and leadership training. This year we are also doing our strategic planning during that time. So if you see one of us towards the end of conference and we look a bit ragged, it's because we all got in on Saturday the 10th. :)

I try to be as social and embrace networking as much as my schedule allows and I'm constantly inviting people by the booth to meet me, our other senior staff, etc. So I decided this year to publish my current schedule so you can track me down if you want or need to. Bear with me - it's a long post because it's a long, busy conference.

Note: The sessions listed with * are other Access Sciences people speaking at ARMA. If I get the chance I will attend their sessions; I might also be in the booth providing coverage while they speak. You can always ping me on my phone at (720) 232-9638 (voice or text) and if I'm not in a meeting or actively engaged with someone I'll pick up.

Oct 11:

8:00 am - 12:00 pm Association Infrastructure committee meeting

12:00 - 1:00 lunch with ARMA HQ staff

1:00 - 5:00 Board discernment

6:30 - ? Board dinner

Oct 12:

8:00 - 9:00 Board executive session

9:00 - 5:00 Board meeting and strategy planning session

Oct 13:

8:00 - 4:30 Email management preconference (separate registration required)

6:00 - 7:00 BOD/ICRM/AIEF reception

Oct 14:

11:30 - 1:00 Region and Chapter awards luncheon

2:30 - 3:00 Board rehearsal for opening general session

5:00 - 6:30 Region receptions

6:30 - 7:30 Young Professionals receiption

7:30 - 8:30 ICRM reception

7:00 - ? RECMGMT-L Listserv reception

Oct 15:

8:30 - 10:30 Opening general session

11:00 - 1:00 Opening exhibition floor/lunch

1:30 - 3:00 Anne Tulek & Glen Hilford speaking*

6:30 - 8:30? Welcome party
11:53: I get older

Oct 16:

12:00 - 1:15 Association general meeting

3:15 - 4:30 Candidate forum

4:00 - 5:30 Exhibitor reception

5:00 - 7:00 San Jose State University School of Library & Info Sciences reception

8:00 - 9:00 Awards event reception

9:00 - ? Canadian party

Oct 17:

7:30 - 9:00 Fellows breakfast

11:00 - 1:00 Fellows luncheon

1:00 - 3:00 John Rhoades speaking*

Oct 18:

10:00 - 11:30 Speaking, "Web 2.0: Compliance and the Cloud"

12:15 - 2:00 Closing general session

My introduction to ECM

Pie started it, Cheryl continued it, and now I'm going to take a whack at it. Full disclosure: I may have some of the timelines wrong, particularly as regards particular capabilities. But the general timeline I think is pretty close.

After I was discharged from the Marine Corps in 1996, I held a variety of jobs while I tried to figure out what I wanted to do when I grew up (I'm still working on it), including acting, traffic court clerk, the US Postal Service(!), and computer repair. I heard through the grapevine that a local software company was looking for a webmaster and set up an interview to show my 3l337 4axor HTML skillz.

When I got to the interview, I found out it was for a software tester for what Gartner was then calling integrated document archival and retrieval (IDARS). The company? Information Management Research, Inc. In June 1997 IMR had probably 40 employees and a neat little application called Alchemy (v4.0) that had modules for the core IDARS capabilities plus COLD (Datagrabber), imaging (Scan2CD), and AutoCAD viewing and indexing (CAD2CD).

I got the job and on my first day I was given a test plan that consisted of a two-page outline of the major capabilities across all four modules: capture, printing, indexing, viewing, exporting, etc. I was told to "find any defects and email them to engineering." While I was pretty technology-savvy, I had no previous exposure to CAD or COLD at all and my scanning was limited to the old serial-port hand scanners and parallel-port consumer scanners.

Over the course of the next several months I underwent a crash course in SCSI configuration (scanners and CD burners), production imaging concepts (patch codes, separator sheets), COLD (the Datagrabber parsing language, regular expressions, forms overlays), and of course the basics of manual software testing. I was also introduced to Windows NT for the first time and learned the guts of managing an NT server.

As Alchemy went from 4.0 to 4.1, to 5.0, etc., I got more and more comfortable both with the pure hardware and software aspects of the job and with the various processes involved in using it. Most of our customers were service bureaus or highly paper-intensive industries like insurance, and I got to understand their processes better as well.

Around 1998 if my timeline is right we started working on Alchemy Web Server. The engineering team really did a superlative job of putting together a very faithful representation of the Alchemy Search interface in a web browser (Netscape 4 or 5 and IE 4 if I recall correctly); my 4axor skillz really came into play here in terms of testing and also in figuring out how to enable or customize it a bit.

Towards 2000 or so we started working on Mailstore, which was a product to allow users to capture their email into an Alchemy database, where the message and any text-type attachments could be full-text indexed and made searchable. The interface used an Outlook web (portal?) page, meaning that users could access all their email, live and archived, within their Outlook client. Later we developed Mailstore for Exchange, which used journaling to capture all messages from Exchange into Alchemy databases. As an aside, I had a discussion with one of our engineers about providing support for archiving instant messaging, and his response was, "There's no business case for that - IM is only for kids." Hrmph.

And around this same time we also started working on Alchemy Document Management, which didn't do management of documents at all but rather provided a sort of subscription and alerts capability to support very lightweight approval and publishing work processes. We also reengineered Alchemy from its traditional standalone desktop architecture to a more robust, more flexible, and more scalable client-server architecture - and started referring to Alchemy as an ECM solution rather than a capture, imaging, or IDARS solution.

In 2001-2002 we began development of the Alchemy Records Management module. By then I had moved to Technical Support and was tapped to learn everything I could about records management. So I found DIRKS, VERS, ISO 15489, DoD 5015, TNA 099, and every other standard, guideline, and white paper I could. In the fall of 2001 I joined both AIIM and ARMA so I could learn more about what records management meant and also what ECM meant. I continued to work on Alchemy in technical support and the occasional design and installation until I left IMR in the summer of 2004; IMR was subsequently acquired by Captaris in October 2004.

I still have a great fondness for Alchemy. It was an exceptional solution for the price and was one of the simplest ECM applications to implement - in fact, I routinely assisted customers onsite and remotely to install, configure, and deploy the system throughout the organization in an afternoon. Granted, it didn't scale to thousands of users, but being able to deploy to 100+ people a reasonably robust ECM system for $50K and in less than a day was a significant selling point (and see all the recent ECM blogosphere discussions about the "enterprise-ness" of ECM). I own copies of the software for every version from 4.0 through 8.0; of course most of them don't work because I can't ping a working license server, and the older ones had enough Windows- and driver-related issues that I don't want to try to run them on Vista.

So I really hope that the folks at Open Text will figure out a way to keep the core Alchemy around. It's a very good solution for small- to mid-sized organizations, particularly where they require some scanning or COLD capabilities. My employer is a partner for Open Text and I'd go back through the training to become certified on Alchemy in a heartbeat.

Upcoming speaking engagements

Here is my current speaking schedule through the end of the year.

September

9/24, "Collaboration and Social Networking", AIIM Western Canada

9/25, "RSS, Twitter, LinkedIn, Etc.: Web 2.0 Tools & Strategies", AIIM Western Canada

October

10/6, "Blogs, Wikis, and Twitter: Emerging Electronic Records Issues and Strategies" and "Records Management 2.0 - Managing Records in the Cloud", ARMA Twin Cities

10/13, "Effective E-mail Management", ARMA 2009 preconference

10/18, "Web 2.0: Compliance and the Cloud", ARMA 2009

December

12/16, ARMA Indianapolis Chapter webinar, topic TBD

If you find yourself in the vicinity, I'd love to see you at one of these meetings!

CompTIA and the CDIA+ in 2009

Many folks who know me know that I have been involved with the CompTIA CDIA+ program to varying degrees since 2001. I passed the Certified Document Imaging Architech(TM) exam in 2001 and was immediately tapped to serve as a subject matter expert for the 2002 update to the exam, at which time it was also renamed to CDIA+. I wrote exam items, reviewed others' exam items, and participated in the beta scoring workshop. I then joined the CDIA+ Post-Cornerstone Committee, and a couple years after the exam went live, I began teaching a CDIA+ prep workshop.

In 2005 the exam items were refreshed - new questions were written, but the exam objectives, the domains, and the job tasks they were based on remained the same from the 2001-2002 rewrite cycle. It's now mid-2009 and the exam has not been updated and there are apparently no plans to do so.

I sent a question through the website contact form asking whether the exam would be updated anytime soon and received this response:

Dear candidate, CompTIA is currently experiencing a service outage with our database provider and therefore will be unable to process your email regarding your certification. Should you have a general inquiry regarding our certification exams, objectives, testing centers, etc. please visit http://www.comptia.org/certifications/testprep.aspx otherwise, we ask that you check back with us in a week or visit www.comptia.org/certifications/yourcertifications in the future for outage updates. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience during this time. Thank you, The CompTIA Customer Service Team

Check back in a WEEK? Sorry, guys, but this is 2009. Websites aren't down for a week. Period. Not to slag the customer service folks, but this just isn't right (and of course I have no idea how long it may have been down already).

This really makes me wonder what's going on at CompTIA and whether I should be concerned about the continued existence of the CDIA+ program specifically and CompTIA more broadly. I'm happy to receive any responses from the folks at CompTIA and have the discussion on one or both topics at jwilkins13@gmail.com.

AIIM ECM Certificate Program Outline

I'd previously posted the outline for the updated AIIM ERM Certificate Program. The AIIM ECM Certificate Program was also updated this year. The update was led by Dan Keldsen of Information Architected. The course focuses more on information architecture and introduces the MIKE2 open-source implementation methodology. Here is the course outline:

Strategy. This course addresses the question, "Why ECM?" It is only offered as an instructor-led course and can be taken either standalone or as the first half-day of the ERM Master Class.

• Introduction to ECM

• What’s driving ECM?

• Uncovering business drivers

Practitioner. This course answers the question, "What is ECM?" and is offered online and instructor-led. The instructor-led course can be taken as a standalone course or as the first two days of the ECM Master Class.

ECMP-1 – Introduction

• Terminology

• Key ERM concepts

• Records management principles

ECMP-2 – Technologies & functionality

• Types of records

• Determining what to capture

• Approaches to capture

• Capturing and managing physical records

ECMP-3 – Information architecture

• Metadata concepts

• Metadata sources

• Applying metadata to records

• Automated metadata collection

ECMP-4 – Create & capture

• Introduction to classification

• Classification concepts

• Classifications schemes

• Classification categories

ECMP-5 – Metadata

• The records inventory

• Developing a classification scheme

• Developing a file plan

• Developing a retention schedule

ECMP-6 – Taxonomy

• How to classify records

• Autocategorization

• Tagging and folksonomies

ECMP-7 – Security & control

• Search and retrieval concepts

• Presentation and rendition

• Annotation and redaction

ECMP-8 – Process & automation

• Governance and instruments

• Security and access controls

• Audit trails

• Encryption and DRM

ECMP-9 – Findability

• Retention and disposition

• Exporting and transferring records

• Destruction of records

• Post-disposition considerations

ECMP-10 – Delivery & presentation

• Managing records without an ERMS

• Technology options

• Basic content services

• Implementation models

• Software certifications

ECMP-11 – Trends & directions

• Storage concepts

• Storage technologies

• Selecting the appropriate storage

Specialist. This course answers the question, "How do I implement ECM?" It is available online or instructor-led; the instructor-led course is available as a standalone course (infrequently) or as the second two days of the ECM Master Class.

ECMS-1 – Business assessment

• Introduction to the MIKE2 methodology

• Strategic mobilization

• Project charter

• Introduction to the SAFE architecture

• Organizational quickscan for information development

• Bundled information gathering techniques

ECMS-2 – Business strategy & blueprint

• Strategic business requirements

• Business blueprint completion

• Program review

ECMS-3 – Technology assessment & blueprint

• Requirements

• Technical architecture

• RFP process

• Technical blueprint completion

ECMS-4 – Governance

• The information governance framework

• The value and role of information governance

• Basic structure of the information governance document

• Localized governance

• Governance of content management instruments

ECMS-5 – Roadmap & project plan

• Roadmap and foundational activities

• Roadmap overview

• Project and deployment plan

• Detailed business requirements

ECMS-6 – Foundation activities

• Software development readiness

• Enterprise information architecture

• Taxonomy design

• Metadata development

• Solution architecture definition/revision

• Prototype the solution architecture

ECMS-7 – Design

• User support & operational procedures design

• Security design

• Infrastructure management process design

• User collaboration conceptual design

• User interface design

ECMS-8 – Develop, test, train

• Develop, test, train

• User support & operational procedure guides

• Technology backplane development

• Testing & training in action

ECMS-9 – Deploy, operate, closeout

• Production deployment

• Evaluation and launch

• Improvement and closeout

• The discovery plan

ECMS-10 – Change management

• Identifying and involving users

• Change readiness

• Best practices for implementing change

• Managing user expectations and needs

• Incentive strategies

Master Class. This course is available only as instructor-led. It consists of the Strategy, Practitioner, and Specialist modules as well as in-class case study activities.

For more information about any of the courses or instructor-led scheduled courses, please contact me.

How to ensure I DON'T follow you on Twitter

In my previous post I noted what you can do to make sure that I unfollow you as fast as possible. In this post I'll give you some tips on how to make sure I never follow you in the first place.

When you follow me, I have email alerts turned on that, well, alert me to that act. I generally stop what I am doing and check you out immediately, so if you are an interesting person I don't miss a thing. Here's what I look for to decide whether to follow you or not:

1. You don't have a profile pic. If you have the default Twitter avatar, I am VERY unlikely to follow you because I assume you're either a spammer or just joined Twitter, and with 60% of new users unlikely to stick with it, I'm not gonna take a chance on you. Twitter makes it easy to upload a pic - do it when you create your account.

2. You don't have a bio. This is the same issue as #1, above.

3. You have a pic and/or bio, but they are very abstract. This is not a hard-and-fast rule, but I generally don't follow folks unless I can tell who they are and/or what they do. Remember, I look at you personally - and if you don't catch my interest, off you go.

4. Your following to follower ratio is way off. When you first join Twitter, I think you have to follow more people than follow you, so you can get some sense of what it's about and how to use it effectively. Gradually, most of the more active people end up either in parity or being followed by more than they follow. As of this posting I follow 382 and am followed by 773.

If you follow hundreds or thousands, and most of them don't follow you back, I assume it is because you are a bot and I won't add you. *Special case: If you have lots and lots of followers and don't follow many (or any) back, I will take a hard look at whether I want to follow you or not. I generally assume you are a celebrity of some sort, and I haven't found much use for those. There are a couple of notable exceptions, but it's been a pretty good rule for me so far.

5. Your updates are locked down. I follow about 3 people whose updates are locked down - and two of them are family members. Your odds of being the 4th are next to nil. (And the one who isn't - your days are probably numbered as well. Which would be a shame.)

6. You don't post at all. It's a waste of my time to follow you.

7. You post prolifically. I know, some days this is "do as I say, not as I do". But when I check your page, if all the updates are from today, I probably won't follow you because you'll monopolize my stream. Nobody is that fascinating. I follow not quite 400 people as of this posting and most of them average 5-10 updates/day, which is about my limit. As another rule of thumb, if you have more than 50% more updates to date than I do, I assume you're over my limit.

8. When I check your tweets, you do anything I listed in the previous post.

9. You don't interest me. Now, that may sound harsh, so let me explain. I run in a number of different social circles: legal/law/discovery, records management, Web 2.0, ECM, foodie, Hash House Harriers, beer, Gov 2.0, and some others. If you are in real estate, a comedian, a celebrity, or something that is not in one of my circles, I am extremely unlikely to follow you. Simply living in Denver, Aurora, or Colorado is insufficient. So far I am adding all ARMA and AIIM members that I find, subject to the limits of the previous post.

10. Your bio asserts that you are an expert, guru, maven, thought leader, or anything of that nature. If you have to tell me you are....

So. Off the soapbox for now. I don't know whether I should write a post about how to get me to follow you - if you don't do anything listed in here, and don't do anything from the last post, AND you follow me, I'll almost certainly follow you back.

How to get me to UNfollow you on Twitter

I like to think I'm pretty easygoing on following people on Twitter. If you follow me, I'll manually check your account to see whether I want to follow back. If you don't immediately look like a spammer (post to come), I'll follow you. But be warned - I triage who I follow ruthlessly. It's not about the numbers for me but rather the value. Here, in no particular order, are the top reasons I will drop you like a bad habit:

1. You don't tweet. I use Twitoria, a great little service that will tell you how long it's been since those you follow have tweeted. I think it defaults to two weeks, but I usually have mine set to 30 days. If you haven't updated your status in 30 days, you're gone. After all, it's not like I'm missing anything anyway - and 140 characters in 30 days is not exactly onerous.

2. You do tweet - and it's political. There are a few folks I follow that are political types, and for them it's OK, just like the ones that tweet their dinner but who are foodies. But most of the people I follow I do so for different reasons. If you post something every once in a while, or around a pretty important 2008 presidential election campaign, I get it; I'm talking about the folks who are full-blown political hacks (and this is regardless of your actual position on the issues). You don't know as much as you think you do - and when you prove it, I move on.

3. You f---ing tweet like a f---ing sailor. I curse too - and in meatspace I'll peel the paint off your front room if ya want me too. But why waste precious characters on a four-letter word? I won't unfollow you for the odd f-bomb. But I also don't want to follow people for whom that's the most fully developed portion of their vocabulary.

4. You seek to enlist me for your cause - no matter how noble or just. Post the odd tweet once or twice a week? OK. Post 10 tweets a day seeking my assistance to save the ? Off with you. Yes, I have a no soliciting sign on my door, too.

5. You're abusive to others. If you start slagging someone for their stupidity, n00b-ness, sheer evil, idolatry, whatever - you're gone. I get plenty of tweets per day without reading your ranting.

6. All you do is sell. It's a cliche by now that the best selling involves listening. And I post self-serving stuff too. But lots of folks don't post anything BUT sales pitches. ECM vendors, I'm looking at some of you (though you're by no means alone)....Engage me in conversation. I still probably won't buy, but I'll at least give you the benefit of the doubt.

7. You are obsessed with follower numbers. I know there are people who are, and I don't mind the odd mention of them. But the "I'm soooooooo close to 10K followers - only 9,184 to go! Pls RT and follow!" will ensure you lose at least one of your current followers.

8. You don't engage. When I ping someone that has thousands or tens of thousands they follow, I don't really expect a response and I'd be thrilled to get one. But if you follow 22 people, and I ping you a couple of times about something, some type of response is really appropriate. Too long without some acknowledgement and I assume you've stopped following me - and I hasten to return the favor.

9. You post links with no context. Now, this won't get me to unfollow you for a while. But I won't click a link without context unless it's from someone I *really* trust - which is a fairly short list. And with the Twitter API spamming running around, the list is even shorter. And if that's all you post, I get no value from you.

10. You unfollow me or don't follow back. I don't follow everyone that follows me - I get it. But there are very few twitterati out there that are so insightful, valuable, interesting, and original that I'll follow them without reciprocation. Here's the reason: if you don't follow me, I can't DM you. And if you're one of those people that follow, I follow back, and you unfollow, so you "juice" your ratio of following to followers - I will drop you like you're hot.

There are other reasons I'll unfollow you as well, but these are the big ones. Now, if you've done one of these and I unfollowed you, and you wanna get me back, fix what you've done and THEN post a tweet to @jessewilkins. I check that regularly and I will give you the benefit of the doubt. Again. :)