John Mancini transitioning to new responsibilities at AIIM

Letter sent out today from AIIM:

Jesse,

As trusted, respected and valued members of AIIM, we wanted to make you all aware of some upcoming leadership changes in the organization.

After nearly 20 years as President, John Mancini has requested a transition to a new set of responsibilities at AIIM.  The Board thinks that this transition creates exciting opportunities for AIIM and for John.

John is not going anywhere, nor is he retiring.  He will expand upon his work with AIIM as an evangelist, author, blogger, and keynote speaker.  The new role will free John up to use his extensive knowledge of the industry and content marketing to help individual companies on their marketing strategies and messaging through a new set of advisory offerings and to evangelize the need for information professionals.

Tony Peleska, AIIM Chair and CIO of the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency, has agreed to chair a transition committee.  Peggy Winton has assumed John’s ongoing operating responsibilities as Chief Operating Officer.

We spoke with a number of people as we considered this opportunity, and thought we would share some of those perspectives with you:

John Newton, founder of both Documentum and Alfresco:  “AIIM and the content management Industry are at a critical crossroads. Content management is on the cusp of being something far larger and far more critical to organizations; it is a key enabling technology for the digital transformation that is occurring.  John has a rich understanding of both where content management is and where it is going, and focusing his knowledge on the market rather than on internal operations is a huge step forward.  He knows what works — and more importantly what does not work — when it comes to marketing.  This transition opens up a host of new opportunities for individual companies to capitalize on his knowledge."

Bob Zagami, long-time AIIM member and Fellow and industry advisor:  "Under John’s leadership, AIIM has transitioned from an association known for a large trade show and ever-changing technologies. His leadership has positioned the association for even greater things in the future. We don’t talk technology — we teach solutions. We don’t have a trade show — it’s been replaced by senior level educational conferences. We are a major resource for those who develop effective information management and governance products and services and the consumers who need this information, now more than ever, to stay current and competitive in an every-changing environment in their companies and organizations.”

Allen Podraza, Director of Records Management and Archives at the American Medical Association: “It is critical for AIIM to capitalize on opportunities to expand its visibility with external audiences who are unfamiliar with content and information management.  No doubt that focusing John’s efforts on this external mission will be exciting times for AIIM.  AIIM has always been among the most creative associations in approaching new markets and new opportunities. It is this creativity that ensures AIIM continues to be THE preeminent Association for information management professional now and into the future.”

Alan Pelz-Sharpe, Vice President at the Digital Clarity Group:  "The traditional lines between structured and unstructured information -- which served in the past to separate what was AIIM from what was not AIIM – have become so blurred as to be meaningless.  Content has become so ubiquitous, voluminous, varied, and critical to business processes that it is impossible to separate ‘content management’ as a separate discipline from business processes and applications.  Telling this story to the outside world requires focus and commitment, and freeing John up to focus on this mission is a big step forward for AIIM."

Thornton May, Futurist:  “Less than 1% of 1% of the seven billion humans on this planet excel at information management.  We can do better.  AIIM is now even better positioned to make the lessons learned during the long evolution from records management, through document/image management to content management and beyond affordably accessible to the majority of our species.”

We’re excited about what this means for AIIM and look forward to chatting with many of you about the exciting next chapter for AIIM.  And we hope to see many of you at AIIM16; it will be a great event!