What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been...And What Comes Next

In the fall of 2010, in the heady days of Enterprise 2.0, Atle Skjekkeland of AIIM reached out to me, asking if I knew anyone that fit a new position he was creating. I knew about AIIM, of course - I'd been a member since 2001 when I worked at a small ECM company called IMR and AIIM was the association in our space. I'd also previously served as the President of the defunct AIIM Rocky Mountain chapter, worked on AIIM Standards, and attended and spoken at the annual AIIM conference. I even delivered AIIM's first U.S. public training course, in January 2006, when I was with IMERGE Consulting. 

The position was for a "Director, Systems of Engagement Strategies". The job description he sent me looked like he'd copied it directly from my LinkedIn profile. I suggested to him that I *did* know someone - me. After some discussion, he agreed, and in November 2010 I joined AIIM in that capacity. 

In the nearly 11 years since, I've held 4 additional job titles, all of them focused more or less on training and certification. I helped Atle build the original Certified Information Professional (CIP) certification, which we launched on September 23, 2011. I led the updates of CIP in 2016 and 2019, including updating the exams and developing the CIP Study Guides and the CIP Prep / Foundations of Intelligent Information Management courses. In between, I wrote or updated a number of other AIIM courses, and had the privilege of teaching and sharing with students all over the world. 

Over the last decade I have enjoyed the opportunity to work with some seriously smart people doing important industry things. I'm intensely proud of the nearly 2,000 information professionals that have attained the CIP, and I believe that CIP is the single most important contribution I've made to the industry...so far. 

August 31 marks the end of that chapter of my career. This is by far the longest I've ever spent at a single employer in my professional career, but now it's time to move on. I remain an AIIM member - this year marks 20 years - and I'm AIIM Fellow #223 in perpetuity. 

So what comes next? I have a lot of thoughts. And I'm grateful to everyone for their kind words, and in a number of cases, offers to work together. I'm going to take a couple of weeks to clear my head and really think about what I want out of this next chapter. I know I want to continue to help people in the information management industry. I know I want to continue to help organizations manage their information better because it will make them more successful. I know I want to continue to tell stories and share my thoughts on how we can do what we do better. And I think it's important to do the right things, in the right way, to further that journey. 

I don't yet know whether that means staying in the association space, or going back to consulting, or working for a vendor, or something else. But I do know that I'm excited about the possibilities and that I'm confident I can find an organization that I can help by doing those things. I look forward to this next chapter and can't wait to get started. 

If you need to reach me, you can do so via my permanent email at jwilkins13@gmail.com, or on Twitter at @jessewilkins.