Upcoming Industry Meetings, Webinars, and Podcasts - April 1 - 30, 2022

Here are the industry meetings, webinars, and podcasts I'm aware of for April 1 - 30, 2022. I don't have anything to do with them from a planning perspective, so please reach out to the individual event producers with any questions. I also don't get paid or get anything out of this other than the satisfaction of helping get the word out.  

This listing is for typical 60-120 minute sessions - as you can see, many of these are chapter meetings. I include longer events - half-day or longer - in my newsletter.  

4/2 - ARMA Terra Nova, IM Education and Awareness

4/5 - AIIM, Records Management Coffee & Conversation: The Future of the Practice (members only)

4/5 - Feith, Records Management University Class 4: Sharing and Selling the Value

4/5 - ARMA Milwaukee, Fetch the Future, Rethink the Ink

4/6 - ARMA Triangle, The Value of RIM Program Audits

4/6 - ARMA Saskatechewan and ARMA Calgary - Privacy Considerations for RIM

4/6 - ARMA Seattle, Adapting to Scale: Comparing IG Targets in Large and Small Organizations

4/7 - ARMA Madison, Cloud File Migrations Technologies and Services – What to Look For and Best Practices

4/7 - ARMA, Building a RIM Program from Scratch Part 2 (members only)

4/7 - NAGARA, Why Records & Governance Matter: A Personal Journey

4/7 - MER Sapient, Data Privacy 101 - New Privacy Law Requirements

4/12 - Twin Cities ARMA, Spring Seminar

4/12 - ARMA Central Illinois, ECG and RIM: A Critical Partnership

4/12 - ARMA Northeast Ohio - Establishing a Records Management Audit Program. Email marie_jones@progressive.com for an invitation.

4/12 - ARMA Dallas, Simple Ways to Turn your Records Liaisons into Records Ambassadors

4/12 - ARMA Chicago, Social Networking, Twittering, and Blogging: Considerations for Policy and Management

4/12 - AIIM, Meeting the Challenge - M365: OneDrive Management (members only)

4/12 - MER Sapient, "I Love My Organization’s Records Policies,” said No One 

4/13 - ARMA Saskatechewan and  ARMA Vancouver, Context is Everything - A case study of an Electronic Records Management System (ERMS) project

4/13 - ARMA Toronto, Processing Library and Archives Canada's Largest Private Digital Records Collection

4/13 - ARMA New Jersey, Privacy by Design and IIM/ECM

4/13 - ARMA DC, Metro Maryland, and Northern Virginia Virtual Spring Seminar

4/13 - ARMA Boise, Improving Buy-In to IM Policies

4/14 - ARMA Upstate New York, From IM / Archivist to Risk Manager: How to transform your role to focus on risk management

4/14 - MER Sapient, Long Run Governance: New Ways to Meet Persistent Challenges  

4/14 - ARMA, Building a RIM Program from Scratch Part 3 (members only)

4/14 - AvePoint and 2toLead, The Biggest Microsoft M365 Management Mistakes and How to Solve Them

4/19 - ARMA Greater Kansas City, The Pandemic and the IG Profession

4/19 - AIIM, Meeting the Challenge - Knowledge Management (members only)

4/19 - ARMA Mile Hi Denver, Virtual Spring Seminar

4/19 - ARMA Atlanta, Alexa - Can You Delete My Conversations With You? Contact atlarma@gmail.com for an invitation.

4/19 - ARMA North Dakota, Taking Your IG Program from Great to Exceptional

4/19 - Feith, Records Management University Class 5: Re-Imagining Records Management Value

4/19 - MER Sapient, How are Companies Really Using M365?

4/20 - ARMA Saskatechewan and ARMA Edmonton, Data Governance in an Information Management World

4/20 - ARMA Nebraska,  Spring Seminar

4/20 - AIIM, The Perfect Storm Driving ECM Into the Age of Automation

4/20 - ARMA Southern Califormia Inland Empire - How Does RIM/IG Impact the Selection and Implementation of Technology

4/21 - ARMA St. Louis, A Day in the Life of the Information Manager of the St. Louis Zoo

4/21 - ARMA Indiana - Handling the 7 Deadly Stakeholders. Send an email to msfox@lilly.com for an invitation. 

4/21 - ARMA, Building a Records Program from Scratch Part 4 (members only)

4/26 - ARMA Lexington, Moving Towards Compliance

4/26 - ARMA Florida Gulf Coast, Building Good Organizational Governance to Expand Your RIM Program

4/26-27 - ARMA Houston, Spring Conference

4/27 - ARMA Saskatechewan and ARMA Vancouver Island, From Sludging Through ROT to Embracing Knowledge Management

4/28 - ARMA New England, Blending Empathy and Emotional Intelligence into your Information Governance Career Trajectory

4/28 - ARMA, Building a Records Program from Scratch Part 5 (members only)

If you know of a chapter event, webinar, or podcast during this period that is focused on IM, IG, RM, etc. that's not listed, let me know here or at jesse.wilkins@athroconsulting.com. 

Re: vendor/consultant-led webinars, I know that demos are quite educational, as are customer case studies - but they are generally too narrow (and self-serving) for me to list them. This is irrespective of source; AIIM/ARMA/MER/etc. webinars that are basically sales pitches won't get listed either. MER Sapient-type stuff, or Feith's RMU, are good examples I'm happy to include. If you think yours will pass muster, contact me at jesse.wilkins@athroconsulting.com and let's talk. 

WBT Systems: How Could Your Association’s Learning Business Shape a Better Future for Your Industry?

Fascinating read. I remember doing some, albeit somewhat shorter-timelined, exercises along these lines several years ago. To those who say 10 months out is unreadable, much less 10 years, I'd say the details and the tools are for sure. But if you don't have a published strategy that's a stake in the ground looking further ahead than this quarter's revenues, you're not going to need to worry about 10 years out. 

https://www.wbtsystems.com/learning-hub/blogs/shape-better-future-for-your-industry

Thoughts on AIIM's CIP Town Hall Summary and Survey

Update 4/7: Minor updates including adding a couple of links to blog posts I wrote after this one.

And here is my more in-depth response. I was one of the 64 CIPs who attended the live Zoom meeting and I had previously shared my thoughts about the changes and the CIP town hall itself. I have been unable to locate either the transcript or the recording; if you can find the link, please send it to me at jesse.wilkins@athroconsulting.com and I'll post it. 

Good Afternoon,

Our sincere thanks to the CIPs that have provided feedback through various channels and to the 64 CIPs who joined the recent live meeting via Zoom.

Peggy Winton re-iterated her apologies for not casting a wider and more comprehensive net of feedback from among the CIP community before making the three recent changes to the CIP program: 1) exam proctoring 2) CEU submissions 3) recertification. She explained the business rationale for the changes: to modernize and grow the program by appealing to the next generation of information management professionals. Several trusted and reputable entities have switched to this model based on continuous and pervasive learning with relaxed barriers to the examination process. 

JW: I regularly research certifications in the information management industry, in adjacent industries, and even in completely different ones like human resources. There are no significant exceptions to the former approach of a proctored exam and the ability to renew via continuing education. I'm very curious to know who those trusted and reputable entities are. I'm 100% certain AIIM won't share any names. 

It is the intention of the AIIM staff to continue to develop the CIP curriculum and examination with regular updates. Two members of the AIIM team have been tapped for content development and CIP lifecycle management.

JW: I reached out to AIIM and confirmed that the two are Theresa Resek and Peggy Winton. I wrote about my concerns about that in a separate post. 

Questions and Comments were taken from the meeting participants using the hand-raising feature. All participants desiring to speak were given the opportunity to do so. Their speaking position was automatically assigned by the order in which their hand was raised.

Feedback provided from participants was largely consensual and can be summarized within these key areas:

1. Proctoring. Folks feel strongly that a proctored exam means more to them and their organizations/potential employers because of the perceived rigor and restrictions imposed. There were various suggestions for ways that proctoring might be handled, based on the experience and practices of other organizations. To understand all options, AIIM is in direct communication with the meeting participants who shared their proctoring ideas in this way. JW: I encourage AIIM to make this part of the discussion public ASAP - this is the key issue that has to be addressed in order for CIP to become a certification again. And note that as part of that process, the CIP exam needs to be 100% redone from scratch because it's been compromised since it went live as an unproctored exam. 
2. Recertification. Folks feel that, while the process can be cumbersome, the submission of CEUs provides an alternative to retaking the exam (which carries much angst and trepidation) as well as a justification for attending continuing education programs and events (some of which require fee approval).
3. Folks do have an interest in new course-based learning paths (with certificates of completion awarded) as potential alternatives to a CIP exam re-sit and/or CEUs at some reasonable time intervals. (Those are currently available as part of the AIIM+ Pro subscription). JW: I did not hear this as an alternative to CEUs or resitting the exam. AIIM+ Pro came up in the context of CEUs and I wrote about that in a separate post. 
4. CEU Submission. Folks understand that certain events and activities are more CEU-worthy than others, and they believe that AIIM is within its right to set stricter CEU acceptance parameters accordingly. They acknowledge that the process can only be fully vetted and automated if aligned primarily with AIIM programming and systems. JW: This conversation suggested that AIIM events should be given more CEU weight than non-AIIM events, regardless of their source. Every certification that takes CEUs, which is almost all of them, awards 1 credit per educational contact hour. Of course the topic has to be relevant to the body of knowledge, and there are ways to "vet" or preapprove events or providers, but an hour is a CEU. Not addressed here: finally providing CIPs a way to submit and track their CEUs and status. This is not currently available in AIIM+ Pro either.  
5. Future Readiness. The body of knowledge upon which the exam is based and the exam question set should be updated on a regular basis. Efforts in this regard have begun at the staff level and will be expanded to include select CIP content advisors in this calendar year. JW: I'm not sure now what AIIM means by this. The practice was to update it every 3 years, meaning it should be done in 2022 since the last update went live in June 2019. And as noted above, it has to be done anyway because the exam is compromised. However, they may mean on an ongoing or rolling basis. This is certainly doable as well, though it increases the complexity of the process and possibly the cost as well if it's done the right way. In addition, the point of a certification is that it tests against a body of knowledge, and that body of knowledge should come from a job task analysis. This has *never* been properly done and should be; in turn, this drives the BoK, which then should drive AIIM's content strategy for training and beyond. 

Finally, I think AIIM is still trying to be too clever here, because none of the changes they introduced in February address the single biggest issue with the CIP program: a complete and utter lack of marketing. I've offered a lengthy list of ways to improve CIP, starting with fixing the exam as noted earlier, but if they don't start marketing it, it won't matter. 

AIIM Releases CIP Town Hall Feedback and Survey

Update 4/7/2022: AIIM has clarified that the survey is open through April 20, 2022. 

As with the previous email, posting the email I just received without comment or editing except to keep it readable as a blog post. I'll have a more thorough response as a separate post. 

Good Afternoon,

Our sincere thanks to the CIPs that have provided feedback through various channels and to the 64 CIPs who joined the recent live meeting via Zoom.

Peggy Winton re-iterated her apologies for not casting a wider and more comprehensive net of feedback from among the CIP community before making the three recent changes to the CIP program: 1) exam proctoring 2) CEU submissions 3) recertification. She explained the business rationale for the changes: to modernize and grow the program by appealing to the next generation of information management professionals. Several trusted and reputable entities have switched to this model based on continuous and pervasive learning with relaxed barriers to the examination process. 

It is the intention of the AIIM staff to continue to develop the CIP curriculum and examination with regular updates. Two members of the AIIM team have been tapped for content development and CIP lifecycle management.

Questions and Comments were taken from the meeting participants using the hand-raising feature. All participants desiring to speak were given the opportunity to do so. Their speaking position was automatically assigned by the order in which their hand was raised.

Feedback provided from participants was largely consensual and can be summarized within these key areas:

1. Proctoring. Folks feel strongly that a proctored exam means more to them and their organizations/potential employers because of the perceived rigor and restrictions imposed. There were various suggestions for ways that proctoring might be handled, based on the experience and practices of other organizations. To understand all options, AIIM is in direct communication with the meeting participants who shared their proctoring ideas in this way
2. Recertification. Folks feel that, while the process can be cumbersome, the submission of CEUs provides an alternative to retaking the exam (which carries much angst and trepidation) as well as a justification for attending continuing education programs and events (some of which require fee approval).
3. Folks do have an interest in new course-based learning paths (with certificates of completion awarded) as potential alternatives to a CIP exam re-sit and/or CEUs at some reasonable time intervals. (Those are currently available as part of the AIIM+ Pro subscription).
4. CEU Submission. Folks understand that certain events and activities are more CEU-worthy than others, and they believe that AIIM is within its right to set stricter CEU acceptance parameters accordingly. They acknowledge that the process can only be fully vetted and automated if aligned primarily with AIIM programming and systems.
5. Future Readiness. The body of knowledge upon which the exam is based and the exam question set should be updated on a regular basis. Efforts in this regard have begun at the staff level and will be expanded to include select CIP content advisors in this calendar year.

In order to receive and quantify feedback from the entire CIP community, please take 10 minutes now to let your voice be heard. 

Link to the survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/XGR8XMG

AIIM Removes Access to Old Learning Management System, Transcripts

Update 4/5: Some time this week, AIIM also did something that broke the link. Instead of seeing the message below, the link simply returns an error, "This site can't be reached." Again, no direct communication of this nor, now, any direction as to how to get your transcript - I'd have expected something on the AIIM+ Pro landing page, but no. I also find it odd that the link is still present in the navigation, i.e. Education > My Courses. 

Some time this year, AIIM finally removed access to their old learning management system (LMS). I attempted to access it yesterday to look something up, and the login page has been updated to feature a new message, "AIIM has reimagined our learning delivery and access to this site ceased as of January 22, 2022." I don't know when this access changed, but I am 99+% certain that I accessed it this month - this is the first I'm seeing it and I'm writing about it immediately because of the issues it presents. 

Aside - I find it fascinating that this change was supposedly made more than two months ago, yet the link remains on the AIIM website. Go to https://www.aiim.org, then select Education and then My Courses and you'll be brought to https://learning.aiim.org/login/index.php, with that verbiage. It further notes that "Any questions, or need a transcript of your learning please drop us an email at hello@aiim.org".

None of this is entirely unexpected - AIIM moved to a new LMS with the launch of AIIM+ Pro late last year. What concerns me is that, yet again, AIIM provided zero communication of this change. It's not posted on the AIIM+ Pro page. It wasn't emailed out. AIIM didn't even tweet about it. 

Why does this matter? Because the old LMS was where your CIP certificate was. It is where your other certificates and dates were. For some CIPs, it was where your CEUs were listed, though likely inaccurately because the upload was a manual upload and a snapshot in time sometime early in 2021. If you didn't already download them, you no longer have access to them. And because AIIM didn't make any announcement about this before it happened, you may not have. 

Now, as noted above and on the old LMS login page, you can send an email to hello@aiim.org to request a transcript. I had gone through this process in February and received the image at the end of this post embedded into an email. I did it again today to make sure I was following the process, and the transcript was text copied into the body of the message, and included a few more fields as well. Since the email came from an aiim.org domain, maybe someone would accept it as proof of learning? 

I also wonder whether AIIM can get to the certificates at all, and if so, how willing they will be to go through whatever the process requires to get them and email them to individual students. I requested my CIP certificate, and that was provided; when I asked about the others, the response was, "As you know we’ve always asked customers to download their certificates for their records." I don't have any of my old award emails so I don't know what they say/said. The current LMS does send out an email saying that "Your certificate is ready for download", but I wouldn't say that that is equivalent. But this response suggests that they can't, and I wonder whether my CIP certificate was actually generated upon receipt of my request. 

More importantly, how is it OK in 2022 for the "Association for Intelligent Information Management" to require an email query, and presumably a manual, staff-generated response, for what was previously available to individual students via a self-service portal? This feels like yet another step backwards. 

Here's my "transcript" from the old AIIM LMS. Some things were assigned CEUs in the LMS, most weren't, so the accuracy here is more in the course names, dates, and "Passed". 

ISO Committee Shares Insights on Working Remotely

The ISO TC46 SC11 Ad Hoc Group 6 has released a white paper on RIM issues associated with working remotely. The 6-page white paper, titled "Insights on Records Management Challenges While Working Remotely", is available at https://committee.iso.org/sites/tc46sc11/home/news/content-left-area/news-about-standarization-in-t-1/committee-shares-insights-on-wor.html. 

AIIM+ Pro and the CIP

Update 3/25: I'm not sure whether AIIM is recording AIIM22 sessions; if not, they obviously wouldn't be available to be added to the AIIM+ Pro catalog. 

Update 5/23: Added current figures, timings, and CEU totals. 

One of the topics that came up on AIIM's CIP Town Hall on March 18 was the possibility of allowing CIPs to renew using CEUs again. That topic led to a discussion of AIIM+ Pro, AIIM's new approach to training. In this post, I will explore why I think AIIM+ Pro isn't the right approach for CEUs, at least as currently implemented. 

I have an AIIM+ Pro membership, and everything in this post reflects my interacting with it on an ongoing basis since early February. 

First, let me start by noting that it is a massive improvement to the look & feel to the old AIIM training. If you haven't taken a look at AIIM training in a while, since the old "death by PowerPoint", it really is night & day difference. So kudos to AIIM, and in particular Peggy Winton, Georgina Clelland, and Theresa Resek, for an exceptional reimagining of AIIM's training offerings. 

However, from a CIP's point of view, AIIM+ Pro doesn't really meet the need for CEUs from a couple of different perspectives - at least by itself. First, and most significantly, at present the content consists of: 

• The reimagined learning modules. These are a synthesis of the best of the preexisting AIIM content - courses like Foundations of Intelligent Information Management, Modern Records Management, Business Process Management, and Taxonomy & Metadata. So while there are likely nuggets of value here & there, the CIP exam covers all of these areas already and it's reasonable to expect a CIP to be familiar with most of them. There is new content coming - but is new content going to be added regularly enough to make it a reasonable ask for CIPs for CEUs? 60 CEUs over 3 years = a lot of courses to be developed. 
• Update 5/23: 
• No new educational content has been added since I wrote the original post, though there have been some tweaks to learning paths etc. 
• There are 29 educational courses, with durations ranging from 20 - 60 minutes and an average of 32 minutes. Since most certifications award 1 CEU per educational contact hour, calculating by the average gives 14.5 CEUs, while using the exact timings gives 16.0. (I can't get timing for 4 of them as they still show "new" instead of the duration. Calculating them at 30 min each.)
• AIIM21 conference sessions. If a CIP didn't go to conference, or even did but didn't attend all the sessions, there is some valuable content here. I don't know whether AIIM plans to record the AIIM22 sessions, but if so I'd expect that they'd be added sometime after conference.
• The CIP Study Guide. If you're a CIP, you should already have this and be sufficiently familiar with it that I don't think this is a value-add from a CIP CEUs perspective. 

In other words, much of the content currently in AIIM+ Pro wouldn't be that suited to the purpose of CIPs' continued professional growth and development.  

In addition, the way in which CEUs are currently tracked is also problematic in a couple of different ways. First, CEUs are awarded arbitrarily, something Peggy explicitly identified as an issue with the previous approach. 

• Every item completed is awarded 1 CEU, irrespective of its duration. So the "Introduction to Creating, Capturing and Sharing Information" course, which is listed in the AIIM+ interface as 2 minutes long, is worth 1 CEU. CEUs for CIP, and most certifications, generally track at 1 CEU per contact hour of educational content. 
• Every item completed is awarded 1 CEU, whether it's technically educational content or not. I have completed 4 of the learning paths, and the certificate awarded for each learning path is itself worth 1 CEU as shown in the screenshot below. 

• Every item completed is awarded 1 CEU, irrespective of how long you took to complete it. As a test, I just completed the How to Improve Information Security course. It's listed in the interface at 20 minutes. I timed it, and from open to completion it took me about 1:30 to do it. But I still got 1 full CEU for it. 
• As of May 23, I have completed all learning paths, all learning courses, all 11 of the CIP Study Guide sessions, and one AIIM21 webinar. The interface shows me as having completed 55 courses; the CEUs are not summed, and 1, Introduction to Digitalizing Information-Intensive Processes, is listed at 0 CEUs. If I add up all the "1 CEU" messages as shown in the screenshot, AIIM shows me as having 54 CEUs. 

Next, any AIIM content that isn't in the LMS - webinars, the AIIM conference, etc. is not tracked in the LMS. In years past, AIIM awarded a set amount of CEUs for an in-person conference - say, 12.5 - based on the combined length of the educational session days, so having a set amount of CEUs might skirt that issue. But I couldn't find any way in the interface to add them. If the answer is to have AIIM do it on your behalf, that seems like going back to the same issues AIIM had identified with the previous process in terms of both the customer experience and staff resource requirements. 

There is no non-AIIM content tracked. This makes sense of course - but if AIIM does go back to doing CEUs, they cannot limit them to just AIIM content. I mean, they can, but that's a terrible approach and one that would be significantly outside the norms of certifications and CEUs. And again there is no way to upload non-AIIM CEUs at present. 

There is no indicator for any previously submitted CEUs, so if you already submitted some, or even all, you needed for renewal, they aren't listed here. I know Peggy said that everything is on the table, but I think this is going to take some thinking through in order to not alienate the CIPs who neared or met the requirements as well as concerns about those who hadn't or won't. 

There's no indicator for when your CIP is due for renewal. As I noted in a previous post, AIIM is currently relying on its records to send you an email allowing you to retake the CIP exam a few weeks or months before your renewal date. 

And there's no CIP certificate, or badge, or any way for you to know whether your CIP is active or not. 

Maybe some of these are configuration issues where something just needs to be enabled that hadn't been because CEUs for CIP were going away. But the other issues, around non-LMS content, still need to be addressed. And this only matters if CEUs for renewal return. 

One last thought. Currently, CIP renewal via exam is $135 for members and $150 for non-members. This is also what it cost to do CEUs-based renewal before the February changes. However, in order to use AIIM+ Pro, CIPs *also* would have to pay the AIIM+ Pro subscription fees of $49/month or $490/year. Over the course of 3 years, that works out to $1,470 if the CIP maintained it the entire time PLUS the member renewal fee of $135, for a total cost over 3 years of $1,605. That's an expensive certification to maintain. 

AIIM's CIP Townhall - My Thoughts and Takeaways

AIIM held a town hall today to discuss the recent changes to CIP. Outgoing AIIM President Peggy Winton noted that there were two major topics in scope for the town hall - proctored vs. unproctored exam and retesting vs. CEUs. Originally scheduled for 45 minutes, it ended up going close to double that and frankly probably could have continued. 

Update: I want to thank Peggy and AIIM for holding this, for giving the CIP community an opportunity to weigh in, and for staying on significantly past the scheduled ending time. 

I will post a link to the video and/or transcript once they are available, but here are my brief notes and takeaways. 

• AIIM apologized - for the lack of communication. 
• Peggy opened by noting that she'd talked to the AIIM Board and a number of other association people and that she believed this was the right decision. 
• Nobody spoke in favor of taking an exam every three years, even an unproctored one. One person did suggest a combination of CEUs and a retake every 5 years (I think?)….
• There was some consensus around the suggestion to have preapproved providers in order to ensure the quality of CEUs.
• Several speakers noted that PMI, IAPP, etc. have figured out how to balance proctoring and CEUs, ISO 17024 accreditation, etc. in the time of COVID. Those organizations have been ridiculously successful over the last couple of years. Then again, they also had marketing....
• There were a couple of suggestions about how to deal with the "significant number" of CIP candidates who for various reasons can't take a proctored exam online or in person, including using AIIM staff and AIIM community volunteers. The former doesn't scale, not with 14 staff, but as this is an exception, I think it's doable. Having AIIM volunteers do it is a little more problematic from an exam security perspective, but it's not insurmountable I don't think.. 
• Peggy alluded to my post about the exam being compromised twice and was very dismissive of concerns about exam security. 
• Peggy kept referring to CIPs who were grandfathered in and have maintained their CEUs ever since, with the result that they've never taken the actual exam. That list is down to me - and I've taken the exam, beta, proctored, and unproctored - at least a dozen times - and perhaps one other CIP. I can't confirm because I don't have access to those records anymore. But this is a complete non sequitur, yet she repeated it more than once.
• Strategy and marketing were outside the scope of this Town Hall, but one participant did bring up AIIM's apparent lack of strategy towards the end. Peggy did indicate that there was "now" staff ownership of CIP and that things would improve moving forward. I'll be curious to determine who that owner is because from the outside it appears that current staff is pretty well booked doing other things. Still no, nada, zero marketing of CIP. 
• AIIM is going to send out a survey on the two issues identified - what the exam process should look like including proctoring, and what the renewal process should look like. 
• Peggy ended the session with a couple of minutes of discussion about how CIP is a separate stand-alone thing that isn't updated as AIIM+ Pro is, it's out of sync with AIIM's content strategy, etc. There's too much to unpack there for this blog post, but it sounded like she wanted the CIP exam to move to rolling updates. If the exam isn't proctored and doesn't need to be psychometrically defensible, this is a pretty easy thing to do - but in my professional estimation, it misses the point. It also has implications for updating training materials to ensure they remain aligned to the exam. 

My takeaway is that AIIM did not anticipate this amount of blowback, but still doesn't understand that it's not just the lack of communications. 

I didn't hear any willingness to go back to a proctored exam. I do think they might be willing to go back to CEUs as an option, though Peggy seemed strongly inclined to limit CEUs from outside AIIM and mentioned AIIM+ Pro a number of times as the path forward. I wrote a separate post addressing the AIIM+ Pro subscription as a CEU mechanism. 

Without a proctored exam, the CIP remains a weird hybrid - it's a certificate program that requires ongoing maintenance. This is the Hubspot model, which Peggy cited, but it flies in the face of literally every other certification in the information management/information governance industry. I'm not prepared to believe that AIIM is smarter than PMI, CompTIA, Microsoft, IBM, ASAE, IAPP, ISACA, ISC(2), and the list goes on for a while. 

At this point I see no indication that AIIM will change back to a proctored exam, at least while Peggy remains in place. I don't know the extent to which the rest of AIIM's senior management backs that specific decision, but if CIP is to be successful, the next CEO needs to make that change, the required development of a non-compromised exam, and an actual strategy and marketing plan, the top priorities. If this doesn't happen, I predict that CIP numbers will drop precipitously and AIIM will be left with no choice but to end it. 

The Information Management Menu - March 2022

The latest edition of my newsletter, The Information Management Menu, is now available at https://mailchi.mp/6c50f4b2f3b9/the-information-management-menu-march-2022. This issue features lots of events; new announcements from ARMA, the ICRM, and ISO; and lots of discussion about AIIM's changes to the CIP program, including your chance to weigh in on March 18.  

You can subscribe using the big blue button at the bottom; I will only ever use your email to send you the newsletter, and you can unsubscribe whenever you like. 

Comments or suggestions? Contact me at jesse.wilkins@athroconsulting.com. 

A Tale of Information Management - the United States Postal Service

Last week, while I was away from my home office, the United States Postal Service attempted to deliver a letter to me that required a signature. I wasn't home, so they left a slip in my mailbox. 

As you can see, the slip includes instructions on how to schedule a redelivery, either by scanning a QR code or by going to https://usps.com/redelivery. There's a 16-digit (4 x 4) article number below that. I went to the website, and it's a four-step process. 

Step 1: Check if redelivery is available for your address. I entered my address, NOT as shown on the slip, but as an actual address. More on that in a minute. I spelled out "Street", and I didn't use a ZIP+4 ZIP code, but when I clicked the Check Availability button, the page refreshed, the address was reformatted to all caps and with "ST" instead of "Street", and the ZIP code had also been updated to the ZIP+4. 

Step 2: Select packages for redelivery. The instructions, verbatim: "Enter a tracking or barcode number shown on the back of your PS Form 3849, We ReDeliver for You! All packages in a single Redelivery request must be associated to the same PS Form 3849."

It asks you to enter a Tracking or Barcode Number; the slip identifies my letter as an Article Number as noted above. I entered the code, both as a 16-digit number and as 4 4-digit numbers. Either way, when I clicked the magnifying glass to search for the number, I got an error, "The address entered for this tracking number does not match the original delivery address. See FAQs

To send the package to a different address than the original delivery address, please use Package Intercept. To modify the Redelivery address, go back to Step 1 and select Edit." I also tried the QR code, which took me to the same form and produced the same results. 

At the top of that error, there was a tracking number listed, a 20-digit code with no resemblance to the one I entered. 

Needless to say, Step 3 and Step 4 were right out. 

Next, I tried the Package Intercept. Both the original article number on the slip and the tracking number generated in Step 2 were unable to be intercepted for any of a number of vague and vaguely technical reasons. 

So I went back to Step 2 and the FAQs. I copied my error, "The address entered for this tracking number does not match the original delivery address" and, sure enough, there was an entry for that. The explanation for that error was, "Redelivery cannot be requested because the original tracking number does not match the original address." Very, very helpful....

I mentioned the address above. On the slip, the entirety of the address hand-printed on the slip was "Street number street name", e.g., "123 main". No street, no city, no state, no ZIP. 

As of now, there is no way for me to schedule a redelivery because whatever address the USPS has for me, for this letter, is not the same as my standard mailing address nor as the USPS-reformatted one. I thought literally the entire point of ZIP+4 was to identify an actual street address (or PO Box), yet that seems to be failing me here.  

How does this relate to information management? Metadata. Again, the USPS is relying on metadata to identify me and confirm that I am entitled to this letter. However, something is off between what they have in this confirmation system and what their master addresses list shows and uses. I know they have a very sophisticated approach to address recognition - have you SEEN some peoples' handwriting in addressing envelopes? - yet it's failing here for what has to be an absolutely simple, yet unforeseen, reason. 

Upcoming Industry Meetings, Webinars, and Podcasts - March 16 - April 15, 2022

Here are the webinars and podcasts I'm aware of for March 16 - April 15, 2022. I don't have anything to do with them from a planning perspective, so please reach out to the individual event producers with any questions. I also don't get paid or get anything out of this other than the satisfaction of helping get the word out. 

That said, help me help you: put the relevant information someplace I can find. Put the date & time in the description. It's easier to give people a registration link than to ask them to email someone, especially at work. Zoom will let you do this - if you're not sure how, drop me a note. 

Aside: I see a couple of multi-chapter presentations. If you're a small chapter struggling to find speakers, consider partnering with other chapters. Don't limit yourselves to just your association - I used to see joint AIIM/ARMA meetings all the time, as well as ARMA/IIMC, AIIM/PMI, etc. Note also that multi-chapter presentations don't have to be within the same state, region, etc. 

3/16 - ARMA Nebraska, Classify All the Things: Harnessing Artificial Intelligence for Records

3/16 - ARMA New Jersey, Digitization: Navigating the Pandemic in Virtual and Remote Environments

3/16 - ARMA Toronto, Managing Information Repositories and Being Litigation Ready

3/16 - ARMA Vancouver, How to Implement Social Media Governance

3/16 - ARMA Golden State, Managing My Email, My Employers and My Own

3/16 - ARMA Southern California Inland Empire, Go from Good to Great, from Great to Exceptional! It's All About the Soft Skills

3/16 - ARMA Greater Washington DC, Developing Smarter Processes Opens Door to Cognitive Skills

3/16 - ARMA Pittsburgh, Design Thinking - Digital Mailroom and Records Room Design

3/17 - ARMA Utah, 2022 Spring Seminar, Setting New Records by Leading Through Change

3/17 - ARMA Triangle and ARMA Madison, RIM Implications of Legal Holds & Litigation

3/17 - ARMA Detroit and ARMA Mid-Michigan, Office 365 - Developing Retention Rules With Your Users

3/17 - ARMA Greater Columbus, Governing Pervasive Content Sprawl

3/18 - AIIM, CIP Town Hall (members only)

3/22 - ARMA San Antonio, What Does AI Have to Do with Records Management?

3/22 - AIIM, AIIM+ Canada - Digital Transformation Canada (members only)

3/22 - ARMA Legal Industry Group, An Overview of Privacy and Cybersecurity Laws and How These Might Affect the Legal Industry (members only)

3/22 - ARMA Hawaii, Information Security Within Microsoft 365

3/22 - ARMA Northern Virginia, Intro to the Metaverse

3/22 - ARMA Florida Gulf Coast, IG and Privacy Management

3/22 - Feith, Records Management University Class 3: Showing the Value

3/23 - ARMA Houston, Let's Dive Venn - Overlap to Optimize

3/23 - AIIM True North, Key Steps to Optimize Processes for Digital Transformation

3/24 - Austin ARMA, A Deeper Dive into Digital Forensics, eDiscovery, and the Proliferation of Data

3/24 - ARMA, System Hardening: Defending Against Common Malware Tools & Living-off-the-Land Techniques

3/24 - Iron Mountain, Where Virtual Meets Reality: The Metaverse, Your Data and You

3/30 - AIIM Southwest, Artificial Intelligence and Information Governance

3/31 - ARMA New England, It's 2 A.M. - Do You Know Where Your Information Is? 

3/31 - ARMA, Building a RIM Program from Scratch Part 1 

4/5 - AIIM, Records Management Coffee & Conversation, The Future of the Practice (members only)

4/5 - Feith, Records Management University Class 4: Sharing and Selling the Value

4/6 - ARMA Triangle, The Value of RIM Program Audits

4/7 - ARMA Madison, Cloud File Migrations Technologies and Services – What to Look For and Best Practices

4/7 - ARMA, Building a RIM Program from Scratch Part 2 

4/7 - NAGARA, Why Records & Governance Matter: A Personal Journey

4/12 - Twin Cities ARMA, Spring Seminar

4/12 - MER Sapient, "I Love My Organization’s Records Policies,” said No One 

4/12 - AIIM, Meeting the Challenge - M365: Holistic M365 Strategy, OneDrive Management (members only)

4/14 - ARMA Upstate New York, Digital Transformation Realities and Challenges to Traditional IM and Archivist Roles Focusing on Risk Management

4/14 - MER Sapient, Long Run Governance: New Ways to Meet Persistent Challenges  

4/14 - ARMA, Building a RIM Program from Scratch Part 3 

If you know of a webinar, podcast, or chapter-type event during this period that is focused on IM, IG, RM, etc. that's not listed, let me know here or at jesse.wilkins@athroconsulting.com. 

Re: vendor/consultant-led webinars, I know that demos are quite educational, as are customer case studies - but they are generally too narrow (and self-serving) for me to list them. This is irrespective of source; AIIM/ARMA/MER/etc. webinars that are basically sales pitches won't get listed either. MER Sapient-type stuff, or Feith's RMU, are good examples I'm happy to include. If you think yours will pass muster, contact me at jesse.wilkins@athroconsulting.com and let's talk. 

Is Your Association Ready to Offer Credentialing?

Ernie Smith, writing for Associations Now: Is Your Association Ready to Offer Credentialing? Very timely given the recent changes to AIIM's CIP. 

Actionable Ideas for the CIP

Per the request in AIIM's CIP Town Hall registration confirmation, here is my starting list of "actionable ideas" to restore and improve the CIP. These are not new; I submitted almost all of these to AIIM in July 2021 as part of a broader "AIIM Learning Vision", and many of them I had submitted as early as 2014. 

I have sanitized them to remove any non-public information I'd included in that internal document. They are not necessarily in a particular order, other than the last one, and some of them, such as creating a model job description, likely meet more than one goal. 

Update 3/13: There's a logical question here - if I'd already submitted these, why didn't they happen? Some did, for a time. Some required marketing - the same marketing that, more than a month after the "announcement" (still not on the blog, still don't think it got sent out to everyone), STILL has yet to do a single thing in support of the "new" CIP program. Some just required more manpower than AIIM had - when I left, AIIM was down to 14 staffers and nobody owned CIP. Not sure who owns it at present and wouldn't be surprised if the answer is, "Nobody." 

Also 3/13: Did some other light editing as well, mostly adding links and a mention of the U.S. G.I. Bill certification. 

Part 1: Ideas to Improve the CIP Exam and Program

• Change the exam back to being a proctored exam. This in turn requires....
• Start the CIP exam update process. It's a minimum of 6 months to go from a standing start to a live exam, but none of these other ideas matter until the CIP exam is restored to a formal, proctored exam. As I wrote in another post, the day it was delivered as an unproctored exam, the CIP exam was compromised and it has to be assumed that all of those questions are going to be available on cheating cheater brain dump sites. Include solution providers in the exam update process. 
• Revert the renewal changes to allow CIPs to renew through retaking the then-current exam or through continuing education at their option. Focus on communicating the need for CEUs and how AIIM (and other) events can help CIPs meet those needs. Automate the reporting of AIIM-sponsored CEUs and continue to allow CIPs to report non-AIIM CEUs.

I think AIIM should also consider further formalization of the program: 

• Get the CIP accredited under ISO 17024 or NCCA guidelines. This will not be a game changer in terms of acceptance and uptake, but it will influence some decisions at the margins, and it will make it much harder for a future AIIM management team to make such arbitrary changes to the program in the future. 
• Consider adding a Code of Ethics to the CIP program. This will acknowledge the importance of ethics in information management, which in turn reaches privacy, security, and many other individual areas of practice. 
• Consider adding a formal experiential requirement. While CIP currently recommends 5+ years of experience, tightening the requirements up to require at least some documentation and within a certain time frame prior to taking the exam would further underscore that CIP's not just a money grab, but reflects real value to the CIPs and their organizations. 
• I don't think that AIIM should require formal education - I think for many jobs in our industry, including some quite senior ones, a college degree is a waste of time, energy, and money.

Part 2: Ideas to Raise the Visibility of the CIP Program 

The intent is to get people talking about CIP, to have answers to common questions available, and to make the case for the value of CIP as a certification to the AIIM community - and beyond that community to people who work with information but who have never heard of AIIM. 

• Learn how to market CIP. I have said literally dozens of times including to Peggy Winton, Georgina Clelland, and Tony Paille, individually and at staff meetings, that if AIIM marketed the relaunched AIIM annual conference like it did CIP, there never would have been a second one. I'm not a marketer, so I don't know the specifics of what this should entail, but it's clear that whatever AIIM has, or, rather, has not, been doing since 2011 is not working and has never worked. 
• Develop a syllabus for information management that can be incorporated into library science, IM, RM degree programs. 
• Work with those types of institutions to facilitate students' access to the CIP exam, either through vouchers or even by administering the proctored exam. Many project management programs do this with the PMI PMP. 
• Renew the U.S. G.I. Bill certification and make sure those types of institutions know about it. 
• Develop a physical study guide that can be marked up and highlighted, that doesn't require internet or batteries, etc. Get an ISBN number. Get it listed on Amazon. People will buy it. 
• Develop a body of knowledge, including a physical one, for the same reasons. 
• Put the CIP registry back on the website, or in the community, or somewhere that it is visible and available. (While AIIM is at it, put the Fellows and Award of Merit awardees back on the website or community as well.)
• Develop a press release template CIPs can use to announce their certification. 
• Develop a graphic template that AIIM can use to announce new CIPs and that CIPs in turn could use for their own social media marketing. Cf. ACEDS, CIGOA. 

Part 3: Ideas to Improve the CIP Program's Value to the Industry

These are ideas to identify and communicate the benefits of having CIPs on staff. 

• Develop a job description or list of knowledge, skills, abilities, and tasks that CIPs bring to their organizations to be successful. This is an almost direct outcome of the job task analysis. This would also help to address the argument that “there is no such thing as an information professional”. There wasn’t an industry-neutral “project management professional”, either, until PMI created it. 
• Develop a number of value propositions for getting the CIP. I’d previously written some of these for end user organizations, sales organizations, and individual CIPs. Update these, and add more for specific roles: consultants, presales/sales engineers, sales reps, information stewards, LOB professionals in information-centric roles like HR or finance, etc. 

Part 4: Ideas to Improve the CIP Program's Value to Individual CIPs

In other words, reward CIPs for getting and maintaining their CIP status. Ideas here include but are not limited to: 

• Develop a job board that lists jobs that require or prefer CIPs. There are dozens of these open at any given time. 
• Develop CIP-only content - ebooks, infographics, webinars. 
• Work with CIPs to develop high-value educational content for the broader AIIM community
• Develop a CIP-only and/or CIP-developed peer networking event. The annual confab exclusively for CIPs. Small in-person events, probably a single annual event at first. Maybe sponsored; maybe sponsors have to have CIPs on staff, and sponsor sessions have to be led by a CIP.
• Implement physical fulfillment for new CIPs: T-shirts, pins, nice, printed certificates.
• Offer CIP swag. Branded stuff for CIPs to show off. Mugs, lapel pins, T-shirts, polos, backpacks, etc. Land’s End-type stuff. Again, physical fulfillment, but handled by Land's End-type company. 
• Develop a "Letter to Your Boss" template so CIPs can communicate to their organizations the value that CIP will bring to them.

Part 5: Ideas to Have Others Promote, Sell, and Deliver CIP On AIIM's Behalf

As the title suggests, these are ways to have other people doing the heavy lifting of promoting CIP, and, by extension, AIIM. 

• Develop partnerships with adjacent associations. SHRM for HR, ACEDS for eDiscovery, IAPP for privacy, etc., with a focus on “here’s what YOU do, here’s how effective IM supports that, CIPs are the change agents.” Short-term, it’s leveraging their SMEs and resources to make the CIP exam and supporting materials better; maybe CIPs (or AIIM members) also get access to their member-only resources and vice versa. Longer-term maybe there’s a CIP/Privacy certification – or a CIPP/IM one that IAPP offers in partnership with AIIM. 
• Develop an accredited trainers program. Charge for a train-the-trainer session, and then those CIPTs - CIP Trainers - can develop their own materials or license them from AIIM. 
• Develop a reseller program so that other training companies, consulting firms, etc. can make some money, or exam vouchers, or etc. from promoting and selling CIP training and exams. 
• Develop partners that can deliver localized CIP training and can verify the efficacy of a localized exam. You wouldn't necessarily want the partners to localize the actual exam due to security considerations, but it could be considered on a case-by-case basis. 

Part 6: A Crazy Idea - Sell the CIP to Me! 

If AIIM is unable or unwilling to support CIP and make it successful, sell it to me and I'll do it. I think there are a lot of ways to do this, ranging from AIIM simply selling it to me outright, to some sort of revenue share. I'll take the risks, I'll pay for the exam development, I'll market it, and I'll and make it what it could have been and what it should be. 

I have no idea whether AIIM would even entertain such an idea, or what it would look like, but I am a certified credentialing professional with program development experience with CIP (2011, 2016, 2019), two separate vendor training and accreditation programs, CompTIA's legacy CDIA+ program, and the former TAWPI's legacy Information Capture Professional program. The CIP would be in good hands. 

In case it's not clear, the care and feeding of a certification is a full-time job - in fact, as it becomes more successful it's probably more than one person. For CIP to be successful, AIIM needs to have a person full, 100%, completely focused on CIP. They do not have that now and they never had that when I was running the program either. At least if they sell it to me, or do some sort of revenue sharing arrangement with me, they'll get that. 

AIIM Schedules CIP Town Hall Meeting on March 18

Update 3/15: AIIM sent out an email announcing the Town Hall. Not sure who it was sent to, but here's the direct link to register for it: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAtceGorTMpGtdDqbXS7GwoaHbFrZBUvYg5

In response to significant blowback from their decision to turn the CIP into a certificate program, including at least one public conference registration cancellation, AIIM has announced it is holding a CIP Town Hall on March 18, 2022. So far it has not been announced via email, but only through an AIIM Community post and event listing, meaning that only AIIM+ members can register and attend. 

The post announcing the town hall reads, "Our recent changes to the CIP Program relating to exam testing and CEU submission has resulted in some passionate responses.

We would like to invite you to join AIIM President, Peggy Winton, for a CIP Town Hall to discuss the reasoning for these changes, and together to share some solutions and ideas to grow the certification for the benefit of every CIP.

This 45 minute Town Hall will be hosted on Friday March 18th at 11:30 AM (EST).

 

Your opinion counts & we want to hear from you!"

When I registered, I received confirmation that includes this line: "Thank you for registering for AIIM CIP Town Hall: discuss the recent programmatic changes and elicit actionable ideas for improvement. You can find information about this meeting below."

I have some thoughts on actionable ideas for improvement - most of which I submitted before leaving AIIM - which I put together in this post: http://informata.blogspot.com/2022/03/actionable-ideas-for-cip.html. 

But for AIIM+ members who wish to participate in the town hall, you can find the event on the home page of the community. If you have thoughts you wish to share, you can also add them to the long post titled, "Any CIP Mentors Out There?" You can also send it to me and I can add it anonymously. 

Blog Recommendation: Deirdre Reid

Deirdre Reid writes in a number of places, but the one I'm going to recognize here is her home blog, Reid All About It. She was one of the inspirations for my own newsletter and list of industry events. Her weekly roundup, Association Brain Food Weekly, is a mix of association industry announcements and resources - but much of the content is applicable outside the association space as well. 

And as a bonus, she throws a couple of recipes or cooking tips into each one - I think I need to steal, err, repurpose, that on The Menu! 

Read her blog, and subscribe to it as I did, at https://deirdrereid.com/.

Blog Recommendation: Haissam Abdul Malak

The next blog I'm happy to recommend is Haissam Abdul Malak's Information Management Simplified. He's a fairly regular blogger and tends to write longer, in-depth articles covering the entirety of information management. His posts come in bursts every couple of weeks. 

Visit Haissam's blog at https://theecmconsultant.com/.

Blog Recommendation: WBT Systems

My next featured blog is from a solution provider in the learning management and association space. WBT Systems' Association Learning Blog covers learning thoroughly, from a largely association perspective, but many of their posts have broader applicability. For example, a recent post called "Keep the Conference Buzz Going with a Year-Round Learning Community" would apply equally as well to a solution provider's annual event. And their post on "5 Lessons from Online Education Pioneers That Will Improve Your Association's Online Courses" are a fit for any organization that offers online learning. 

Some of their posts have some light references to their capabilities, but I've been reading this blog for years, and have reposted some of their posts elsewhere on Informata because I've found them so valuable. What little bit of marketing/selling they do in these posts is more than acceptable to me because the content is just so good. I regularly hold up WBT Systems' blog as an approach all solution provides could and should emulate. 

Visit their blog, and optionally filter for particular topics, at https://www.wbtsystems.com/learning-hub/blogs.

InfoGovWorld Announces Call for Speakers for InfoGovWorld 2022

InfoGovWorld has opened its call for speakers for InfoGovWorld 2022, scheduled for September 29-30, 2022, online. Proposals are due by April 10, 2022. 

For additional details or to apply speak, visit https://infogovworldexpo.com/call-for-speakers/

Blog Recommendation: Karl Melrose

I've decided to start calling out good blogs and introducing them to my audience. Most of them are good enough that when I see new posts from them, I stop what I'm doing to read or at least load them in a browser tab. 

Some are written by end users, some by consultants, and some by vendors, but what they all have in common is that they are educational, not self-promoting, and that they are reasonably regular in their posting schedules.

On that first point, a little self-aggrandizement is not such a bad thing - in moderation - but I'm not going to link to blogs that tout "XYZ Solution" or "The Patented ABC Methodology" or that are written to lead you to their services. If you want to find those on your own, enjoy...?

So. The first one I want to highlight is Karl Melrose and his Meta-IRM Substack. As he notes in his About page, 

This blog started life as my attempt to understand the significant questions I had about information and records management.

I still have questions, but I also have a point of view now about what has gone wrong for records management.

This blog is about those questions, and that point of view.

His posts are generally short and to the point, and always provoke thought. Visit Karl's blog at https://metairm.substack.com/.