This week marks the return of the AIIM conference in-person. This is my first AIIM conference since 2010 in Philadelphia that I'm not attending as a member of AIIM staff. And of course this will be the first AIIM conference since the world shut down due to COVID. I expect a lot of changes, and it will be interesting to see the final attendance numbers since so many organizations are still shut down for nonessential travel.
With all of that as background, here is my preview of the AIIM22 conference, scheduled for April 27-29 at the Hyatt Regency Convention Center in downtown Denver, CO.
Denver
The weather is looking fantastic - and I predict lots of sunburns! Here's my post on how to prepare for Denver weather. The word of the week is, "layers".
Denver may not have the repution as a "foodie city" that some other cities have, but there are many hidden gems to uncover (and I wrote about some of them as well). We are definitely the place for beer drinkers, with more than 150 breweries just in the Denver Metro area alone.
Masks are not currently required in the City of Denver; I haven't checked with the Hyatt, but I don't think they are required there either. There are likely still some shops, restaurants, etc. that require them as do healthcare providers. I will be bringing a mask with me just in case and strongly recommend that AIIM22 attendees do the same.
General
The conference seems to be scaled down compared to years past. The sponsor prospectus encourages vendors to join 400 information professionals in Denver, which is down significantly from previous years. That's likely a recognition that COVID hasn't completely gone away, nor have the associated travel restrictions. I took a look at the attendees list, though, and it's quite impressive.
The event app is live, as is the Event Hub; unfortunately, the CVent event app doesn't appear to have a way for attendees to network with each other except 1-on-1 messages and scheduled meetings. I vaguely remember the same issue with AIIM20's event app; this is unfortunate and a significant loss to the overall conference experience in my opinion.
Sponsors
Among the 25 sponsors for AIIM22 are many of the industry standardbearers as well as some new names - well, new to me anyway. I did find it interesting that the sponsors include a couple of toolkit providers.
All sponsors have at least one speaking session - more on that in the Content section below.
I haven't heard any scuttlebutt about major announcement, but who knows?
Content
There are a lot of sessions to choose from - more than 90 in total, and a wide variety of types of sessions. From the agenda:
Over the last two years, you've attended plenty of Zoom sessions featuring speakers over PowerPoint. Why would you travel to an in-person conference for the same thing? Our sessions have been crafted to ensure group learning, collaboration, and problem-solving:
Here are some of the types of sessions I'm planning to attend.
- Speed Dating/Networking - groups of attendees with some interest in common get the chance to network and build or deepen relationships. This is my absolutely favorite thing about any conference.
- "Ask Me Anything How I Did It!" - speakers will hold court on a topic with which they have specific experience and expertise
- "I'm Stumped" - speakers will have an opportunity to crowdsource solutions to their pressing problems
- Customer Fireside Chats - these are case studies offered by sponsors and sound like facilitated interviews.
The General Sessions, RoundTables, Customer Fireside Chats, and Solution Showcases are delivered or run by the sponsors. Many of these speakers have deep subject matter expertise across a variety of industries and types and sizes of organizations, so don't be scared off by the fact that it's a vendor-led session.
I'm really interested to see how the closing keynote goes as a CIP panel has been added, comprised of five incredibly smart, talented, and experienced professionals.
Finally, congratulations in advance to the professionals who will be enrolled in the AIIM Company of Fellows during the keynote. And thanks to AIIM for listing the Fellows that will be in attendance in the Event Hub!
Aside: AIIM, can you please put the list of Fellows and recipients of the Order of Merit back on the website, or in the Community, or somewhere?
Open questions
AIIM's gone through a lot of changes in the last 12 months - some good, some ... interesting, and all depending on your perspective. Here are a couple of significant outstanding questions for AIIM - I think both are a possibility to be addressed at AIIM22, but AIIM is still less transparent than they could be so we may not see anything on either.
1. Peggy Winton's replacement as CEO. It's only been 10 weeks since Peggy Winton announced it was time to pass the baton - that's no time at all for finding a replacement for a CEO. However, AIIM didn't post the actual opening or job description until March 25 - with a closing date of March 25. The AIIM website gave a little more time, until April 15, but still. To me that's at least a little suggestive that the search was a foregone conclusion - perhaps the replacement will be someone on staff or someone on the Board of Directors. This is wild speculation, of course, and I have zero insight as to how the search is progressing. But I will not be shocked or surprised if an announcement does come this week.
2. The future of CIP. February was a busy month - AIIM also announced changes to the CIP program including making it an unproctored exam, allowing unlimited attempts to pass, and removing renewal through CEU as an option. I've written a number of blog posts about this, so I won't belabor it here. After significant blowback, AIIM announced that they were reconsidering and that "everything was on the table". They sent out a survey that just closed last week asking CIPs a number of questions about what they wanted to see in CIP.
While I pushed the survey as hard as I could, I doubt they are going to get thousands of responses. I'd think therefore that it should be pretty straightforward to analyze the results, analyze suggestions I and others have made, and announce their plans for CIP at AIIM22.
As I've previously written, the CIP exam has been compromised since the day it went live in an unproctored format, so any changes to return it to a proctored exam require that the exam itself be updated from scratch, and that's not a quick process. If they want the revised CIP exam live by Jan 1, 2023, they need to kick it off soonishly. I'd love to see an announcement to that end at AIIM22.
I plan to have a recap post at the end of the week with my thoughts and observations about the event. I hope the conference meets and exceeds everyone's expectations and that we all come out of it refreshed and excited about the things to come!
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