December 31, 2022

Upcoming Industry Meetings and Webinars, January 1 - 31, 2023

Here are the webinars and local events I'm aware of for January 1 - 31, 2023. 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 to get the word out.  

1/5/2023 - AIIM+, Records Managers Coffee & Conversations: Blockchain in Information Management (members only)

1/5/2023 - NAGARA, Charting the Course(s): Records Management Education for Target Audiences

1/5/2023 - ARMA Triangle, The Impact of the Digital Age in Archives

1/10/2023 - ARMA Twin Cities and ARMA North Dakota, Go from Good to Great, from Great to Exceptional

1/10/2023 - ARMA Chicago, Records Policy Writing

1/10/2023 - ARMA Northeast Ohio, Metadata Matters. Please reach out to Eileen Cook eileencook@westfield-bank.com to receive a meeting link/invite.

1/10/2023 - ARMA Dallas, New Year Social and Tour

1/10/2023 - AIIM+, Meeting the Challenge - M365: Sensitivity Labels in Purview (members only)

1/10/2023 - MER Sapient and Contoural, How to Protect Data Under Legal Hold When Applying Automatic Disposition

1/11/2023 - DGPO, Business Value Assessment to Identify Data Governance Priorities

1/11/2023 - AIIM, Social Networks' Impact on Information Management

1/11/2023 - San Diego ARMA, Privacy-enabling Your Retention Schedule

1/11/2023 - ARMA Metro Maryland, How CPSC Prepared for the Pandemic

1/12/2023 - MER Sapient and Shinydocs, The Value of the Current State Assessment of Your Data 

1/12/2023 - ARMA Houston, Holiday Social

1/12/2023 - ARMA Greater Seattle, Taking a Journey Through Our Information Universe

1/12/2023 - IAPP and ObservePoint, Shining a Light on Dark Patterns: Good Marketing vs Consumer Manipulation (members only)

1/17/2023 - ARMA Milwaukee, Modernizing Your Data Retention

1/17/2023 - ARMA Mile High Denver, Building and Sustaining Your RIM Program with a RIM Playbook

1/17/2023 - AIIM+, Meeting the Challenge: Data Literacy (members only)

1/17/2023 - ARMA Central Missouri, What's New and What's Coming for Records Management in Microsoft. For more information, email Lori Grothoff - lgrothoff@orscheln.com

1/17/2023 - IAPP and Cisco, Privacy in the World of Hybrid Work: Solving the Cloud Challenge (members only)

1/18/2023 - ARMA Nebraska, Unstructured Data Management Suspense

1/18/2023 - ARMA Southern California Inland Empire, GIS Data 

1/18/2023 - ARMA New Jersey, Smartphones, Cloud Computing, Mobile Devices, and Ephemeral Storage: How to Prepare Your Organization for the Risks Arising from Different Emerging Technologies

1/18/2023 - Contoural, How to Protect Data Under Legal Hold When Applying Automatic Disposition 

1/19/2023 - ARMA Liberty Bell, The Intersection between Privacy and IG

1/19/2023 - ARMA St. Louis, Archive Cleanup: Ending 20 Years of Status Quo

1/19/2023 - ARMA Detroit, Litigation Holds 101 - What, Why, When, How...

1/19/2023 - ARMA Arizona, Awesome on Your Own Terms: Bypassing burnout & banishing the lie of work/life balance

1/19/2023 - ARMA New England, AI and Machine Learning: How to Apply to RIM

1/19/2023 - ARMA Greater Columbus, We Want to Hear You...And Free Lunch

1/24/2023 - ARMA San Antonio, IGIM v2.0 and IG ISO 24143:2022

1/24/2023 - MER Sapient and Preservica, 300+ Pros Weigh-in: The State of Play of Long-Term Records in Microsoft 365  

1/24/2023 - Practicing Law Institute and Contoural, Creating a Compliant Privacy Data Retention Policy That Avoids Conflicts and Is Easier to Execute (members only)

1/25/2023 - AIIM and Cadence Solutions, Maximizing Templates, eSignatures, and Automated Reminders

1/25/2023 - Austin ARMA, RIM 101 Workshop

1/25/2023 - Austin ARMA, Taking a Journey Through Our Information Universe

1/26/2023 - ARMA Toronto, Virtual Social

1/26/2023 - ARMA Jacksonville, Information Governance: Keep Your Information Assets from Turning Into Liabilities

If you know of a webinar or other local/regional 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

If you're looking for a speaker, I'm available to speak at your chapter or event. For more details, see http://informata.blogspot.com/2022/06/im-available-to-speak-at-your-meeting.html; this post also lists a few other speakers who are available and quite good. I published a separate blog post about how to find speakers and what to look for at http://informata.blogspot.com/2022/06/finding-speakers-for-your-event-part-1.html

December 12, 2022

IGP CEU Opportunities

Update 12/4/2023: All of the ARMA webinars are behind the new LMS, so you'll need to search for them in their bookstore interface, and likely log in with an ARMA account as well, though I don't think you need to be a member. 

It's that time of year for many Certified Information Governance Professionals (IGP). Your 60 CEUs need to be submitted by the end of the year, and if you're like many, a) you've procrastinated and still need a few credits and b) you're not sure where to find some of the less commonplace topics like ethics and risk. I put this post together in the hopes that you may find it helpful as you wrap up your recertification requirements. You can find the details about what's required for renewal here: https://www.arma.org/page/IGP-recertification

Note: If ARMA thinks IGPs need to submit, e.g., 2 hours of ethics, or 4 hours of risk management, I think they need to have at least that number listed and readily available / findable on their website. 

The listings below include free resources from ARMA's website and others to allow IGPs some choice in what to submit for CEUs. I make no claim as to their quality, as I did not sit through every minute of every one of them, but the descriptions seemed like they would be good fits. I also have no relationship with any of these other than standard professional memberships in some of the associations listed. You may need to register to access the webinars, but I didn't link to anything behind a member paywall I don't think. 

There are some vendor-sponsored sessions; I didn't ask their permission to list these and you will likely need to fill in a form to get access. I also limited vendor sessions to no more than 2 per category. If you see something you think should be removed, drop me a note at jesse.wilkins@athroconsulting.com.  

Information Management - 15 hours

Information Security - 4 hours

Privacy - 4 hours

Risk Management - 4 hours

Legal - 4 hours

Technology - 4 hours

Business - 4 hours

Ethics - 2 hours

The remaining 19 hours can come from any of these areas. 

If you know of any other good resources that fit any of these descriptions, please send me a note at jesse.wilkins@athroconsulting.com and I'll add them. 

December 8, 2022

The Information Management Menu - November 2022

The November 2022 issue of my IM/IG/RM-y newsletter, The Information Management Menu, is now live at https://mailchi.mp/1fbadc8f3d9c/the-information-management-menu-november-2022Highlights include:

  • Calls for participation from CompTIA, ARMA Canada, ARMA Houston, and more
  • My recipe for pickle soup(!)
  • Links to my ARMA Magazine article, broken into three separate blog posts
  • Ten conferences and industry events through February 2023
The newsletter is free to subscribe, and I'll only ever use your name and email to send it to you. Listing your announcements or events is also free - as long as they are relevant to me and this audience. For more information about The Menu or anything on it, ping me at jesse.wilkins@athroconsulting.com

December 7, 2022

Make Your Recertification Program Easy on Your Certificants!

TL: DR: Exactly what the title says - make it easier for your certificants to recertify! 

I've written often about the importance of certification maintenance - for example, here's a post I wrote on certifications and renewal requirements last year, which was itself an update to a post from 2017. In a nutshell, I believe that certifications need some sort of regular renewal requirement, to help ensure that certificants stay abreast of changes to the discipline, related technologies, etc. Some organizations require certificants to take the assessment/exam again, others require or allow them to submit continuing education units (CEUs), and some offer the choice. 

When it comes to submitting CEUs, most certifying bodies don't really care where they come from, just that they be applicable and relevant and meet any other requirements such as minimum duration. That said, every once in a while an association will attempt to limit CEUs to just their content, often justifying it because it's unique in some way. This is almost always a ploy to make more money, either directly or indirectly; if you sat in on such a discussion, you'll invariably hear a variation on, "Why would we send people to competitors' websites by accepting their content for CEUs?" I submit that if you look at a certification's recertification requirements and they only accept their own content, it's not a certification that will offer value or long-term relevance and you should look elsewhere. 

Similarly, some certifying bodies offer more credit for their own content, or less credit for someone else's, of similar length, depth, and quality. Again, this is an indicator of a certification that will not remain relevant for long. The overwhelmingly standard approach, at least in the information management industry, is 1 hour of education = 1 point towards the renewal requirements. There are some other nuances, but that's the basic approach. Most certs require 20 points per year of the renewal cycle. So if you look at the points awarded for an event, and they are different depending on the source - for example, your conference awards 3 points per 1-hour session - look for a more relevant and viable certification. 

If you want your certificants to use your events for CEUs, make it easy for them to do so. Several years ago, AIIM added a note to every landing page that says, "This webinar is approved for X.X hours of CIP Maintenance Credits." Simple. And AIIM doesn't require credits in each domain or in different types of content delivery. 

ARMA, on the other hand, does require credits in a variety of areas for its Information Governance Professional (IGP) certification, to wit: 

  • Information Management (15 hours required)
  • Information Security (4 hours required)
  • Privacy (4 hours required)
  • Risk Management (4 hours required)
  • Legal (4 hours required)
  • Technology (4 hours required)
  • Business (4 hours required)
  • Ethics (2 hours required)
  • General (19 hours required)

ARMA does have a list of webinars on their website, but you have to click each individual one to see a) what (one) domain it applies to and b) how many CEUs it's worth. Some of them also cover more than one category; for example, a recent webinar called "Data Retention: The Blind Spot in Your Privacy Program" is listed as 1 CEU in the Risk topic but it would likely apply to the Privacy topic, and perhaps the Technology topic as well. ARMA used to have lists of webinars applicable to each of the 8 specialty topics above, but at some point that was removed from the website. I'd love to see them bring that back. 

I'd also love to see a certifying that "gets it" start listing other organizations' relevant webinars and events for which CEUs would be granted. I don't expect them to go out, check everyone's websites, and update them, but if a certifying body offers review and preapproval of a third party event, I think that event should be listed on their website. I think all of our IG/IM/RM-y associations and certifying bodies are missing a trick by not curating that type of content - heck, I'd be willing to pay for a centralized source that I could use for my privacy certs, and my IG cert, and my RM cert, etc. 

December 1, 2022

Upcoming Industry Meetings and Webinars - December 1 - 31, 2022

Here are the webinars and local events I'm aware of for December 1-31, 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.  

12/1 - IGWorld Magazine and Exterro, Accelerate Your CPRA Compliance Program

12/1 - ARMA Triangle, Unique Challenges of Managing White House Records

12/1 - ARMA Metro NYC-LI, IG/RIM Impact on the Business: Perspectives, Roles and Successes from Different Industries

12/1 - NAGARA, Communications Skills for Records Managers

12/1 - ARMA International, Are Your Risking It All?

12/1 - ACEDS, E-Discovery Day: Exploring the New ISO Standard on Information Governance

12/1 - IAPP and TerraTrue, How to Future-Proof Your Privacy Program (members only)

12/3 - ARMA Vancouver, Winter Social

12/5 - RIMPA Global and Leadership Through Data,  Here's a Flavour of What You Can Do with the EDiscovery Tools

12/6 - ARMA San Antonio, Member & Vendor Social Event

12/6 - ARMA Calgary, Drafting Effective IM and Privacy Policies

12/6 - Austin ARMA, Holiday Social (members only)

12/6 - MER Sapient and Contoural, Applying Records Retention to Structured Data

12/6 - ARMA International and Leadership Through Data, M3S65 Audit and Investigations

12/6 - AIIM+ and Contoural, Coffee & Conversations: CCPA Penalties (members only)

12/7 - ARMA Metro Maryland, Improving Access to Historical Records Through Crowdsourcing

12/7 - Upstate New York ARMA, Records Management Challenges and Lessons Learned. Contact Ted Hanousek at thanousek@bhlawpllc.com

12/7 - ARMA New England, Holiday Networking and Charity Event

12/7 - Contoural, Records University Class 3, Automating Records Management

12/7 - IRMS Islands: DPO, Why You Should Be Worried About Microsoft 365

12/7 - IRMS, The Difference Between Archiving, Preservation, Perpetuation, and Archives

12/7 - IAPP and Exterro, Next Gen Privacy: Breathing Life Into Your Legacy Inventory Process (members only)

12/7 - ACC and Exterro, Lessons from the First CCPA Enforcement: GPC and Beyond (members only)

12/8 - MER Sapient and Archive360, Data Minimization: Making it Part of Your Data Privacy and Cybersecurity Program

12/8 - IRMS, Tackle the Security Risk of Information Sharing at Scale

12/8 - IAPP and BigID, Data Lifecycle: The Path Less Chosen (members only)

12/8 - OneTrust, Mitigating US Privacy Risk to Control your Organization’s Attack Surface

12/12 - RIMPA Global, Rhubarb and Custody: All Talk and No Traction

12/13 - ARMA Mile Hi Denver, So You Want to Spruce Up Your Policy? RIM Policy Creation/Refresh

12/13 - ARMA Dallas, Preventing Employees from Hoarding Electronic Documents

12/13 - ARMA International and Leadership Through Data, SharePoint Fundamentals

12/13 - ARMA Chicago, How Privacy Laws Impact Your Retention Schedule

12/13 - ARMA Madison, "I Love Our Organization's IM Policies," Said No One.

12/13 - ARMA Milwaukee, Building Your RIM Foundation

12/13 - ARMA Northeast Ohio, Stranded Digital Records - What they are and why you should rescue them

12/14 - ARMA Nebraska, Mysteries of Followership/Charity Auction/Alumni Day

12/14 - ARMA NCR Ottawa, Tangibly Operationalizing Information Governance to Reduce Information Risk

12/14 - AIIM International and Microsoft, Redefining Information Management: Integrating Content AI in the Flow of Work

12/14 - Contoural, Records University Class 4, Training and Employee Behavior Change Management

12/15 - Legal IG Roundtable. Contact Leigh Isaacs at leigh.isaacs@us.dlapiper.com for more information. 

12/15 - ARMA Detroit, Establishing a Records Management Audit Program

12/15 - AIIM Florida, Deliver Compliant, Accessible Documents in 3 Easy Steps 

12/15 - ARMA Arizona, Considerations for Treating Data as an Asset in Transactions

12/15 - OneTrust, Privacy and Trust as a Strategic Imperative

12/15 - ARMA International and Cadence Solutions, Microsoft Purview eDiscovery

12/16 - ARMA Greater Sacramento, 24th Annual Christmas Charity Social

If you know of a webinar or other local/regional 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

If you're looking for a speaker, I'm available to speak at your chapter or event. For more details, see http://informata.blogspot.com/2022/06/im-available-to-speak-at-your-meeting.html; this post also lists a few other speakers who are available and quite good. I published a separate blog post about how to find speakers and what to look for at http://informata.blogspot.com/2022/06/finding-speakers-for-your-event-part-1.html 

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 Access Sciences' webinars, 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. No cost to list anything, I just need the details (and for it to meet my criteria for education).