As with so much of what I do, it starts with a spreadsheet. The current version has 4 tabs:
- Overview - this lists the association-y sources for events. My current list includes AIIM, ARMA, RIMPA Global, IRMS, InfoAdvocates, MER, NAGARA, and IAPP.
- AIIM and ARMA Chapters - just what it says. More detail on this below.
- Standing Conferences - this is more for my monthly newsletter.
- Vendors - this tab lists vendors who put on webinars that are highly educational and not sales pitches. It's a fairly short list at the moment and includes Contoural, WesternIM, Meru Data, and the Digital Government Institute. I have a number of other vendors I check periodically, but vendors seem to take pride in making it difficult to find their webinars on their websites, and the ones that do, are almost always either product demos or sales pitches. If you think yours should be on my list, contact me at jesse.wilkins@athroconsulting.com WITH A URL that I can regularly check, e.g., somecompany.com/events. Or put me on your mailing list, but again if I don't think it's educational it won't get listed.
My fortnightly process is as follows:
- Delete all information prior to the date of publication, in this case March 1, 2023.
- Review my personal and work email accounts for any event announcements.
- Check each site listed on the Vendors tab.
- Check each site listed on the Overview tab. For AIIM, this means going into the Community (members only), checking the events listed there, and then going to the AIIM website and checking the Events > Upcoming Events page. For ARMA, this means going to the ARMA website and checking the Join & Connect > Events page.
- Check the AIIM and ARMA Chapter tab. This is a little more involved and works as follows.
AIIM has 7 chapters listed in the AIIM Community. 3 of these have their own separate chapter websites. I have all of these listed on the AIIM and ARMA Chapter tab. I check the individual Communities and the chapter websites and add any events to the file.
The ARMA Local Chapters page lists the following:
- 14 Canadian chapters, 2 of which have no hyperlinks
- 2 international chapters, 1 of which has no hyperlinks
- 69 U.S. chapters, 4 of which have no hyperlinks and 2 of which have merged (Lexington and Louisville)
Or is that true? Because, as part of my process, I also check any Facebook or Twitter accounts that I have been able to track down, either because they are listed on the website, or because I found them through a direct search. Not every chapter has FB or Twitter, but most have one or the other. I don't check LinkedIn because generally you have to join a group to see its postings, and this process already takes me 4+ hours twice a month.
The order, then, is:
- If there's a website, check the website events page.
- If there's no website, or nothing on it, check Facebook.
- If there's no FB page, or nothing on it, check Twitter.
- If there's no Twitter, or nothing on it, update my spreadsheet with "No events currently listed".
What this all means is that just for AIIM and ARMA, between the chapter websites, FB, and Twitter, I'm currently checking up to 177 links twice a month. About 1x/quarter I do a fresh search for Facebook and Twitter accounts for the chapters I don't currently have listed. I don't generally check LinkedIn because I have yet to find a chapter posting there but nowhere else.
I started doing these events listings in January 2022; any chapter that hasn't had a meeting since then, I've arbitrarily decided is probably inactive. So as of the date of this blog post, of the 92 chapters listed between AIIM and ARMA, I only count 71 that have had at least one meeting since that date. However, I still check the other 21 in the hopes that they will have revitalized.
Next, I have a plain text file that I keep updated. Why? Because this strips any formatting off so I don't have to worry about fonts, colors, sizing, etc.
Now, when I say "Check each site", above, I check the site, and if there's something relevant, it goes into the text file, in date order, on one line, and then I add the URL indented one tab on a second line. If it's limited to members-only, for example AIIM's Records Managers Coffee and Conversation monthly meetings, I denote that in the listing, e.g.,
3/7/2023 - AIIM+, Records Managers Coffee & Conversations - Global Email Retention Policy (members only)
https://community.aiim.org/events/event-description?CalendarEventKey=074084e9-ffe2-4fc4-a5c5-0185ad326456
Once I have what I believe to be the complete events listing, I copy the entire thing into a blog post. I *cut* the URL from below each event, to make sure I'm applying the right URL to the right event, and use the topic of the event as the link, so it looks something like this:
2/14/2023 - ARMA Mile Hi Denver, Develop Your Own Tools to Provide RM Solutions to Your Organization
I then double-check the formatting, add the title, and hit Publish. Once the link is live, I post it to both ARMA communities, the AIIM community, Twitter, and LinkedIn. In the post I note that if I overlooked anything, I'm happy to add it since it's just a matter of editing the blog post.
One last note: I don't generally include longer-form events like conferences as I include those in my newsletter. Similarly, I don't include training, both for that reason and because the already-long events listing would more than double in length.
I'm looking for a way to provide more context, but the blog is a bit limited in what I can efficiently do with that. Ultimately I'd like to add some sort of visual cue to denote:
- In-person-only, hybrid, or virtual-only
- Members-only vs. open
- Paid vs. free (and that gets tricky - some events are free for members and not for non-members.)
- Other context that would be helpful?
So that's it. It's a labor of love, with emphasis on labor! If you have thoughts on how to make this better or more useful, please let me know at jesse.wilkins@athroconsulting.com.
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