ARMA Announces InfoCon 2021 to Go Virtual

The annual ARMA InfoCon 2021 conference, scheduled for Oct 17-20, 2021 in Houston, TX, will be held virtually again this year. The full statement is available at https://www.arma.org/news/578146/.

For more details or to register: https://armainfocon.org/

AIIM Opens Call for Board of Directors Nominations

 Via email: 

We are currently accepting nominations for candidates to serve on the AIIM Board of Directors for a three-year term beginning January 1, 2022. The first Board meeting for selected candidates will be in a non-voting “guest” capacity on December 9 (virtual and optional for incoming directors).

Candidate qualifications include:

• knowledge of key industry trends
• experience in strategic planning, implementation and budgeting
• demonstrated commitment to AIIM and the industry
• willingness to attend four Board meetings per year (most will likely be virtual) with one allowed absence
• AIIM Professional Member in good standing

Nominations may be submitted by the nominee or his/her supporter. The nomination package includes the following items:

• nominee’s current resume
• brief statement from the nominee regarding the role and value he/she believes AIIM should play/provide over the next 2-3 years
• one-page statement regarding the nominee’s contribution to that process as a member of the Board of Directors
• two letters of support from individuals that can attest to the strategic acumen and professional integrity of the nominee

Completed nominations and letters of support can be sent to Boshia Smith, Community/Membership Administrator; questions may also be directed to her at bsmith@aiim.org. The deadline for nominations is Monday, September 27, 2021.

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. 

ARMA Opens 2021 Awards Nominations

 ARMA has announced that it is accepting nominations for a number of awards, to be presented at the ARMA InfoCon 2021 scheduled for October 17-20 in Houston, TX and online. 

Most of the existing awards have a submission deadline of May 15, 2021; these include: 

• Christine Zanotti Award for Excellence in Non-Serial Publications
• Distinguished Service Award
• Company of Fellows

There are also a number of new awards for which the submission deadline is currently July 1, 2021. 

For more information, visit https://www.arma.org/general/custom.asp?page=Awards

I'm Available for In-Person Events in 2021

Updated 4/8 to reflect my vaccinated status. 

AIIM20 in Dallas, TX was one of the last live industry events to happen before COVID-19 shut down much of the in-person world as we know it. I know exactly how lucky AIIM was to get that in before the shutdowns. Since then, almost exactly a year ago, just about all industry conferences, meetups, workshops, happy hours, etc. have been postponed or pushed to virtual. 

Well,  sure. COVID-19 is real, and it's dangerous, and in our industry in particular I think we skew a bit towards older and probably less healthy because more sedentary. There are some other aspects of the shutdowns that I think range from probably warranted to completely unjustified, but I'm going to keep my focus on my industry and the things I do and attend...or did. 

Full disclosure: I was diagnosed with COVID-19 in early December 2020. Loss of taste and smell, typical head cold-type symptoms, shortness of breath I'm still working to overcome - no fever, ever, though. So much for temperature checks, at least for some cases. Mostly recovered, though, and tested negative again as of December 29. As of April 2021, I am fully vaccinated (Pfizer), and that plus the prior exposure should leave me pretty well-protected for some time, though I suppose we don't know how long yet. 

So. Since AIIM20 I've attended or participated in a number of virtual events - our CIP Independent Study Group and other virtual instructor-led training (VILT), the MER 2020 conference, the AIIM 21 virtual conference, and others. I think some of them have been very successful, but others have been less so, for any number of reasons. I'm not a fan, for example, of the avatar/virtual world approach. I think the tech is still not there yet, at least in meaningful widespread availability in an easy-to-use format, and it always feels like an attempt to replicate in-person interaction in a way that completely misses the points: the serendipity of the hallway meeting and the ability to easily pull someone else into the same. I just don't get the same vibe or ability to riff in that environment. 

And that's the thing for me. Most of the time I attend an event, I'm not expecting to learn a lot from the actual sessions themselves. Maybe I'm not going to the right events - or maybe most events aren't focused on people like me who are more senior and don't need the entire history of the world explained at the start of every session. (Aside: Speakers: fix yourselves. Event organizers: fix your speakers.) 

But the value I have in attending events is in the networking: the serendipitous meetings, the waves from across the hall, the chance to engage and interact and probe and laugh in a meaningful way a dozen different times a day. It's the conversations at lunch, or at the bar at the end of the day, or in the karaoke lounge waiting for my turn. It's the late night bull sessions, and the discovery of new restaurants and bands with colleagues. 

So I am actively looking for opportunities to get together with like-minded people. Let's do it safely - the usual precautions apply. Get your vaccine when you can. Elbow bumps or waves from 6 feet away, at least for a while longer. I'll do the same, and I have lots of masks and I'm happy to use them. But I'm ready and available - for private or public training courses, for conferences or other events with at least some in-person component, for chapter meetings, etc. 

I'm not doing this to be irresponsible. Rather, I believe that if we can safely interact with each other to some minimal extent in other arenas - some offices, grocery stores, hair salons, even gyms - we can, and many of us need to, do so at other industry events. I am not an extrovert by any means, though I know and feel for many of them. But even as a confirmed introvert I'm past ready to reengage my colleagues in person. I know it can be done safely, at least for most people, and I've absolutely embraced the hybrid model, but I'm looking forward to seeing many of you again soon and in person. 

AIIM Opens Awards Nominations

AIIM has announced it is accepting nominations for AIIM Awards, to be presented during the AIIM21 virtual conference scheduled for April 27-29, 2021. Nominations are being accepted for the Company of Fellows and the Award of Merit. Nominations are due no later than March 12, 2021. 

For more details or information on eligibility criteria and the nominating process, visit https://info.aiim.org/2021-award-nominations. 

ARMA Canada Opens Call for Speakers

 ARMA Canada has announced that it is seeking speakers to participate in the ARMA Canada Information Conference 2021, scheduled for May 31 - June 2, 2021 via virtual platform. From the call for speakers:

Information Conference 2021 is looking for engaging speakers to share their experiences, learnings, and knowledge. We are focused on stories that demonstrate change, adaptability, challenges especially relating to work from home adjustments, remote work, and the changing workforce.

Update: Submissions are being accepted through Feb 19, 2021. 

For more information or to submit, visit 

http://armacanada.org/home/information-conference/

ARMA Seeking Candidates for Board of Directors

 ARMA has announced that it is seeking candidates for the ARMA International Board of Directors. They are specifically looking for two candidates: 

• President-Elect
• Director

Terms will begin July 1, 2021 and run through June 30, 2024. Nominations must be received by November 30, 2020. For additional information, visit https://www.arma.org/general/custom.asp?page=Board_Elections. 

AIIM Opens Call for Participation for The AIIM Conference 2021

Updated: The dates are April 27-29. 2021.  

AIIM has announced it is soliciting speakers for The AIIM Conference 2021, scheduled as a digital event in late April 2021. Couple of key points: 

• Sessions will be 20 min and pre-recorded, but speakers should expect to participate during the session and in Q&A after
• Focus is on current/near-future trends and relatability to real-world problems
• Priority is given to speakers from end user organizations, but others are not completely precluded from participation. However no sales or vendor angles are allowed
• Speakers will get a free full conference pass - if you're a CIP, this will get you access to a ton of CEUs. 

Submissions are due by November 25, 2020. Lots more information here: https://www.cvent.com/c/abstracts/9db01f47-bc34-4044-84d7-f5b4fba64837. 

Microsoft Ignite 2020 is next week, virtual, and FREE.

 As the title notes, Microsoft has made the Microsoft Ignite event this year free to attend. Scheduled for September 22-24, 2020, it will feature more than 700 sessions on all aspects of the Microsoft technology stack. You can read a preview of the event in Redmond Magazine here: https://redmondmag.com/articles/2020/09/17/microsoft-ignite-2020-preview.aspx

You can register here: https://myignite.microsoft.com/home

I also saw a post from Sharegate about their picks for the top sessions on Teams and securing Microsoft 365. You can find that post here: https://sharegate.com/blog/ignite-2020-sessions-manage-secure-teams-microsoft-365

Rebecca Richards, on the IAPP blog: COVID-19, privacy, and school recordings This is an incredibly important topic and it cuts a lot of different ways: 

• Privacy expectations of, for, and among students
• Privacy expectations for teachers
• Privacy expectations for students' and teachers' families
• Records management and disposition of potentially extremely sensitive information
• Freedom of expression, from both students and teachers, and concerns over others seeing and reviewing recordings
• Security of recordings, and, truth be told, of streams - not so much at the platform level as at the "my Zoom session doesn't use a password and I'm too lazy to see whether anyone is on the session that I don't recognize"
• The dynamic of things in the background at either end - toy guns being an example that's already come up

I hope the IAPP as well as other groups like AIIM and ARMA continue to think about, and offer guidance on, this issue. 

IAPP Opens Annual Call for Volunteers

From the email I received today: 

Here are our 2021 volunteer leadership opportunities:

• ANZ Advisory Board
• Asia Advisory Board
• Board of Directors
• Canadian Advisory Board
• Certification Advisory Boards
• Education Advisory Board
• European Advisory Board
• KnowledgeNet Chapter Chairs
• Privacy Bar Section Advisory Board
• Privacy Engineering Section Advisory Board
• Publications Advisory Board
• Research Advisory Board
• Training Advisory Board
• Women Leading Privacy Advisory Board
• Young Privacy Professional

Applications must be submitted by October 2, 2020. Additional details are available at https://iapp.org/connect/call-for-volunteers/ (must log in). 

MER Opens Call for Presentations for MER2021

 The MER Conference has opened its call for presentations for MER 2021. MER 2021 will follow a virtual format, with precons scheduled for May 20-21, 2021 and the conference proper scheduled for May 24-27, 2021. Submissions are required by October 16, 2020. More details can be found here: https://www.merconference.com/page/1595237/call-for-presenters

Martin White, CMSWire: Where Have All the Experts Gone? The Hunt for Corporate Expertise

John Mancini, writing for Quality Associates Incorporated: 13 Key Questions to Ask Solution Providers About Digitization

ARMA Announces/Extends Call for Awards

I must have missed the announcement earlier by ARMA, but I saw today that they have extended the deadlines for some awards to July 1. From the post: 

Nominations are open for the Company of Fellows Award, the Christine Zanotti Award for Excellence in Non-Serial Publications, and the Distinguished Service Award. The due date has been extended to July 1. If you know a colleague worthy of one of these honors, consider organizing their nomination. Get more details here.

Chapter awards applications are accepted through July 1 as well. Submit your chapter’s application for the Chapter Luminary or Standing Ovation Awards here.

However, if you follow the link, some of the deadlines are still May 15, including all three of those listed above. So I'm not sure actually what the deadlines are; the takeaway is that if you or someone you know is deserving of an award, you should definitely get the submission in! 

John Mancini, writing for Quality Associates Incorporated: 13 Key Questions to Ask Solution Providers About Digitization

Andrew Warland: Storing offsite or digitising paper records - which is more cost-effective? Very thorough rundown of the options and expected costs.

John Mancini, writing for Quality Associates Incorporated: Digital Modernization: The Elephant in the M-19-21 Room

John Mancini, CMSWire: Anatomy of a Collaboration Disaster. John is always insightful; his observations and conclusions at the end of the article about how to apply these lessons to traditional enterprise systems are spot on.

Andrew Warland: Why is 'going digital' a problem for records management?

H/T James Lappin via Don Lueders.

Melissa Heelan Stanzione, Bloomberg Law: 'Wet' Ink Signatures Requirements May Fade After Coronavirus (1)

Jed Cawthorne, CMSWire: Will We Ever Get One Aggregator to Rule Them All? 

This has been a topic near and dear to my heart for a long time, at least dating back to when AIIM hired me as the Director, Systems of Engagement Strategy in 2010. It's a long post about the challenges of connecting different enterprise, and commercial, social networking/productivity services.

Two quick points: first, I didn't start the discussion - it was already going on when I butted in to lament the lack of a protocol like SMTP to support interoperability. And I knew Dion Hinchcliffe had been involved with related efforts for a long time, but I didn't know about the Open Social Foundation work.

Anyway, well worth the read IMO.

Andrew Warland, on his blog: Recordkeeping metadata in Office 365 and SharePoint

James Lappin, on his blog: Project Cortex and the future of document management in Office 365 Long post, but well worth the read.

Mark McGregor, on LinkedIn: Coronavirus Heralds Three Seismic Shifts in Working Practices, Changing the Way We Work Forever.

John Mancini, writing for Quality Associates Incorporated: Getting Over the Perfect and Embracing the Good

John Mancini, writing for Quality Associates Incorporated: A "BRIDG" to Understanding Capstone

ARMA InfoCon 2020 Call for Speakers Now Open

Nick Inglis, Executive Director, Content and Programming at ARMA, announced today that ARMA has opened the call for speakers to participate in ARMA InfoCon 2020, scheduled for October 26-28, 2020 in Detroit, MI.

Submissions are due by March 20, 2020. Speakers will receive a free CORE registration.

More information and a link to the submission form can be found here: https://www.arma.org/general/custom.asp?page=2020-call-for-proposals

Asif Rehmani, on LinkedIn: Training SharePoint users is a waste of time.

I have mixed feelings about this. I agree - for the audience that is business users. But I do think it's helpful to have someone around who knows the *how* (what his workshop covered) as well as the *why*. I also tend to think that that person should also have information management chops to support the why's - e.g. why use a document set vs. a folder vs. a list, or which is better, manage in place or records center, etc.

John Mancini, blogging for Quality Associates Incorporated: Isn't Email Management ALREADY Supposed to be Under Control? 

John Mancini, blogging for Quality Associates Incorporated: Five Reasons M-19-21 Readiness Isn't Business as Usual

John Mancini, blogging for Quality Associates Incorporated: Simple Sounding M-19-21 Digital Records Requirements are Deceptive

John Mancini, blogging for Quality Associates Incorporated: Why Does M-19-21 Digitization Matter? 

NIST Announces Release of Version 1.0 of the NIST Privacy Framework

Just received an email from NIST:

Dear Colleagues,

We’re thrilled to announce the release of Version 1.0 of the NIST Privacy Framework: A Tool for Improving Privacy through Enterprise Risk Management! This would not have been possible without collaboration and feedback from so many of you at each step along the way – thank you so much. 

NIST Privacy Framework Webinar: Ready, Set, Adopt Version 1.0! - January 29^th, 2020 at 1 PM ET

Join this webinar for an in-depth review of the Framework and learn how your organization can adopt this voluntary tool to identify and manage privacy risk and build innovative products and services while protecting individuals’ privacy. For more details and to register, visit the event page.

Implementation Support and New Resources

To support your use of the Privacy Framework, we’ve updated our website with many new resources.

• Visit the new Privacy Framework Resource Repository to explore crosswalks, common Profiles, guidance, and tools to support implementation. For the launch, we’ve provided mappings to some key NIST guidance, but we encourage you to contribute resources to share with the community.
• Whether you’re new to the Framework or seeking more information about adoption, see our hypothetical use case Profiles and updated frequently asked questions.
• We’ve also published a companion roadmap to promote collaboration to address key privacy challenges for organizations and improve future versions of the Framework.

If you have questions about adoption or would like to share feedback about your experience with using the Framework, please contact us at privacyframework@nist.gov. We look forward to continued collaboration with you, as the Framework is a living document.

Some light reading for the weekend. :) 

AIIM Accepting Awards Nominations Through Jan 21, 2020

AIIM has announced that it is accepting awards nominations through January 21, 2020. Nominations are being accepted for awards for leadership (WIIM, CIP, Community & Engagement), the Company of Fellows, and the Order of Merit. Each award has different requirements; for more information, or to nominate a deserving individual, visit https://www.aiim.org/awards.

The AIIM Blog - How to Perform a Content Migration - Your Checklist for Success

Originally published on December 19, 2019

This post described a representative content migration process and checklist, including the need for a content cleanup before the migration and the importance of quality checking and control.

https://info.aiim.org/aiim-blog/how-to-perform-a-content-migration

The AIIM Blog - The CIP vs the IGP

Originally published on December 26, 2019

This blog post compared the AIIM Certified Information Professional (CIP) certification to the ARMA Certified Information Governance Professional (IGP) certification.

https://info.aiim.org/aiim-blog/differences-between-the-certified-information-professional-and-the-information-governance-professional

The AIIM Blog - The Best Training for Records Managers

Originally published on December 31, 2019.

In this post I discuss a number of training options for records managers beyond AIIM's offerings.

https://info.aiim.org/aiim-blog/the-best-training-for-records-managers 

My blogs at The AIIM Blog and the AIIM Community blogs

My blog posting has been rather light here of late because I've been blogging fairly regularly at the AIIM blog and the AIIM Community blog. So I thought I'd cross-post those posts here once they've gone live over there. I'm not going to copy them verbatim; rather I'll summarize and then link to the live posts over there.

Marcus Evans, Janine Regan, Christoph Ritzer, Andrea D'Ambra, and David Kessler, Norton Rose Fulbright Data Protection Report: Record Retention is a Key Component of Your Privacy and Cyber Compliance Program

Simon Reader, Information Commissioner's Office: Data Protection Impact Assessments and AI

H/T: Eduardo Ustaran

ARMA seeking nominations for the ARMA International Board of Directors

ARMA announced that it has opened nominations for the Board of Directors, who will serve 2- or 3-year terms effective July 1, 2020. Nominations are open for three positions:

• President-elect
• Director
• Treasurer

The deadline to apply is Nov 1, 2019. More details including specifics about responsibilities and qualifications can be found at https://www.arma.org/page/Board_Elections. 

Joe Shepley, CMSWire: No One Cares About Information Governance But You

MER opens call for speakers for MER2020

MER, the Managing Electronic Records conference, has announced its call for speakers for MER2020, scheduled for May 4-6, 2020 in Chicago, IL. The deadline to apply is October 18, 2019. Additional details are available from the speaker prospectus at https://www.merconference.com/page/1436799/call-for-presenters?ct=t(A-10-Join-the-Team-Oct-01).

Carlos Pauling, on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/navigating-professional-jungle-gym-carlos-pauling/

H/T: Pam Bartoli

NIST: NIST Releases Preliminary Draft of Privacy Framework

H/T: IAPP

Randolph Kahn, Business Law Today: The Case to Rethink Records Retention in 2018 and Beyond. Just seeing this because Randy just posted it to LinkedIn. Worth a read.

CIO Magazine house editorial: The Dark Side of Robotic Process Automation

H/T: Nintex

Todd Hefner, Law.com: Demystifying Social Media Discovery. Short version, which Todd leads with: " 'Social media information is treated just as any other type of information would be in the discovery process.' Locke v. Swift Transportation Co. of Arizona, LLC, No. 518CV00119T, 2019 WL 430930, (W.D. Ky. Feb. 4, 2019)."