Pretty exciting, eh? Definitely a different, yet very, familiar role. When you consider that I’m joining a pretty good team that just added Cheryl McKinnon as VP of Marketing, you can start to see some exciting, or at least interesting, times ahead.

Now that you’ve read the answer to the open-ended question from a week ago, what else is there to tell you? How about the story behind my move to AIIM and a little about what I see happening in my future?

Back in Time

Five years ago, I made a fairly gutsy statement while interviewing with Washington Consulting, Inc., my last company. I told the person interviewing me that my next job was going to be a Chief Information Officer position. Now normally you don’t tell an interviewer that you are thinking about your next position already, but as you may have gathered, I prefer to just tell it like it is.

Flash forward five years to when I learned that Cheryl McKinnon was coming to town for some meetings. We arranged to catch-up over drinks one evening during her trip. Coincidently, Cheryl interviewed with AIIM and they talked about their struggles managing their information and finding a person to drive them towards solutions.

That’s when Cheryl did something even more brilliant than normal, she suggested me. She then broached the idea with me over drinks. I was intrigued. From there, it was a matter of making sure that everyone had the same vision of how AIIM should manage their Information Assets in the future.

We did and here we are.

What That Means

AIIM is not unlike many organizations. Multiple systems need to work together to serve the goals set forth by leadership. There are different groups that all have valid and important needs that have to share central resources.

More importantly, AIIM is going to focus on better managing its information to better serve its members. If you are reading this that is you or at least should be.

While AIIM may be small in employees, it makes up for it in membership. I will be helping AIIM to help you. Since I am still an Information Professional, I will essentially be helping AIIM to help me do my job.

If that isn’t recursive enough, let me know.

Focus of the Word

The Word is going to follow the things I deal with in the course of my work at AIIM. It is still going to focus heavily on Information Management and the Content Management aspects of the broader whole. Just expect to see posts on topics I wouldn’t have previously addressed.

I will not be sending out a bunch of hype. This is still my blog. I will talk more about AIIM, but that is because the issues that AIIM addresses are those same issues that I’ll be dealing with going forward.

Just from a different perspective.