Information

The “Better” Information Professional

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Normally I don’t like to post too quickly on a specific topic. This is because I like people to digest the previous post and let it bounce around the net a bit. Today calls for an exception.

As I discussed, I took AIIM’s new Certified Information Professional exam cold. While I did want to judge the exam, there was a second reason for taking it cold. I bet Cheryl McKinnon that I could score higher then her without studying. While I wasn’t overly confident, I figured the odds were even and the conditions of the bet weren’t onerous.

Well, I lost. Cheryl, a vice president of MARKETING, received a higher score. She is the better CIP.

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Keeping Your Content Alive, With or Without SharePoint

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Last week I called SharePoint a legacy system and that there were many document graveyards/coffins out there built upon SharePoint. I also said that SharePoint was just the latest Content Management system to host document graveyards. This lead to an entertaining discussion as well as related articles by Ron Miller questioning the point of Content Management and Billy Cripe discussing the need for a new focus for Content Management Systems.

Before moving forward, I want to clarify. I was not slighting SharePoint. If anything, it was a recognition of what SharePoint has achieved as a legitimate Content Management system.

Let’s now take a step back and look at keeping Content alive.

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Certified Information Professional, A Valid Measure

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Yesterday I talked a little about why the concept of a Certified Information Professional is important to making Information Management a real profession and the gap that it is aiming to fill. Today I want to talk about the exam itself and whether or not it is a good measurement tool.

I’m not going to bore you with all the details on how the exam was prepared by outside experts or any of that. While important, that isn’t a true measure. I think the true measure is the opinions of the battle-scarred veterans of the Information wars. Being one, I offer my opinion here to start building a consensus.

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Becoming a Certified Information Professional

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Certifiied Information Professional (CIP) logoToday I went out and passed AIIM’s Certified Information Professional exam. There are a lot of thoughts I want to share around this action, but it is going to take a couple of posts. In this post I am going to cover the Why. Later I will cover the What.

The first thing I want to say is that working for AIIM is not the reason I took the exam. My original goal had been to listen to feedback from others before I took the exam. It was always in my 2012 plans. Joining AIIM just moved me from the laggard position to that of the evaluator.

After all, if I was going to be the lead Information Professional at AIIM I should at least check out the certification sooner rather than later.

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SOPA, PIPA, and the Battle of Money

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Earlier this week I took my blog down for the day to protest SOPA. This was easy for me to do because I don’t derive income from my website and because WordPress made it as easy as clicking a box to join in the protest.

Of course, easy or not, I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t believed in the cause. SOPA and similar bills, both in the past and future, threaten creativity and, more importantly, grant a little too much power to “Big Brother”.

Rather than explain it all to you myself, listen to Clay Shirky on the topic:

That pretty much sums up most of what you need to know, but there is more. [Ed Note: Almost immediately after hitting publish, Clay published a great post about not underestimating Hollywood]

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SharePoint, Another “Legacy” Content Management System

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After waking up to discover that I had a sick kid, I decided to spend my Martin Luther King holiday relaxing and making sure the kid got some rest. I made the mistake of logging onto twitter and retweeting something by Melissa Webster from today’s Lotusphere 2012 conference:

A.Rennie “Content at rest = cost, content in motion = value”, “Sharepoint is today’s document coffin”. Social ->relevancy, currency

The tweet was read by Gabor Fari who took immediate dislike to the tweet. Two facts that are important to know before proceeding. Gabor works for Microsoft and while I have worked with all major versions of SharePoint, most of my experience is with platforms that were mature when SharePoint was first released.

I’m going to recount some points of the discussion and expound now that I’m not limited by 140 characters. If you want to see the tweets, check both his and my tweets from Jan 16.

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Failure is Not a Positive

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A while back, people from the tech world began postulating about the value of failure. The context was that failure may not be a waste if the lessons can be built upon. One should never use “fear of failure” as an excuse not to do something.

The problem is that now people are talking about failure as if it is a good thing, something to be pursued. It isn’t.

FAILURE IS BAD.

If someone fails once, no biggie. If they fail more often, maybe it is because they don’t have the chops to proceed. Maybe they just suck.

Failure teaches you what doesn’t work. It doesn’t always teach you what does work. You may do something wrong, but if you adjust, you haven’t failed.

If you have truly failed, you need to not only analyze what went wrong, but why you didn’t see it in time. Why didn’t, or couldn’t, you adjust.

Most likely, you need help to learn the right way. Depending on the failure, you may need to add someone on your team.

Better yet, think on your weaknesses, we all have them, and act to get people on your team who can compensate.

Failure is to be avoided. It is a bad thing. Failure isn’t the end of the world, but if you decide that you are willing to fail, you likely will.

Looking Back on Pie’s 2011 Predictions

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image I have been busy these past few months. How busy? Just look at my post rate. It hasn’t been for lack of topics, I’ve just been burning the candle at both ends.

Well, I’ve been on “vacation” for the past week and feel rested enough to take some time to write. Coincidently enough, I have two posts to write quickly, the first being this post evaluating the predictions for 2011.

As I did for the 2010 predictions, I am going to score them as either correct, incorrect, or partial (50%).  The partial is for predictions that were correct in the causes, but the effects were off.

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Nuxeo World 2011, A Healthy Start

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I had the pleasure of flying to France to speak at the second Nuxeo World last week. While my primary purpose was to deliver a quick little keynote on Content Management Trends (slides and CMS Wire article), I had ulterior motives:

  • Where are they going?
  • Do they know Records Management?
  • Are they capable?

I had enough of an answer on each question to enter into a partnership with Nuxeo, but this was all about long-term planning and strategy. I thought I’d share what I learned while letting them learn that there are pros and cons to the publicity that they get by working with me, just ask EMC (who has accepted the balance).

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Nuxeo World 2011: Roadmap, Technical Strategy and Vision

Why would you not attend a roadmap session? Roland Benedetti, VP of Products and Marketing, and Thierry Delprat, the CTO, are going to get us all up to date.

  • Use a Scrum based development approach, 4 key disciplines
  • Roadmap Management
  • Modern Development Method and Tooling
  • Heartbeat and Iterative Development Method
  • Continuous QA and Release Method
  • Stressing the constant QA of the product
  • Opening the “roadmap” through Jira in the next week

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