AIIM

There Goes AIIM CIP

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Zombieland-Shot Bill MurrayWhen I wrote about the state of the information professional community last week, I really didn’t think I would be revisiting the topic so soon. While we can self-organize using Meetup, having a national association really makes a difference in the success of every community effort.

What made AIIM valuable in this role was their approach to content and information. They weren’t all about records management and the controlling of information. The focus on on using information to address business needs. This included records management but wasn’t constrained by it.

The Certified Information Professional (CIP) was an important feature of AIIM. It provided a valid measure of an information professional. It was a valid measure that needed some nurturing to gain market traction. And then last week, AIIM killed it.

CIP Suffers a True Death

AIIM not caring about the CIP has been apparent for a long time. The marketing of it beyond the association has been sparse. Back in December of 2015, they even cancelled the CIP briefly before the community rose-up to protest.

This is worse.

They have crippled the certification. Jesse Wilkins laid out the issues with what AIIM has done point-by-point. I want to focus on two key aspects, the elimination of Continuing Education Units (CEUs) and opening-up the exam.

CEUs Mean Something

As anyone who has been in this industry for any significant period of time will tell you, the fundamentals have not changed. It is everything else that has changed beginning with the technology. Cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions have changed our strategies, as has the advent of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Azure for application infrastructure. That has had tremendous implications for how we manage information.

While information professionals may not need to learn the ins-and-outs of these technologies, they do need to understand how the technology has changed things. Conference sessions, trainings, webinars, and other events serve an important way to keep up with all the changes. When measured as CEUs, they show that you are working to maintain your expertise.

And I will tell you with absolute certainty, I prefer tracking CEUs to taking the exam again. Any certification exam worth its measure is not an easy or pleasant experience.

Dying a True Death

What they have done to the exam actually killed the CIP. It is now open-book, unproctored, and allows for unlimited retakes. While this means anyone with Google or a smart friend can eventually pass the exam, it also means that the questions are now compromised.

The problem now is that the CIP exam questions are now public domain. Anyone can (and likely already has) go in, capture all of the exam questions, and sell the answers online. Knowing the Internet, they’ll be out there for free shortly thereafter. Regardless of the price, moving it back to a proctored exam now wouldn’t matter. the exam questions are compromised so new ones would need to be created to become a valid certification again.

Last time, AIIM simply took the CIP away. When they reversed course, turning it back on was easy enough. The only harm to the CIP was to its reputation.

They really killed the CIP this time.

What is Next For AIIM?

That is a really good question. The chapter network is dead after years of neglect. The CIP no longer has value. AIIM still has a strong webinar program, reasonable research, and lots of training. However, you don’t need to be a member of AIIM to partake in those.

As for the conference, we are still in a pandemic. Its value is really unknown.

AIIM needs to decide what they want to be going forward. With Peggy Winton ending her tenure, now is the time to define a vision and follow it. Are they an association for information professionals? Are they a vendor association? Are they a marketing firm that collects names, sells it to vendors, and makes money off of training on the side?

That last one is a business plan, not a vision.

Now is the time to answer that question. The next leader of AIIM needs to commit the organization to that vision and move them there. And they need to do it soon while there is still enough value remaining at AIIM to make it worth saving.

Where Is The Content and InfoGov Community?

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Real Genius-Chris Knight asking What is taking so longIt has been a long couple of years. Everything has moved online and maintaining the sense of community in the Information Governance (InfoGov) industry has been a challenge. That is not even taking into account the continued changes our association space that we’ve been seeing.

To be honest, I miss seeing my industry colleagues and friends. Sure, I’ve seen several of them over Zoom, both with and without beverages, but the complete lounging that takes place as conversations meander between the professional, personal, and everything in-between is very much missed. As we move into 2022, InfoGov.Net is trying to meet some of those needs. Given that our needs are so diverse, I wonder what the future holds.

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Cutting Edge Technology at this Year’s AIIM Conference

[Originally published on the TeraThink blog]

The Alamo at NightLast month I had the pleasure of going to San Antonio for the 2018 AIIM Conference. As always, AIIM hosted some great conversations and informative presentations. Some of the discussions focused around emerging technologies in the information space, blockchain, and artificial intelligence.

Lots of new technology were discussed in a panel run by Alan Pelz-Sharpe. He and his panelists; Andrea Chiappe, Kashyap Kompella, and Dan Abdul; broke the technologies down and how they impact the world of information management. Alan noted that during his preconference session, a surprising number of people were already very familiar with these new technologies. That is a refreshing realization. Broad understanding in the industry is critical towards creating practical applications with any new technology.

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Talking Agile Content Services at NCC-AIIM

[Originally published on the TeraThink blog]Russ Stalters presenting at January 2018 NCC-AIIM meeting

Recently, I was at the local NCC-AIIM Chapter meeting. Russ Stalters was visiting from Texas and shared the story about how he created a new, 200+ person, data management team for the BP Gulf Coast Restoration Organization. A separate organizational entity from BP, the organization was stood up in 90 days from vision to operation. It was an impressive tale involving massive amounts of information being absorbed and managed in a highly visible environment.

As Russ spoke, it became clear that two of the key lessons were around agile processes and content analytics. It generated some great discussion that took us well past the scheduled time. I wanted to take some time to share some of the highlights.

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People First These Days in Information Governance

[Originally published on the TeraThink blog]

Director Laurence Hart speaking on Digital Transformation and Information Governance at the NCC-AIIM meetingLast week I spoke at the local National Capital Chapter of AIIM. I gave an updated version of the talk I’ve been giving the past year on Information Governance in the Age of Digital Transformation. While the talk was not new, it was the first time I had given it locally. The discussion was new and very much on point. As I sit here waiting for the 2017 InfoGovCon to start, I want to share some of the highlights.

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Focusing on the Local by Joining the NCC-AIIM Executive Committee

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Hanging out at AIIM Nats night w/ (left to right) Mark Mandel, AIIM Vice-Chair Mark Patrick, and dedicated AIIM staffer Theresa ResekI’ve talked a little bit here about the need to improve the local communities for information management. It is an area that ARMA does better than other groups in the industry but their focus and members can be intimidating for those who aren’t records managers. AIIM chapters are a decent alternative but there are a lot of challenges.

For the past couple of years, I’ve been chatting offline with some chapter leaders from both associations, brainstorming ideas, and trying to think of ways to improve the local community. Some of these discussions became more focused when Kevin Parker became the president of the local AIIM chapter, NCC-AIIM. During one of these discussions I agreed to join the chapter’s executive committee.

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Getting Information to the People at AIIM17

[Originally published on the TeraThink blog]

A sign welcoming people to AIIM17Another year and another AIIM Conference in the bag. It was a good year as the industry seems to be slowly coming to the realization that while content is a problem, the solution is to solve the business problem, not necessarily the content problem.

The industry entered AIIM17 with a debate over whether Content Services or Enterprise Content Management (ECM) should be the default name for the industry. The speakers, and attendees, basically uttered a massive, “Who cares?” We are solving problems and learning how to make sure that not just information can be found. Valuable information can be found.

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Information Governance, Moving on from Content

Has Content build holding us prisoner, making us miss the bigger picture?When I dove into the debate on Content Services and ECM, my conclusion was fairly straightforward.

Look at your information flow. Follow it and find new ways to make it flow faster. If you can do that and know where your information is at anytime, you are done.

There is a lot of detail buried under that relatively straightforward statement. Content Services is part of a broader trend in the content management space and is here to stay. It has been here since CMIS (Content Management Interoperability Services) entered the picture almost a decade ago but now people are seeing it as more than a way to integrate systems.

The problem is that ECM (Enterprise Content Management) is still just part of the picture. Even if we use the latest tools without regard to the latest buzz words that define them. If we just focus on the content we are failing to solve what needs to be solved.

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What is an Information Professional?

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Beaker from the MuppetsOne thing I heard from MANY people at the AIIM conference was that the concept of an information professional as we understand it was flawed. The claim was that usage patterns of AIIM resources showed that members would join and engage to tackle a single project. Once that project was completed, they would leave AIIM and presumably go do something else that wasn’t information related. John Mancini, the outgoing CEO of AIIM, shared his thoughts on the current information professional in a four post series covering the history, evolution, environment, and future of the information professional.

Experience tells me that the conclusion is incorrect. There are a large number of people who spend careers in the space and dip into AIIM resources only periodically. It is also a conclusion is hard to confirm or deny because once they disengage from AIIM, it is tough to measure what people do next.

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Content Analytics at the AIIM 2016 Conference

[Originally published on the TeraThink blog]

When in New Orleans, this is one of the healthier optionsI attended the annual AIIM Conference recently in New Orleans. As expected, it was a great event with a lot of interesting presentations. I spent a lot of time talking to people, learning what they were doing, how they were achieving success, and hearing about what wasn’t working. I may also have had a beignet or two.

My chief interest was content analytics. There has been a lot of buzz in the industry regarding this capability and I wanted to learn how real it was among practitioners. It seems like a simple concept; Take the classification technology from eDiscovery tools and apply it at the front end of the business process. Instead of reacting, become proactive in analyzing and acting upon content.

I learned that it is going to take some pioneers to make this a reality.

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