AIIM

A Farewell to AIIM

18 Comments

Today is my last day at AIIM. After today I shall cease being their Chief Information Officer (CIO) and return to the ranks of the Professional Member. As I leave, I want to make sure that I share a few important things.

An Education

Boy, did I learn things. I learned a lot about:

  • The Association Business. It is a business and it has many unique aspects compared to other businesses with whom I have ever worked. Many of the unique aspects will help me look at problems in other organizations with a fresh viewpoint.
  • Association Management Systems (AMS). While hand-in-hand with the former, I learned that implementing an AMS as a system isn’t that different from any other business system. Translation: It takes planning, communication, and work. I also learned why they are important pieces of software and not simply a domain-specific CRM system.
  • Marketing. I thought I knew a reasonable amount about Marketing when I started at AIIM. I spent every day after that learning how much I didn’t know as I learned more and more.

That isn’t counting all the new technology tidbits and personal interaction skills I picked-up along the way. It was an intense time.

Continue reading →

Ready to Prove Yourself at AIIM 2014?

AIIM13 KeynoteThe call for speakers is out for AIIM 2014. As an employee, I can only speak as either a backup or as a keynote, though John Mancini seems to have that job locked-up.

You, on the other hand, can speak. In fact, you should speak. Your experiences and war stories are the kind of things that make the AIIM Conference useful for everyone.

Why should you speak?

  1. It is a chance to share your pain. Think of it as group therapy.
  2. Presentations are only 20 minutes long. Anyone can find enough useful information to fill that time.
  3. You can validate your ideas and experience among some of the leading minds in the Information Management profession.
  4. It is a chance to tell your favorite “war story”. (Those are the best presentations)
  5. Your boss is unlikely to say you can’t go if you are a speaker.
  6. You can tell people I am wrong without me being able to interrupt you.
  7. Looking smart in front of potential future colleagues is always a good thing.
  8. Why do lists always have to have 10 items? This is hard.
  9. Gaining the respect and admiration of your industry peers goes a long way.
  10. Who doesn’t want to spend a week in Orlando?

So start thinking about all the nuggets of wisdom you want to share and submit your idea today.

The AIIM Website Tribulations

2 Comments

If you’ve been to the AIIM Website recently, you may have seen this message:

Thank you for your patience as we undergo a major system migration to improve the services we bring you. We ARE available to assist you if you encounter any problems.

While a majority of the issues have  been resolved, the message is still there until I am 100% sure that every open ticket is unrelated to the migration.

What migration do you ask?

The one I hinted earlier this year when I talked about AIIM’s Website Performance. The migration is part of our long-term plan to improve the services we provide to our members.

The future is here but the ride has been bumpier than expected.

Continue reading →

Information Management has Failed

5 Comments

New PictureIn March, I gave a keynote at the annual AIIM Conference. It was based upon my post, Silicon Valley’s War on the Enterprise. I’ve been hoping to share the video with everyone, but that doesn’t seem probable due to some bad luck.

Given that it is a very text-light presentation, I am going to try something new. I’m going to walked you through the whole thing…..

This is War

Seriously, it is.

Title Slide Continue reading →

Six Years of Pie

7 Comments

You may not know it looking at my last two months of activity, or lack of it, but I’ve been writing, tweeting, and generally being loudly opinionated for the past six years. What started as just a way to vent my opinion over the direction of EMC/Documentum has become a platform for trying to push for change in the industry.

Thing is, the change is here. This June I’m going to pull my best Howard Beale and I’m going lay out why things are changing and why we can’t act as if it isn’t or that we have control.

But before all that, let’s review what has come before.

Continue reading →

Getting the Local Connection

This week I went up to Boston to speak at AIIM’s New England chapter. While I enjoyed speaking about the cloud and how AIIM is using it, I enjoyed talking to the people more.

I’ve always enjoyed attending events like this. Whether it is a random meet-up group, a local AIIM chapter, or one of the bigger seminars/conferences, talking to people the best way to keep a finger on the pulse of the industry.

When I was a consultant working with multiple clients, I would be very focused on a subset of the industry from both a technology and business perspective. Getting out and trading war stories with others was a great way to learn, let off steam, and to make sure that I never lost sight of the bigger picture.

Continue reading →

Tracking Website Performance

2 Comments

For those that have been paying attention to AIIM recently, you may have noticed that our website wasn’t performing at 100%. While the website has never been the fastest, it had been dramatically slower recently.

We’ve been working on thing to improve the user experience but sometimes circumstances catch-up with you as it did this week. I thought I would share a little case study in addressing Website performance.

Quick Background

If you aren’t a regular visitor to AIIM’s website, in addition to standard content delivery, we have some basic Community features including blogs, profiles, and discussions. In addition, members can update their information and preferences stored in our Association Management System (AMS). One final feature is that our training courses are all available directly through our website.

In 2012 we saw a steady rise in traffic, which is good. We were seeing more engagement and more of our research and content being accessed by a wider audience than before. We also noticed a trend of people taking more of our online courses instead of the traditional in-person courses.

Seeing this, we made plans to improve our scalability. Then reality hit.

Continue reading →

A New Conference Experience for Pie

It has been an interesting year so far as the CIO of AIIM. My world is subtly difference. I’m still acting as an Information Professional for an organization but there have been a few key differences:

  • Only one client
  • I don’t advise, I execute
  • The problems faced are mine but I can address them

There are lots of other differences, but those are the significant ones. This experience is also affording me a new experience.

I’m attending a technology conference as a client.

I’ve attended a lot of conferences either as a technology partner or a company trying to sell something. When I was neither of those, I was at an industry event like the AIIM Conference for networking and learning.

This is a new role for me, except for the part where I expect to be busy.

Continue reading →

AIIM, Associations, and My Career

1 Comment

2012-08-13 20.13.51I recently renewed my paid membership in AIIM, the Global Association for Information Professionals, for whom I am also the Chief Information Officer. I have been a member of AIIM in some form going back to 2003. To the right is my 2003 welcome letter from John Mancini that I stumbled upon just the other day.

I’ve also been a member of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) since 1998. This is a Computer Science based association. I interacted with them back in college but joined them years later because I liked their programs and I had the money to join.

The reason I bring this up is because Lane Severson asked me an important question when I tweeted that I had re-upped my AIIM membership. His question, You gonna expense that?

Continue reading →

AIIM’s Real World Cloud Strategy

3 Comments

This morning I was on a call with a vendor. Doesn’t matter who it was. Suffice it to say they wanted to sell me IT services of some kind. The conversation was quite similar to conversations I’ve had over the past six months.

Vendor: I’d like to talk to you about X.

Me: No thanks. I’m getting out of that business, moving everything to the cloud.

Vendor: Oh? Who is your provider?

Me: We are taking different approaches based upon the application needs. [Some examples here.] If something changes I’ll be sure to give you a call.

It is amazing that they all think that going to the cloud is a one vendor style of approach. This leaves me wondering, are a lot of people taking that approach? Why?

Continue reading →