CIP

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.

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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Moving AIIM’s Certified Information Professional Forward

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New York CityIn December, the industry was faced with the prospect of a long needed certification being removed from the market. After the community protested that we need the CIP, AIIM backed off from closing the CIP and committed to updating it to reflect the changes in the industry since the CIP’s inception.

So far so good.

Now we the industry need to help AIIM make the CIP better. Chris Walker had some thoughts on ways to make the CIP more successful. Jesse Wilkins who runs the CIP program for AIIM made some requests from the industry on how we can support the CIP.

Now after having existing CIPs review an updated exam outline, AIIM is asking the industry to review the outline by this Friday, February 12.

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AIIM Awoke the Sleeping Community and Listened

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Paul Atreides from the movie Dune proclaiming, "The Sleeper has awakened!"Last week I shared my opinions on AIIM cancelling the CIP certification program. Similar opinions were shared in many blogs (Mark Owen compiled a nice list), tweets, LinkedIn, and many other channels. I don’t want to dwell on the specifics of those posts because an important thing happened shortly afterwards. Just seven days after AIIM announced the end of the CIP, AIIM reversed course and recommitted to the CIP with the promise of an update at the 2016 AIIM conference.

That’s right. The CIP IS BACK and it is because of the community.

That doesn’t mean that all is right in the universe. If anything, this chaos reveals to us that there are real problems out there. Luckily we also learned that there are passionate people in the community who can be roused to action when they feel they can make a difference.

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The CIP, A Lost Opportunity

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[EDIT: 1 week after killing it, AIIM restored the CIP after the community’s feelings about the CIP became known. Read my initial thoughts.]

Sadness from Inside Out CryingFor those that may not have heard, AIIM is killing off the Certified Information Professional (CIP) certification.

We’d like to share an exciting development with you.

To categorize the news as disappointing is a massive understatement. AIIM dumping the news on a Friday afternoon shows that AIIM knew that this would not be well received. In many ways I feel that AIIM has turned its back on the industry with this action. I am just a bit angry at that development.

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What is Content?

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A couple months back, Deane Barker wrote an article where he declared himself a Content Management Professional. This is a true statement by every definition of the term I have ever encountered. If that was all there was to it, this would be a boring post.

Deane then made the mistake of defining Content.

I can’t really fault Deane because I am going to make the same mistake in a few paragraphs. Everyone in the Content Profession eventually writes about the very nature of the work we are doing. Some do it to establish a reputation as a leader. Others do it in order to support a point.

I do it out of hope that by coming to some sort of agreement, we can better solve the Content problem.

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My CIP Breakdown

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A few weeks back, I asked readers how they thought I did on the different sections on my Certified Information Professional (CIP) exam.image I was curious where people thought my weak points were based on what they knew of my experience, from reading my blog, and other sources. The goal was to see how my experience, shared publically over the years, matched-up with the exam.

Well, the results are in. As I write this, there are 23 votes but as one is from me, I’ll throw it out. Before I break down the voting, let me share the answers.

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Translating Experience to the CIP

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When I took the Certified Information Professional (CIP) exam back in January, I didn’t study due to a bet. This made the process more challenging than necessary. What I wanted to do today was see if you could guess which area I scored the lowest.

I’m not leaving you without any information. You can always look at what I’ve been blogging about for clues. There is also my LinkedIn profile which will tell you what I’ve done over my career. Finally, checking out what each domain area in the CIP exam covers should help you match that all together.

This of course, begs the question, what do you get for guessing correctly? That is a tough one. The poll is anonymous, so it will be hard to reward individuals…so let’s crowdsource. I’ll take suggestions for all readers (making me publicly confess some dark secret of some sort) and for those readers that share their correct guess in the comments prior to my announcing results.

I’ll run this poll for one week. At the end I’ll share the correct answer, the area that I knew the best, and what areas I missed a question. This should help people determine what areas they may be lacking knowledge in as a supplement to the Sample Exam.

What Being a Certified Information Professional Says

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Certifiied Information Professional (CIP) logoIt’s been almost six months since I took and passed the CIP exam, becoming a Certified Information Professional. At that time I said I thought it was a valid measure of someone’s worth as an Information Professional. Since then, everyone I’ve talked to that has taken the exam has concurred.

If it is a valid measure, then those who have become a CIP are the kind of person you want in a senior role on any Information-centric project. Right? Is that a true statement?

What about a Big Data project?

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The Lost Decade of ECM

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imageOf the three posts rattling around in my head, this would be the third in order if I had to set a preferred order. Problem is, one idea takes more effort to develop while the other actually needs to refer to items in this post.

I spoke last week at Momentum in Las Vegas as part of EMC World. Instead of talking about Documentum or how I had worked with a client to solve a problem, I talked about the changing landscape of the Information Industry. The SlideShare version of the presentation is at the end of this post but I wanted to talk about the Lost Decade first.

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