Information Coalition

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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Building The Next Generation Of Leaders At InfoGovCon 2018

[Originally published on the TeraThink blog]

Kevin Park talks as Annalisa Nash Fernandez, Nick Inglis, and TeraThink's Laurence Hart listen during the closing panel of the InfoGovCon Leadership Summit. Picture by Jim MerrifieldOnce again, I am attending the Information Governance Conference (InfoGovCon) in Providence, Rhode Island. In addition to the excellent content during the main conference, The Information Coalition team added two new components to the agenda, the Leadership Summit and CIO Breakfast.

I was honored to be asked to represent TeraThink and speak at the Leadership Summit. I shared many of personal lessons from my past and stressed the need for fresh leadership in the industry. However, I want to take a moment to share what some of the others discussed during the events. Continue reading →

Beyond the Hype of Content Services

[Originally published on the TeraThink blog]

The original Washington Monument just off the Appalachian Trail in MarylandA few weeks back, I spoke on an Information Coalition webinar with Nick Inglis about getting Beyond the Hype of Content Services. We discussed content services and tried to separate the reality from the hype. If you been following, there is a lot of hype out there and has been since Gartner stopped tracking ECM (enterprise content management) and switched to content services. This has fed people’s instinct to equate content services with ECM. Many vendors and consultants are now taking their marketing messaging and simply substituting one term for the other. Even more distracting are people that reflexively reject content services because they assume the person using the term is just doing a term swap.

The truth is that content services is not ECM. It is an approach to implementing solutions that support an ECM strategy and providing sound information governance. Content services doesn’t eliminate the need for an ECM strategy or information governance. In fact, if you don’t have a strategy or proper governance, you might end up addressing the wrong things.

You still need a plan. To determine how to implement it, you need to know what content services is and how it can make a difference.

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InfoGovCon 2017 Continues to Set the Bar High

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Governor Raimondo speaks at InfoGov17This post has been a long time in coming because I’ve been trying to process everything that happened this year. Once again, InfoGovCon was a great event and the Information Coalition should be proud at the quality of speakers that they assembled. After all, how many conferences score a governor and get them to talk about something relevant?

Conferences like InfoGovCon are critical for the industry. We are still building a template for consistent success. As Shannon Harmon, whom I had the pleasure to meet this year, put it,

The best practices are still being developed. The body of knowledge is under construction.  This makes information governance an exciting space within which to work.  It can also be immensely frustrating for those who want a well-defined structure in place.  Working in this space requires a certain comfort level with the unknown.

After decades of working in this space, I agree that there are still some unknowns. We have learned a lot about what NOT to do. It is the way we can get things done consistently that we are still putting together.

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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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Too Many Associations

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A Pie from "Too Many Cooks" spoofWe are currently dealing with a glut of associations in the information industry. In the past couple of years with the addition of:

When you take into account the long history of AIIM and ARMA in this industry, it is clear that the community at-large feels it has needs not currently being met by the existing associations. CM Pros failed after failing to determine what value they could offer, at what cost, and how they could be distinct from AIIM and ARMA.

What does the entry of these new players mean?

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