Well – I was headed to a roundtable on Marketing your RIM program, but I got there and no one was there yet…plus, I started thinking that I wouldn’t have more input. I would like to be more of a sponge right now. So later on in the week there is a marketing session that I will go to.

My second choice was this session on RM Continuing Ed, which now seemed like a much better choice than the first. On my way I ran into Dr. Langemo and we chatted briefly about Jesse’s last session. He thought it was great, too. But it reaffirmed his belief that the state of email is still pretty much nowhere. He said he now thinks he needs to stress this issue more in his seminars. One more big question mark with no “right answers” in the RIM world!

ARMA 2007: Continuing Education: building a career path in RIM
Raymond Cunningham, CRM, CA, CDIA+, CIP, ERM-m – University of Illinois Foundation
Sunday 10/07/07 3:30 pm

Raymond is a self avowed “certification junkie”; he is on the listserv!
I love these quotes he gave us: “Careers are built – they don’t happen by luck”, and “You must be proactive in your career”; because it tells me I am in the right session.

He told us about the ARMA Core Competencies document which will be released. There will also be a skills assessment with it, which sounds really useful. Raymond also went over all the major certifications and it was really useful to me- I guess I‘ll know more about the AIIM certs if the Listserv members ever agree on how valuable they are! Raymond gave us a lot of good advice I think, and the best was that everyone’s situation is different, so we need to keep open minds and get motivated no matter what we are doing now.

He suggested Google-ing yourself: you need a big footprint to impress prospective employers! Who knew!? LinkedIn, FaceBook, YouTube, Jobsites…and checking stuff like indeed.com

I do know I want to get ahold of “Jobs vs. Careers in Records Management”, July 1997 – Pemberton, he seems to really like what mr. pemberton has to say.

I need to take an inventory of where my career is, as he suggested, and get moving. And after listening to him, I feel I do need to talk to him or Jesse about prepping for my CDIA+ exam – Raymond thinks going in cold isn’t a great idea.

I think I’m glad I ended up in this session rather than the roundtable today : )
Next stop, the welcome party!

Tomorrow bright and early is the keynote by Michael Oxley. Should be great. I wonder if they will have a motivational marching band like they did last year to kick it off in San Antonio...

ARMA 2007: Identifying and Classifying E-Messages as Records


Jesse Wilkins - Access Sciences Corp
Sunday 10/07/07 1:30 pm
It was Jesse Wilkins who suggested on the ARMA Listserv that some people try to liveblog the conference, so I’m hoping if he reads this he will take into consideration that this is my first attempt.

There is a big crowd in this large room, so it looks (not surprisingly) like a topic lots of ARMA members are interested in.

The director of ARMA Education introduced him and explained that this presentation is a presentation of his research and that Jesse’s paper will be available on the website for the benefit of all ARMA members – pretty cool, I think! She explained that they get their research funding from chapters – two chapters contributed to this research, and she presented those chapters: Houston and Denver Mile High. Believe she also said that Jesse is donating the money back to the ARMA education fund – very cool!

Key Points/Highlights of the session:
The objectives of his presentation were summed up as identifying current practices, identifying available technological solutions, and how to develop an action plan to handle E-message classification.

He recommended a YouTube video on “How not to do PowerPoint” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORxFwBR4smE)– this is really a note to myself for a funny look!

Jesse talked about how he gathered his data through literature review, survey, and interviews. He did a pilot with a small group first and used Surveymonkey (http://www.surveymonkey.com/) to publish his survey.

I have to say that out of his key findings about how email was used and controlled, the thing I found most interesting was that 30% of those surveyed forward business messages to personal accounts. He attributed this to limits on message size and the like, and I can totally see this, but I wouldn’t have guessed it without seeing it here.

In his survey responses, I guess one of the things I was surprised about was that 60% of respondents archiving emails captured metadata. Jesse did not seem to be. The fact that they capture To, From, Subject, Attachment name, and Date and time did not impress me as “being captured”…that is stuff that is already there. When I’m thinking metadata, I’m thinking something that has to be added. Usually manually. He did admit in those cases there was not much added because no one wants to do that.

When he rolled out the options for strategy, he gave a great example to illustrate the option of declaring and managing messages as records: If you get 200 emails per day, and 10% of them (20) are records, then you spend 30 seconds apiece identifying , 30 seconds deciding it is a record, 30 seconds classifying, 30 seconds moving, etc., that’s about an hour per day just to classify email – which translates into about 6 weeks each year! Can anyone imagine trying to implement that strategy at their organization?! No way.

Basically, with all the solutions available, there still is no one “right” solution for everyone. However he did have some bullet points on what you need to think about and produce to get a program rolling.

Lot of questions after the session - about very specific about RM theory in this area. Not to helpful for those who have already done a lot of reading on this topic!

Off to my next session....

ARMA2007 RIM: The Fundamentals, day 2/2

RIM: The Fundamentals
Two day Pre-conference seminar preceding ARMA 2007 conference led by Dr. Mark Langemo, CRM, FAI

I’ll apologize in advance for the length of this post today – it is a second whole day session.

The Remaining Agenda for this Pre-Con:
1. RM & the law – how to develop legally valid RRS
2. How to develop state of the art filing systems for paper records
3. Managing inactive records
4. Imaging and applications of Imaging (film + digital)

His recommendations for the conference to our group -
On Wednesday Morning at 8:00, Dr. Tim O’Keefe “Communicating with IT”
Do not be at the 1:30 on Tuesday where he is speaking…we’re already here listening to him!

Before starting a Records Retention Program Process develop a close working relationship with your org’s: In other words: LAY THE POLITICAL GROUNDWORK!!!
He has already established why Records Retention Management is not an exact science, but with that in mind take these strong recommendations…

Dr. Langemo’s Twelve Steps to a Successful Records Retention Program – see his slides for these

Developing State of the art filing systems for Paper records
Traditional Drawer filing systems are expensive; these are the dinosaur of RM, and should be phased out as we can realistically/economically replace them. We need “State-of-the-Art” systems! Start with a preliminary file purge to get rid of dups and non-records. Then you are ready to get started in earnest.

Managing inactive records
Storage and management of inactive records are usually two of the greatest consumers of space, salaries and equip.
He defined Inactive records: those records on any media that are accessed referred to and used infrequently but that must be retained according to retention schedules to meet operating needs or legal requirements.
Dr. Langemo belives that the most important thing about managing inactive records is finding them : ) Then, once you have found them, getting a plan of attack together, and he gave us some ideas for that. We talked about process and in sourcing vs. outsourcing.

Imaging and applications of Imaging
We talked about both microfilm and electronic imaging. This was helpful to me..don’t know much about microfilm, though I do about electronic.

Overall, I loved Dr. Langemo’s sessions. His call to action was great – he should be a motivational speaker! He loves records management, too, which is great for getting us psyched up.

RIM: The Fundamentals, day 1/2

This is a two day Pre-conference seminar preceding ARMA 2007 conference led by Dr. Mark Langemo, CRM, FAI

I’ll apologize in advance for the length of this post – it was a whole day session - I assure you my actual notes are MUCH longer! non RM lovers will be asleep by word 100…..
The session seemed to be composed of people from Records management and IT areas – more from private sector than public. There were no attendees from the legal department (or none that want to admit to it!)

Dr. Langemo told us that he was going to start from the bottom, assuming no knowledge on our part about RM...but he also assured us he would structure things so it is not boring or “the two longest days of our lives”. He introduced himself & definitely proved that he is a truly engaging speaker. He said that all reactions are welcome (but questions might have to wait a bit.) He also invited us to plagiarize his content if needed in developing our own programs.
Then he presented his “upside down triangle” Agenda (anyone who is considering taking this session should check this out)
Day 1
1. What is RM2007?, benefits & ROI for making RM a high priority, What are the components of an org wide RM program (what they should be)
2. Strategies: what are the steps which usually need to be taken to ensure your program is supported in our org (sr. mgrs and users)
3. ERM: not many orgs are managing their electronic records well
4. RM & the law – how to develop legally valid RRS
Day 2
5. How to develop state of the art filing systems for papers records
6. Managing inactive records
7. Imaging and applications of Imaging (film + digital)


What is RM2007?, benefits & ROI for making RM a high priority, What are the components of an org wide RM program (what they should be)

To set up his talk, ML established the idea that recorded info is growing exponentially in volume, and therefore the time required to manage it is going to increase even more. The components of what we are going to need to do to deal with it are Political – Organizational – Methodological – Leadership in New Technology tools.

He emphasized the importance of selecting and implementing an electronic records management system, as this has become the only viable way to execute your plans. He also stressed that compliance has never been more important – especially since the new amendments to the Federal rules of Civil Procedure.

He defined what a record is, what the records lifecycle is, and what Records Management is. He briefly overviewed events of the past few years and how they have brought us into a “compliance age” of sorts. Dr. Langemo reviewed the lack of RM education, and lack of knowledge about it in organizations. He also stressed the need to centralize this function in your organization which should be centrally managed.

He urged us all to develop a formal strategic plan for each of our organizations, and covered what he believed to be the elements of a successful Organization-wide RM program, and the Elements of a Successful eRecords Management Program
He urged all practitioners to maximize use of the Internet/Intranets/Portals for Quality RM – he thinks every organization needs to develop a strategy to do this, and that Records Managers need to be leaders in making this happen.
He also urged all of us to evaluate our RM programs using an ARMA tool:

www.arma.org/standards/eassessment.cfm, and by checking out the ISO standard so that we can benchmark our programs and show our senior management where we stand.
Dr. Langemo also explained how important it is in this industry to network, especially with Records Managers in our own industries or verticals. He thinks that while we are all at the conference we should find a Records Manager in our industry and ask them:
a. How their RM programs were set up,
b. where their position falls in their org,
c. their inventorying and surveying strategies,
d. a small part of their retention schedule (for format),
e. what SW they are running & lessons learned
Strategies: what are the steps which usually need to be taken to ensure your program is supported in our org
Dr. Langemo gave us the 8 strategies he believes are the critical program development strategies – he believes that implementation of them can result in establishment of a successful org wide records management program : 0 If you have ever met him, you will know that he is very passionate about this!
He strongly believes that every organization with a RM program should establish a RM Website on their Intranet with information about personnel, the program itself, inventories, policies, retention schedules, etc.
Dr. Langemo also stressed RM Education for all of us. He urged us to consider getting our CRMs, take ARMA’s RIM 101 Fundamentals course on line, and read up on the reference books available
Managing Electronic Records
Dr. Langemo discussed the fact that not many orgs manage their electronic records well yet. To quote him “It is still a new frontier”. This part of the session really just covered the fundamentals of electronic content, and ways to manage it, including collaboration and all that goes along with it. He warned us that he was going to simplify a lot of it into 45 minutes of material.
Though there are lots of advantages to Electronic records, E records are “A huge problem – and a great solution” because of whose control they are under and how they proliferate. He believes that there are a lot of things ERM Programs can do to be successful. Some of them include partnering with IT, using ERM software, and keeping an inventory of your electronic records.
He kept us laughing with a list of similarities between success in baseball and Records Management, and showed us some great pix of him playing baseball and showing off his talent at the catcher position!
Developing and Implementing Legally Valid Records Retention Programs
He stressed to us that managing records retention is not an exact science, that a good faith effort must be made to develop and implement a RRS for your org, and that, Retention Management must always be driven primarily by valid user need within organizations.
He pointed out to us that the Legal counsel with whom we all work, have almost definitely never studied this stuff in law school. But that now Judges really know how to ask questions to get to the heart of the matter: do you have a schedule, do you follow it, etc. Dr. Langemo then discussed the reasons why every org needs a legally valid RRS and what the risks are of not having one.
He made a great joke about the standard “7 year” retention answer we all seem to get from our customers.
Most of all, he put retention law/reg development in perspective for us. He told us that in the US there are about 8,000 US fed and state regulations and 4,000 state laws which total up to 12,000 laws and regulations which may impact how long we keep records. The number of Canadians laws are right behind the US in total number…He also gave us another useful stat – that there is now 1 attorney for every 273 people in the US, followed closely by Canada. In Europe it is 1:5,000. Because of this we’d all better be good at researching and making our best effort to comply with the existing regulations. There is now good research software for use in tracking down regs and laws surrounding retention of our records, and he listed it out for our reference.
Can’t wait until day 2 – if Dr. Langemo could keep me this engaged for an entire day of records management, I’m expecting great things from day 2!

If you're reading this, it means you made it through my first "liveblog"...well i had to edit it a lot - it was too long (still is), I couldn't get the wireless connection to work at the conference, and the My Word 2007 'Publish blog' function wasn't cooperating very well with me! All in all, a good learning experience, but a big apology for all my formatting that was lost : (

More tomorrow...

For all you ARMA-ites out there, I am planning to LiveBlog the ARMA 2007 conference starting this Friday, October 5th, in Baltimore, MD.

I am attending the preconference session "Records and Information Management: The Fundamentals", facilitated by Mark Langemo, Ed.D., CRM, FAI. I am looking foward to it & think should be very informative.

Those who know me won't be surprised that I am looking forward to the opportunity to eat Chesapeake Bay Blue Crabs almost as much as I am the conference!

Stay tuned for my post on what sessions I plan to attend - off to pack for the week.