Miss Know-it-all Rambles On

Cute Beer Recommendation Flow chart

2011-02-17T15:27:00.000-08:00

I really do need to change my blog format so I can put my fave links on the edge, but for now....http://blog.sublimedirectory.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/What-Beer-Should-I-Drink.jpg

Craft Beer Geeks

2011-02-15T11:44:00.000-08:00

Just read a great blog post on craft beer culture that I loved
http://craftbeersocial.com/craft-beer-culture-geeks-vs-snobs-via-sam-cal
And it reminded me of what a great time I had this weekend with the GALS from the Georgia Ale and Lager Sirens group. They were invited to brew a beer for the Sweetwater Cask Ale Fest and welcomed all GALS to join. They were so helpful in explaining every step of the brewing process for their ale to me (who knows very little about homebrewing, but is trying to learn the basics.) They were so much fun to hang out with trading leads on good beers to acquire, discussing what we all like, and sharing info on good festivals coming up.

It also reminded me of all the local Atlanta beer folks I've met over the past few weeks at events. Even retailers aren't withholding information about their likes/dislikes and plans for the future: they're sharing so we can all learn about the beer world. It's endeared Atlanta to me a lot more, and gotten me even more excited about craft beer!

This is what being a beer geek is all about. If you really love something, you want to share it with the world so we can all appreciate it, not withhold your knowledge only for yourself. After all, none of us can enjoy it alone.

Resting up for a big Beer Day in Atlanta

2011-01-28T16:22:00.000-08:00

Just read a few tidbits while getting psyched up for two fun events tomorrow:

GALS (Georgia Ale & Lager Sirens) January Meeting at Hop City, where the owner Kraig Torres will be talking to us about the beer retail business. I'm even dragging a friend along because I love encouraging other ladies to get into beer culture! To be followed by a scavenger hunt OR homebrewing lesson. Can't wait.
Atlanta Cask Ale Tasting. OK, so I dropped the ball on this one. I mentioned it to Mr. Know-it-All when tickets went on sale, but he just grunted. I should have realized that all he heard was Charlie Brown's teacher, but I didn't, and this week he asked if we were going. Well, it was sold out, so no. But not so fast. Some of the great people on Beer Advocate's website responded to our plight and we have each procured a spot on the list. Thanks beer peeps! This event is supposed to be pretty great. It's partially sponsored by Beer Connoiseur Magazine, and thrown by Lucky Devil Brewing (or 5 Seasons...I'm not sure because they recently defected from the 5 Seasons Chain) and Taco Mac. Casks are concoted by craft breweries around the USA, so I hope they taste better than some of the wacky stuff I had at the Sweetwater event last year! (though I still loved that). Even better is that it's supposed to be a high of 65 degrees tomorrow. Yahoo!

And now onto my items

RateBeer.com just released their "Top Beer Bars in the World" list. 2 Atlanta bars are in the top 10: The Porter Beer Bar and Brick Store Pub. Both I love, but I'm calling a little "B.S." here - Monk's cafe in Philly a distant #50? And in the top 10 in the WORLD? Just shows why I like Beer Advocate better than RateBeer.

Sounds like Cigar City Brewing products are FINALLY hitting Georgia in March of this year. Hooray for Jai alai IPA!!

Brick store is going to have 2 rotating casks going of Port and Lost Abbey products - can't wait to try more from these awesome producers who are new to the Georgia market.

Porter is having their LAST wild friday tonight. Wish I were there, but I have to rest sometime!

I'll update this post with pictures tomorrow and a summary - it oughtta be a great day.

Success! The Angel's Share Captured in the Wild in Atlanta

2011-01-23T07:11:00.000-08:00

Well, we thought it was all gone, but it's NOT!

Had some errands to run yesterday, so we headed to little 5 points and afterward had lunch at The Porter so we could try some of their sour ales left over from Friday night's "Where the Wild Beers Are" event. The had a lot of kegs remaining from the event (yay!) and we were also able to get the very end of their Mikkeller Baconator, which we've been hunting for months. It was SMOKEY as expected. Anyway, I had a super Bell's Wild One and Mr. KnowitAll had an Ichtgem Grand Cru. Food was awesome as always, but we had to move on to get closer to Decatur so we took off and headed east.

Our next errand was trying a new beer shop in Decatur called AleYeah! on W. College Ave. Wow. What a concept. Great beer, beer making supplies, glassware, local craft foods (can you believe they had my favorite Spotted Trotter Items and Cheese from Sweetgrass Dairy, including a cheese made using Arrogant Bastard???). We picked up a lot of things, including The Angel's Share from Burbon Casks, Sierra Nevada Hoptimum, and a store assembled 4pk of 2 Young's Double Chocolate Stouts w/ 2 Timmerman's Strawberry Lambic (obviously for me, thank you whoever came up with THAT idea.) This place is definitely worth the trip and we're planning to add it to our rotation. Anyway, the proprietor was talking with us about The Angel's Share he had in stock and happened to mention that he had tried the brandy aged variety at Leon's Full Service the night before...and that he was pretty sure they still had it. Can you believe it!!??? So of course we headed there immediately....

And they still had it!!! Can you believe it??!! Beautiful, delicious, and as amazing as we remembered from our last opportunity to taste it in 2009. They also had a tremendous draft list there, which included Port Mongo Double IPA (which we were also hunting), and Mikkeller Chokolat (which was a very nice complement to my Book Kreik...sorry, I'm a chick and I like that kind of stuff.)

All in all an "unbelievably" productive day, and we still made it to our chili cookoff on time!

Hop Slam Weekend

2011-01-21T16:13:00.000-08:00

Had a big coup this week - my spouse was following the Tower Liquors blog while I was in a seminar and found out they got some Bells HopSlam in this Tuesday. I was able to swing by and get a mini keg PLUS their last 6-pack. I even gave one bottle to their beer manager so he could try it out. He said when there is such a buzz, he feels bad reserving some for himself. How awesome is that?? I'm going to email him to see if he liked it or not. I'm thinking definitely.

We were also lucky enough to get on the Green's wait list, so we got another case of HopSlam, too. Don't worry, I'm planning on sharing the wealth with a few coworkers and friends over the next week.

Anywho, what we did Thursday was we had a HopSlam tasting. We had saved a bottle of 2010 HopSlam and "blind tasted" it against a HopSlam 2011 and a Port WipeOut. I correctly identified them all (and I must say the Port WipeOut was great, but not a double IPA so it was kind of unfair to it). But I was able to confirm two things about the HopSlam: 1) that IPAs indeed to not age well, but also that 2) the 2011 is even better than the 2010. The 2011's well balanced fruity strawberry grapefruit smell gives it a BA 5.0 in my mind, and the taste has a great hop citrus zing with citrus fruit juice and peppery spice on the tounge. Incredible, and worth the trouble and cost.

Tonight I'm drinking a Yuengling Porter, which was tough to come by here in Georgia, but is full of nostalgia for me and is just as good as I remember. Maybe even better. On to make dinner and add some reviews later on whatever else I get to. A coworker gave me some of his homebrewed ale, and I'm looking forward to trying it out!

New beer is out!

2010-11-27T20:02:00.000-08:00

Would always love to have more to say about records management, but the thing is, as much as I love it I love food and drink even more!!

Today was a great adventure: forays to my 2 fave pubs in the ATL and a pre stop to one of our favorite beer stores.

1. Hit Brew City - No Dogfish Head Bitches Brew or Squall available; no worries, we procured some wittekirke (wit AND framboise), Allagash Interlude, Yakima Glory, Double Bastard, Tres Pistoles, Weyerbacher Fireside Ale, and Terrapin Moo-Hoo. Yes, we have a problem.
2. Hit The Porter Beer Bar - as always the food here is incredible. We only ordered a cheese tray and were 'gifted' some spent Sweetwater grain bread, but it was very lively and the local cheeses were incredible (thanks sweet grass and my fave flat creek dairy). They were out of the listed Dogfish Head Bitches' Brew (but luckily we had already procured a couple of 750ml bottles earlier in the year when the first distribution was released - btw it's tremendous!) So I ordered a Rodenbach 2008 vintage. It came in a 4 or 8 oz glass, which seems pretty small, but it is a vintaged version and I must say a bit smoother than the regular or Grand Cru you might get in a bottle. Have to agree with some frequent beer reviewers on Beer Advocate that it would be nice for the US to advocate bottling/production dates on beer so we could compare these types of things, especially because I've had some Rodenbach Grand Cru in the past which has been a mere one click sweeter than salad dressing!

Next was the Mikellar Green Gold. You can procure this at Hop city, but it will run you about 5.50$ a 12oz. And it will be totally worth it. It was served in a beautiful tulip glass and was honey colored with a dense, high tan head. The smell was floral and fruity and the hops were quite evident. This IPA is extremely well balanced; it is supposedly made in the style of an "american ipa" but it is super hoppy without being overpowering and tasty from the first to the finish. Try it.

Last was an out on a limb beer for me, the Kasteel Cuvee Du Chateau. Listed as a Belgian Strong Dark Ale, it is not exactly in my wheelhouse, but the Porter's description listed it as fruity and complex. It was MUCH lighter than expected, despite the dark color, and had a tremendous cherry presence and very disguised alcohols. It was served in a chalice which gave it a large surface area for aeration.

Somewhere in there I think I had a taste of someone's WakeNBake and Stone Cali-Belgique - nothing disappointed.

After The Porter we moved onto:
3. The Brick Store - Looking for Bitches Brew, but none on the main menu. I had to settle for Stone Vertical Epic 101010; Very nice balance, and I was able to take my time with this one, but in between that and the Dogfish Head Squall we spotted in a 750ml in the cooler, we had nice spinach, chick pea and potato soup, with the most incredible pierogies on the side....I always consider The Porter the winner in a food war with Brick Store, but that soup was an unexpected surprise...

The Squall was even better than we'd expected: it is basically a bottle conditioned 90 minute ale, and the smoother for it. That's all I can really say. 90 minute WAS my favorite beer, and this is my favorite incantation of it so far. Good luck finding it if you are in the ATL.....

4. Home and a standard Brooklyn Chocolate Stout from the stash. Spouse hit the Oban, and that was OK by me. We checked out the movie "Up in the Air". Don't watch many movies, but I'm so glad we picked this one. Great acting, great story, great message, script and execution....wow. Love to see it when Hollywood exectues well. If you haven't seen it, you should check it out.

Anywhoo, overall, a great day.

Talk atcha later: tomorro is an NFL day, so a good day to report on Local ATL beer offerings!! Stay tuned.

Flat Creek Lodge

2010-05-07T16:57:00.000-07:00

Just got back from Flat Creek Lodge in Swainsboro, GA earlier this week. I always have a magical time there (I don't throw around adjectives like that lightly) and this year was no exception.

I brought back some cheese with me, but not as much as I'd like: Flat Creek, you need to make more available to us on site!

Anywho, tonight is wine and cheese night featuring only Flat Creek Cheeses. Tonight we're having Drunken Deer, Low Country Gouda, and Uneenodae (this one I had to get at Alon's).

I hadn't planned to have Italian wine, but that's what the spouse wanted, so we're also having an amazing new-ish supertuscan called Brancaia. This wine was ranked number 10 in the Wine Spectator Top 100 of 2009. I've tried this in a previous vintage and was unimpressed, but this 2007 is truly super at a super price. Strong fruit that holds up to food without being overly tannic. In fact, it's a bit much for these cheeses. Next time I'll pair it with some pecorino and maybe a robiola. Thanks to our friends for giving us a bottle to try out!

Back to the cheese!

The Low Country Gouda isn't as strong as I remembered - especially when paired with the wine - but it's still tasty.

The Drunken Deer is beer cheese with chunks of smoked deer jerkey that was washed in some home brewed beer throughout it's aging. This I like. It is just as good as I remembered, but still smoky and probably better suited for beer drinking. It tastes like a mild cheddar and is semi soft. Very nice smoke flavor, without being overwhelming. Luckily, I bought almost a pound of it, so I will be able to try it with some porter or IPA next time.

The Uneenodae wasn't something that I was able to get at the Lodge, but I've bought it from Alon's before. It is really tasty. Mild, but with quite a bit of flavor. Somewhere between semi soft and hard, with those little calcified chunks in it which are the sign of a spectacular cheese (in my book anyway.) This cheese is 50% sheep and 50% cow milk, and is the first Flat Creek cheese I've had with sheep's milk since they took on the flocks. (Lacaune-East Friesian mix sheep, in case you are interested.) If I were the cheese producer, I would consider this one of my masterpieces...and it's produced somewhat locally. These sheep's milk cheeses are only produced in limited quantities because of the lower yield of milk in these smaller animals. Flat Creek also recently lost their main cheesemonger, which worries me that we won't see such strong sheep's cheeses for a while, but I'm hoping if I get on their list the new cheesemonger will start producing great cheeses soon (and I will get some!!)

Kudos as always to Alon's for their fresh baguette, awesome marinated anchovies and olive tapenade. We also added a favorite of mine, olive and almond paste, along with some grilled artichokes, peppardew and topped it all off with some olives and greek salad.

Pictures to follow....a nice low-key night. Thanks Flat Creek Dairy! Can't wait to be able to bring home some of your award winning Blue Farmhouse, Cypress Cheddar. Also looking locally for Aztec Cheddar, Smoked pepper and Cilantro Leiden cheeses!

March Madness!

2010-03-27T19:17:00.000-07:00

It’s been a great March so far – some great weather in amidst the bad, some awesome Cinderalla stories in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship, and also some great opportunities to taste some new beer and scotch.

Macallan Tasting
A couple of weeks ago, Macallan held their marketing roadshow here in Atlanta. I get pretty excited for these even though they are marketing focused, because I’ve had a tough time finding non-marketing Scotch whisky tastings since I moved here. It was a well done event – not as intimate, warm & fuzzy as the last time they came around, but still pretty good and represented “The Macallan” well.

The event was held in one of the beautifully restored Biltmore ballrooms. They jazzed it up a bit with pop music (like black eyed peas), lots of monitors showing media presentations with maps and factoids, tricks with ice cubes, and a rep/speaker with a headset and jazzy presentation reminiscent of a motivational seminar. Seems that they are targeting a ‘broader market’ and by that I mean younger and more urban. I can’t wait to see how that pans out for them – I’d love Scotch to appeal to a broader market. What I didn’t love was the guy telling me all about his golf game at St. Andrews and the subsequent touring around Scotland in his rental Bentley. Who cares- we’re here for free scotch buddy! Thankfully, the whole event was only about an hour and a half long.

Anyway, despite the hype, the Scotch offerings were great. Here’s what they had:
10 year Fine Oak
12 year (sherry oak)
15 year Fine Oak
17 year Fine Oak
18 year (sherry oak)

They were all quite good, and I had never realized they were marketing a 17 year, but I did discover that I by far like the traditional sherry oaked variety better than the Fine Oak or American Oak or whatever they’re calling it these days. It seems much more complex to me and sort of warmer with less “bite”. This is a bit of a generalization (since I can’t find my notes from the event), but that’s my summary. For my money, I’m going to stick with the 12 year. It is well worth the money and this free event has helped me prove that it’s my favorite (besides the 18, but at ~$150 that’s a bit out of my budget for regular purchasing.) The 12 year remains about $40 and may not have the 95 rating by wine enthusiast, but it’s in the low 90s and I happen to love it.

In case you don’t understand the “Oak” distinction, The Macallan is traditionally matured in sherry casks made of European Oak which are pretty expensive to make. They are hand selected and only come from Jerez, Spain. The rep threw out the $ amount of the cost of one of these casks but I can’t remember what it was, but it seemed like a lot. Conversely the fine oak line is matured in a combination of European & America Oak casks which previously held sherry and American Oak casks which previously held bourbon and are purported to be lighter and fruitier with more citrus and vanilla tones. These are evidently cheaper to procure, but they give the scotch it’s own distinct flavor which is very different from the traditionally produced variety.

Other bottles Macallan was marketing but not offering in the free tasting:
Fine Oak - 21 & 30 year
“Traditional” Sherry Oak – 25 & 30 year

Prices are all over the place for these 30 years – if you can find them. Looks like there is not much hope of procuring a 30 year Fine Oak for much under $400 or a 30 year Sherry Oak for under $900. If you’re in the market, good luck, and send me a dram!

Sweetwater “Brew your cask off” Charity event
The Sweetwater brewery continued heir “good guy” role by facilitating and hosting a really cool charity event on March 20th. Here is what they did:

1)Sweetwater came up with a set of base beers

2) They invited all their distributors (bars, restaurants, liquor stores), charitable organizations they were raising money for (4, but only one would “win” via an attendee vote ) along with a few local celebs and various other volunteerees to participate – these were the entrants

3) They held a pre-event event in which each entrant was tasked with to each brew a cask conditioned beer of their choice

4) Then they held a big party and charged a fee for entry where there would be voting on the best cask by a panel of judges and by the attendees

Pretty cool. What was really cool was that each entrant got to add creative flavoring of their choice and come up with a creative name for their brew. I can’t remember how many there were and am too lazy to get up and find my guide (maybe I’ll edit this later) but I would say that there were about 150 different selections including the base beers.

There were beers made with chocolate, there were beers made with hot peppers, there were beers made with chocolate and hot peppers. It was true March madness. Some other ingredients which come to mind were dates, figs, vanilla, mint, tequila – you name it and someone tried to put it in their beer. I tasted beer that was like thai iced tea, beer that was like a peppermint patty, beer that was like a tootsie roll; and also a beer that I actually had to pour out it was so undrinkable. My personal fave was a saison style beer that I had early on. Can’t remember who made it, but who cares?

The vibe was pretty good. We got there early and left early, so mostly all I saw was people having a good time and things not getting ugly. Probably some drunkards hanging around after we left, but I’m glad we missed them and honestly I don’t know how you would have gotten drunk unless you were power chugging your 1oz servings. Then again, Sweetwater was supplementing with one of their own brews (try their new Dank Tank BSP Quad – quadruple style done well.) What a fun day.

You can find the winners here: http://www.brewyourcaskoff.com/
None of these were ones I tasted, except the loser (hey, there were so many, and they actually ran out of some of them!)

They donated a good portion of the profits from the entry fees to the charitable orgs, and the most to the winning one which turned out to be the Atlanta Humane Society).

Miss Know it all time:

Cask conditioned ales are generally unfiltered, unpasturized beers which are “conditioned” in their own casks only and served directly from them. This means all fermentations take place in the cask – they’re not moved to different vessels. They don’t have any pressure added to dispense them as with regular draft beers, but instead are hand pumped. You can see these at some of the good beer bars here in the ATL like the Brick Store or the Porter where they generally have at least one cask ale offering that needs to be pumped by hand. This is how it was done back in the day.

In the midst of all this we’ve been spending quite a bit of time at Taco Mac watching the real March Madness – and this year it is indeed madness - so I’m gonna get back to it and update on the Brick Store Single Hop Mikeller event later. Stay tuned….

Had to re-post this for the other cooks out there

2010-03-02T10:49:00.000-08:00

I had been thinking about what to make for dinner and stumbled across this link on the delicious hotlist. It's 5 meals in one chicken, or how to creatively (and deliciously) make 5 meals for 2 people on 25$. Pretty cool.

http://cheaphealthygood.blogspot.com/2009/02/1-chicken-17-healthy-meals-26-bucks-no.html

Stranded in the Garden State

2010-02-15T14:41:00.001-08:00

well, after a long weekend of getting flights cancelled and arriving a day late, we've had some fun things going on.

Saturday night we had dinner at 90 acres - great space and great food: I would recommend! http://ninetyacres.com/
Sunday night we went to see Jersey Boys on Broadway with the family and ended up having dinner at Park & Orchard in Rutherford, NJ. Excellent food and amazing wine bible, but wierd space and service.http://www.parkandorchard.com/

We got stranded today here (no planes and it's snowing AGAIN tonight), so we ventured out while the sun was shining to create some adventure. We headed to a Beer Advocate top-rated liquor store Oaktree in S. Plainfield that is a Buy rite. Check out their impressive inventory here: http://www.oaktreewines.com/InventorySearchBeer.aspx.
All I can say is I finally yelled - "We have to get out of here!" I felt like a kid in a candy store...luckily their prices were tremendous. They even kicked in some cool microbrewery pint glasses because we made such a large purchase. Unfortunately, they, along with the beer we did not get around to trying, could not be brought home with us, but I did take a chance on Delta losing my luggage and smuggled a single Dogfish head 120 minute IPA back with me. More on this once I actually get to taste it (yes, it AND my luggage survived!)

We stopped to get some tremendous pizza at Cosimo's in Westfield, NJ. Rated the best pizza in NJ by the Star-Ledger. I have to admit that it was pretty great. We got a broccoli rabe/sausage/onion pie, and it lived up to the hype. http://www.cosimosrestaurant.com/

Then we drove through a bunch of beautiful towns I've never been in before, saw lots of snow and deer and sledders, and generally had a fun day. If I get inspired, I'll embed my sledder pix in here later.

We came back with a bunch of beers to try as a group (and ordered some more pizza!) Many we've had, many are things we can't obtain in the ATL. Here is the order we tried them in:

Duchesse De Bourgogne
Rodenbach Grand Cru
Hitachino Nest White Ale
21st Amendment Hell or High Watermelon
Southern Tier Raspberry Wheat
Elysian Night Owl Pumpkin Ale
Lagunitas Brown Shugga
The Bruery Dark Orchard
Founder's Kentucky Breakfast Stout
Troeg's Nugget Nectar

We left behind some Southern Tier chocolate stout, a dark rye and a few nice IPAs in 750 ml bottles. Also, our extra Nugget Nectar and 21st Amendment Watermelon. I have a sneaking suspicion none of it will make it until our next visit, but that's OK - we love to spread the beer love.

As fun as it was, I'm happy to be back in my home sweet home...it was snowing buckets today, and I thought there was no chance our plne would take off (it did.) Time to hit the gym to work off all the pizza and beer!!

Winter Weekends full of cooking!!

2010-01-31T14:59:00.000-08:00

Been a great weekend for cooking!

Friday
A friend came over for wine and cheese on friday - and i remembered that I really need to start logging these events. I wish I had starting taking pix of wine and cheese night 8 years ago - I would have some great photos and archives to look back on!

One of the wines we had was excellent and a gift from Mom -http://winelibrary.com/wines/32998-2005+Tir+Na+Nog+Grenache+750ML
Another was a bottle our friend brought over, Lyeth Cabernet Sauvignon...can't remember the vintage on that one.

The cheeses we had included a Talleggio, aParranno, a Boule de Perigord with black truffles.
We had some olives, steamed atrichokes (I need to work on my technique with these), and fresh roasted red peppers, along with some hot soppresatt and regular peppered salami. Pepper shooters and peppardews, too. We also had the usual array of dips, this time featuring my favorite mint and pistachio pesto and some almond olive paste.

Saturday
I also made several casseroles for a baby shower I co-hosted saturday. I made a chicken and spinach manicotti and eggplant parm. Did not make my own sauce due to time restrictions, but got rave reviews on both nonetheless!

We also made some chili for a chili cookoff at a friend's house. It came out "OK". Better luck next time, I think. We really need to work on our chili skills...

Sunday
Breakfast was a fritatta made with anaheim, poblano and red pepper surplus from the chili making yesterday. It was excellent with some added colby cheese and fresh cliantro.

Currently, I am making a lamb and eggplant stew based on a recipe I found online. So far, it smells good, but I'm not convinced it's going to come out as well as expected....well, I guess we can always fall back on leftover cheese! And if it turns out well, I will post the recipe.

I have been doing a TON of dishes today : )

Quote of the Day 01/25/2010

2010-01-25T07:47:00.001-08:00

"To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worthwhile. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter." - Aleister Crowley

What do you think Mr. Crowley would have thought about social networking and web 2.0?

Nice AIIM Article on E records management implementation

2010-01-25T07:23:00.000-08:00

Got this Carl Weise article via @juliecolgan RT @BethMayhew
Implementing Electronic Records Management: A lot more than software http://ow.ly/109Ez

It may be very handy for communicating our process to colleagues; sometimes users have a tough time understanding why we "can't just throw up a folder structure" and let them have at it. It's a liiiitttllle more involved than that.

2009-06-29T13:20:00.000-07:00

almost every day, I have at least one song 'stuck' in my head. I think I'm going to start blogging it here, so that I have a record. Definitely don't want to put it on FB and bog everyone down with it!

today: Rearview Mirror - Pearl Jam

2009-03-01T12:00:00.000-08:00

I sit here in my living room having the kind of Sunday I really love: watching good tv and sports, watching the snow fall outside, and kicking back with a Dogfishead 90 minute ale.

On one hand, it makes me miss living in the northeast (getting 'homebound' by snow is rare here in the Southeast), but it allows me to remember what I work for every day. Sad to say, but it's not world peace or anything so noble (though I wish I felt like I could make a difference there) but just the ability to earn an honest living doing something I like, and have Sundays off like this to just vegitate and relax with the S.O. The snow puts everything in a different perspective, because even if you wanted to go out and hike somewhere, as an urbanite, it kind of makes no sense to brave the bad roads to get to your hike; so the things you can do for the day are limited, clearing your options and decision making down to just a few things. It gives me a strange peace.

2009-02-28T10:03:00.000-08:00

Disappointing Night at The Tabernacle

OK - I'm a bad blogger, but I had a rough night last night so I feel the need to pollute cyberspace with my thoughts.

My spouse and I went out to dinner and then to a concert at the local small venue in Atlanta. It's usually a great place to see a show and I was really excited to see Ben Folds. This venue happens to be all general admission, which is usually not an issue, but last night was absolutely awful. There were lots of people talking as if they were at a cocktail party or something, and to add to that, the sound system didn't seem to be working properly, so not much sound past right in front of the stage, and no sound piped into the downstairs area. I couldn't even hear the show! Lots in the crowd were trying to get the talkers to quiet down, but to no avail. It was so frustrating...is this what our culture has come to? People are so self-involved that they pay 65$ + to go to concerts and then talk through the whole thing? If they want to miss the music, that's fine, but don't prevent those of us who want to hear it from doing so. I am so confused about this. We ended up leaving after about 8 or 10 songs, and I'm still thoroughly disappointed by the whole experience. I think that was not only my last general admission show, but maybe my last at the Tabernacle, and I'm not thrilled by that.

2007-10-07T17:00:00.000-07:00

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...

2007-10-07T15:00:00.000-07:00

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....

2007-10-06T23:00:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-10-05T23:00:00.000-07:00

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...

2007-10-03T08:22:00.001-07:00

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.

2006-06-20T20:45:00.000-07:00

Just got in from Cabo!

I will send you a link to my pix - i'm still working on seeing if we can exchange via FTP.