November 15, 2013
Dear Everyone:
I’m not sure quite how it happened, but I wound up giving a Presentation
at last night’s ARMA Dinner.
(Association of Records Managers and Administrators.)
Every two years we elect a new Board of Directors for our local chapter.
Shortly after she was sworn in, our new President sent out an
email to all of us on the Board (I’m the once-and-again Vice President
this time) asking for suggestions about possible programs and what did
we want to do with the Chapter this time.
I innocently suggested that we might look into the possibility of
organizing a Study Group for people interested in becoming
Certified
Records Managers. I happened
to know that the current President is, in fact, taking the CRM
Examination herself; so I thought she, at least, would be interested.
What I didn’t know was that she and the previous President, who is now
the Pacific Region Manager, decided to have a program called “Increasing
Your Professional Net Worth” at the November meeting.
I found out about it when the current President sent us both an
email asking for “a short bio and outline of your presentation” from
each of us.
To which I replied, “Huh???”
The Pacific Region Manager assured me that I would only have to talk for
about 15 minutes about the Institute of Certified Records Managers
(ICRM) and he would take care of the rest.
That, I thought, I could do.
In fact, all the information I needed was available on the ICRM website.
All I really had to do was get the facts, organize them and plop
them all into a
PowerPoint Presentation.
I even have PowerPoint on my computer, since it automatically
comes with the rest of the
Microsoft Office package.
And I’ve used said PowerPoint many, many times in the past at
work.
One of the things I actually like about PowerPoint is that it virtually
forces you to organize your
thoughts. If you go on for
too long, the list runs off the screen.
So the general rule is:
Keep it short and to the point.
A few years ago, someone at the
Information Technology department at
work did some kind of audit of company documents floating around on
various computers and discovered that the most frequently used format of
documents was, in fact, PowerPoint.
You would have thought
Word or
Excel, but no.
As one manager told me:
“We’ve been trained to think in
bullet points.”
This was before I worked on a particular project that included many,
many contractors. Time and
again, I watched as the contractor opened a previous PowerPoint
document, wiped out all the existing information, then saved it as a new
document and proceeded to use it to collect notes, draft an agenda and
take the “minutes” of a meeting, all in Presentation format.
Because it was the easiest thing to do.
So I got started on my “little” Presentation for ARMA.
Collecting, organizing, making mental notes to go with this slide
or that. I must say it was
very nice to have over a month to get things all arranged.
So much better than “you can have that ready for the staff
meeting this afternoon, right?”
As for the audience, a grand total of eleven people showed up, including
the two “Speakers”. In other
words, a small, very friendly group.
Ironically, the Chapter President couldn’t make it.
But one of the things on her agenda for the Board meeting
following the regular Chapter Meeting was:
Do we want to try to set up some kind of a “study program” for
prospective CRMs? The answer
was a resounding “Yes.”
It will be interesting to see what comes of that.
Love, as always,
Pete
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