March 13, 2015
Dear Everyone:
A very busy week, ARMA-wise.
(ARMA = Association of Records Managers and Administrators, but you knew
that, didn’t you?)
On Wednesday, we had our “Annual” Spring Seminar.
Called “Annual” because we’ve had one every year since we started
I-have-no-idea-how-long-ago.
By “we” I mean the four “Northern California” chapters,
Golden Gate (San
Francisco), Mt Diablo (East Bay),
Sacramento and
Silicon Valley.
Originally, I think it was “just” the three “Bay Area” chapters, but
then Sacramento felt left out, so we invited them to join us.
Basically, all the chapters combine their resources to host a
Records and Information Management (RIM) seminar and jointly divide the
proceeds, assuming there are any, equally.
Naturally, the first thing everybody does is ask “sponsors” to foot the
bills. Sponsors are
generally companies that sell RIM products and services and have a
vested interest in finding possible new customers.
Give us money and we let you set up a table with promotional
items, colloquially referred to as “giveaways”, posters and banners,
business cards, etc. The
more money the sponsor provides, the more they are promoted, including
getting their logo printed on a reusable bag.
Of course, you can’t have too many people hitting up the same sponsors,
so we needed a way to keep track of who was contacting whom.
And, somehow, that led to my setting up a
spreadsheet with names,
companies, etc. Because
individual chapters need sponsors to help them out with the usual
expenses and so on, I already had a list of companies that I had
contacted when I suddenly became the Chapter President.
It was fairly simple to make a copy of that list and revise it.
Then, when people started registering for the Seminar, I
“automatically” got a copy of the information and that led to another
spreadsheet. I didn’t even
think about it. Just opened
up Excel and began a list.
Before I knew it, I was the unofficially official “Keeper of The List”.
This year’s theme was “Space Invaders:
It’s Not Just a Game Anymore”, with a little graphic that
somebody dug up of an old video game icon.
The idea was to take advantage of recent new stories about
significant instances of hacking to generate interest in the Seminar.
And then find Speakers who could talk intelligently, and
coherently, about RIM and anything having to do with securing
Electronically Stored Information (ESI).
Since nearly all Information (i.e., Records) is now electronic,
in one way or another, it seemed a good fit.
However. As the date
approached, people were not exactly beating on the door to get in to the
Seminar. Last year’s tally
was around 70 attendees, of which maybe 15-20 were sponsors.
(Each sponsor gets a number of “free” passes depending on how
much money they forked over to begin with.)
This year the total was closer to 40-50, with about 20% sponsors.
Talk about “preaching to the choir”.
So our Region Coordinator, “Clancy”, who basically ran the whole thing,
decided to hold a teleconference meeting yesterday afternoon to discuss
the “pros and cons” of why we had less of a turnout than in previous
years. Only problem was that
“Clancy” had already scheduled a different teleconference meeting the
same morning.
That makes one full-day Seminar and two hour-long meetings all devoted
to ARMA all in the same week.
For me, it was a bit much, but not impossible.
But for others, who still have jobs, taking that much time away
from work looked like it was getting to be a problem.
The morning meeting only boasted a few attendees and a great many
started sending email “regrets” for the afternoon.
Eventually, “Clancy” got the hint and rescheduled the “recap”
meeting for the week after next.
As for the Seminar itself: I
found it very interesting.
More importantly, I got lots of free pens, a reusable bag, and a full
five hours of Continuing Education credits for my
Certified Records
Manager requirement. And
that’s what really counts, isn’t it?
Love, as always,
Pete
| Previous | Next |