March 24, 2017
Dear Everyone:
Last year, when it began to look like absolutely nobody was going to
come to any of our monthly ARMA Chapter Meetings, I tried to put
together a “Symposium for
City Clerks”.
The idea was to host a gathering of municipal clerks with a group
of Speakers who could not only talk about Records and Information
Management (RIM), but gear it towards the needs of small cities, of
which the
East Bay abounds.
Unfortunately, my timing was a bit off.
It turned out that our intended “symposium” would coincide with
the annual meeting of all the
City Clerks in California, somewhere in
the southern state and thus, no one would have been able to attend our
event. So I put it on the
shelf until a couple of months ago.
Then I contacted “Rebecca”, the City Clerk here in
San Ramon.
She was all in favor of the idea and started scoping out when
would be the best time. We
decided on late March. We
also decided to focus on “electronic records”, as this was something all
City Clerks seem to be struggling with.
(They’re not alone.)
In the meantime, I contacted three people that I thought would make
exceptional Speakers:
“Paris”, “Stevie” and “Colin”.
“Paris” has been in ARMA a really long time.
She’s even been the Pacific Region Manager in the past.
She is also the CEO and Co-Founder of her own RIM consulting
firm. So she knows a whole
lot and was more than willing to come and speak to all those potential
clients.
“Stevie” was a member of the Golden Gate (San Francisco) Chapter of ARMA
when I joined in 1987. She
has since been elevated to the
Company of Fellows, a sort of lifetime
achievement award in Records Management.
She used to live here in San Ramon and has a daughter in
Walnut
Creek, so she’s almost always willing to come to the
Bay Area to give a
talk, if asked.
“Colin” is also a member of the Golden Gate chapter, in fact he’s their
current Vice President. And
he’s the sales representative for one of the few commercial records
centers that still hasn’t been gobbled up by
Iron Mountain, the
Godzilla
of Records Management.
“Colin” is always willing to talk about anything regarding RIM and to
talk to any of the City Clerks at any given opportunity.
“Paris” and “Stevie” both accepted immediately, even before we had
nailed down the date.
“Colin” waffled a bit, indicating that he thought he could cobble
together a “panel” of municipal employees to give an in-depth discussion
of just about anything to do with all those computer records that seem
to multiply on their own.
So we had a place, San Ramon’s new
City Hall, just finished last summer.
We had a date, March 30th.
And we had at least two Speakers, “Paris” and “Stevie”.
What we needed to do was fill out an application to get the
educational sessions pre-approved by the International Institute of
Municipal Clerks (IIMC) and its California associate organization.
People are much more likely to attend if they already know
they’ll get credit for it.
I sent an email message to “Colin”, asking for a description and
biographical information for the IIMC application.
Silence ensued.
However, we needed to make an announcement about the Symposium before
people had the chance to fill up their calendars with other things.
Finally, we decided to just go ahead with the two Speakers that we had
for sure. No sooner did we
send in the application than “Colin” popped up again, like a
Jack-in-the-Box. This time
he had dropped the idea of a panel in favor of one Clerk who had just
won some kind of award for her digitization of all her City records.
So, at last count, we have three confirmed Speakers, a date and time,
plans to provide breakfast and lunch, pre-approved education points, and
a total of 42 people already signed up for next Thursday’s “RIM
Symposium for City Clerks”.
It’s all coming together.
Love, as always,
Pete
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