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In a singular act of prescience, Atle details what you’re going to learn at AIIM 2012. When you leave, you’ll be rethinking how you manage information for your business.

What Now? 8 Things You Should Tell Your Boss on Monday
Atle Skjekkeland, Chief Operating Officer, AIIM
Thursday, March 22. 3:30 PM

Duhon: How would you describe an Information Professional?

Skjekkeland: Few people have “information professional” as a title, but many have it as a job. Last year, Gartner published a report titled “CIO Alert: The Need for Information Professionals,” which argued for the business value of this emerging profession. An information professional could be an IT professional tasked with managing customer data or Web content; a records manager responsible for ensuring information management compliance in an era or social, mobile and cloud computing; or a consultant responsible for implementing collaboration and content management solutions. These are just a few examples of people we consider information professionals – your current job may be Business Analysts, Information Architect, Data Scientist, Knowledge Manager, Digital Marketing Specialist, IT Legal professional, Records Manager, Digital Archivist, etc.

Duhon: How is this conference geared toward their needs?

Skjekkeland: This is AIIM’s first large conference in 10 years and we want to do it right from the start! The conference will be limited to around 500 people and be highly interactive and engaging. The conference program and workshops focus on strategies for the future, not tactical stuff that you can get online. We want the attendees to get new ideas from the keynotes (and our keynotes are some of the best experts in the world like Clay Shirky, David Pogue, Dion Hinchcliffe, and Ray Wang); hear what their peers are doing in the three conference tracks (Engage, Control, and Process); and also meet and discuss strategies for the future with other attendees in the interactive sessions, match-making appointments, and group therapy sessions. If you are only going to one industry event this year to plan how to manage information in an era of mobile, social, and cloud – this is it!

Duhon: What excites you most about the convergence of mobile, social, and cloud computing?

Skjekkeland: A large corporate IT department used to be the center of IT innovation, with medium and small companies getting the technology after a few years. As a consumer you were lucky to get the “cutting edge” technology many years after the large corporate IT department – if at all. Now it is the opposite – IT innovations happen within consumer IT, and after a few years a large company may benefit from it. The analyst company Forrester claims that more then 50% of US employees now think they have better technology at home then at the office, which is starting to impact how they look at enterprise IT. They are, as consumers, used to having lots of technology options – all easy to use and easy to deploy – there is hardly any training required, no significant upfront investments, no developers required, and no lengthy projects. This is a challenge for information professionals, but also an opportunity. They can now leverage technologies and lessons learnt from consumer IT, but also use staff as a center of innovation for improving business processes and operations. Use the conference to learn from early adopters and industry experts - learn what works/what doesn’t work, possible strategies, roadmaps, and factors for success.

Duhon: Another big trend is Big Data – what does this mean for information professionals?

Skjekkeland: It is now often cheaper to store data then to get rid of it, and the exponential growth of social, mobile, and cloud computing with rich content and video fuels the exponential growth of information. The analyst company IDC claims that the amount of information doubles every two years, and that we will have 50 times more information by 2020. Our keynote speaker Clay Shirky thinks it is not an information overload problem, it’s filter failure. We are drowning in data, but thirsting for knowledge. This is now starting to change behavior, and David Weinberger recommends organizations to "filter" on the way out, not on the way in. Organizations should store as much as possible since they don't know the future value of data, and then use analytics and social technologies to "filter" information when people need it. Office workers will not be able to process 50x more emails per day – they will use social filters and analytics to learn from big data – similar to what many people already do on Twitter with hashtags and sentiment analysis. Corporate governance, risk, and compliance issues are still very important, but traditional records management systems and manual governance frameworks will be replaced by analytics to automate disposition management and compliance. Information professionals should use the AIIM Conference 2012 to identify how their organization can exploit big data, but also identify solutions and best practices.

Duhon: Looking ahead, what ONE thing do you expect that attendees will be able to tell their bosses after AIIM 2012?

Skjekkeland: Ideas for the future! Social, local, and mobile technologies allow you to better deliver information to staff and customer when, where, and how they need it, but also capture customer and employee information and knowledge. The same technologies with cloud computing and big data will also help you revolutionize business processes – moving from paper to PCs to tablets. All this will force you to rethink information governance and compliance – you need to use analytics to automate and improve the control of information assets.

Excited? Ready to interact with other information professionals, exchange ideas, and learn from each other and the AIIM 2012 Conference sessions and keynotes.

Register today.