Blogs

While my daughter was driving the last leg of a nearly 1,700 mile road-trip, I checked my Twitter timeline to find @SharePointMom and @TashaEv both commenting about “checking out this AIIM thing.” I should have replied “don’t get me started” but instead, I tried to nudge them closer to following through on that idea. I have long been an advocate of AIIM, and I seriously have to recommend the organization to everyone working with SharePoint. I’ll try to avoid the obvious wordplay opportunities, but while SharePoint brings all the ammo and artillery to the battlefield, it’s often hard to know where to point it. (OK, I should tell you that our vacation included a serious tour of Gettysburg). AIIM completes SharePoint in so many ways that the organization should not be overlooked.

In New England, the AIIMNE Chapter leadership just finished planning our upcoming program year. We have one event dedicated to SharePoint, but we have six others that will add value to any solution being built on SharePoint. We are going to talk about using Social Media internally, about security, and we’re going to talk about records management. We are going to learn about preservation and archiving and we are going to teach a class to help people prepare for AIIM’s Certified Information Professional (CIP) exam. Between the out-of-the-box features and the wealth of aftermarket add-ons, SharePoint is well equipped to deal with all of those issues, but knowing what features to use, when to use them, what pitfalls to avoid, well, that stuff is not so clear when you open a box of SharePoint. The SharePoint community provides a ton of resources, but we tend to be SharePoint-centric. I look to and rely upon the SharePoint community to learn how to do something, but I look to AIIM to know what to do, and why to do it.

Regarding the “whole AIIM thing”, wow, that’s hard to describe, I mean just look around this website and see all the things they offer. Of course I think the best thing AIIM offers is the chance to participate in a larger community, up close and personal via your local Chapter and the AIIM Conference. I love SharePoint events, but I learn more when the discussion is broader than SharePoint. There’s a world of solutions out there, and the people using Nuxeo and the people using Box and the people using OpenText (just to name a few) have all figured out ways to solve the problems that we face every day. Those solutions can be considered and the core elements can usually be applied to SharePoint.

I know this is an AIIM blog, and in large part I am preaching to the choir, but I am trying to reach the people who think AIIM is just an online community. I know it’s a self-serving message, but if you live in New England, please join us at our program year kick-off event on September 11^th and learn more about what AIIM can do for you locally. OK, if you don’t live in New England, you should check out your local chapter.