Blogs

My name is Michael Wells.  I’m a Lead Analyst for the Information Systems department of the government of Chesterfield County, VA.  It seems that I’m also an “expert blogger” for this new community here at AIIM.  I consider this truly an honor, because while I might be an expert at many things “blogging” isn’t one of them.  I hope that you may take away something interesting or entertaining from my posts each week, and I encourage you to comment back whenever you are able.

I have an extensive background in technology.  I started with computers back in Elementary School, back when my home computer used cartridges and cassettes for data storage.  I progressed through floppy drives and hard drives, and now into solid state storage and “the cloud.”  I’ve owned many, many gadgets along the way, and still love to find the perfect mix of tech and geek.  Some of my favorite tech devices and companies I’d recommend, in no particular order:  MacBook Pro, TiVo, Nikon, Garmin, Blackberry, Xbox, Roomba, VMware.

I have worked in enterprise content management (ECM) for 5 years now, coming into this position by being in the right place at the right time.  My ECM predecessor was leaving the organization, and I was one of those tapped with absorbing as much information from him as possible during his last two weeks.  I ended up “owning” that system and have administered ever since.

I have been honored to speak about ECM and some of the things we have done with it here in numerous places and venues.  I was asked to speak at the Laserfiche Institute Conference in L.A. in 2007 and at the AIIM conference in Boston in 2008.  I’ve also spoken and conducted workshops locally many times over the years and I love to share the knowledge I’ve accumulated.

The technology that excites me the most currently does not fall under the umbrella of this blog, but I’ll mention it here briefly – Desktop Virtualization.  One of the many hats I wear involves implementing a pilot for moving workstations from desktop PCs to virtualized systems living in the data center. 
This technology has reached a point where it can truly change how IT is done.  I’m extremely impressed with the VMware View implementation, and hope to have our pilot in production soon.

As far as “Capture” and its challenges, I have found that in today’s environment the biggest challenges are with the people and not with the technology.  I cannot imagine trying to implement ECM in the “old days” with tiny hard drives and magnetic tape storage – we are blessed with SANs and terabytes and 60 ppm scanners.  Most of the capture tricks and implementations I have developed recently have focused on minimizing the “human” component of the capture process.  How can I make the process predictable and repeatable when humans, by nature, are not?

I hope to hear from you soon.