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While the credit to my foray into unstructured information management; namely DMS and ERM must go to my erstwhile mentor, Mr. P Vidyasagar, I would credit my knowledge mostly to AIIM. Ever since I stepped into the world of AIIM, my knowledge in the world of ECM, ERM and BPM have only been on the increase.

However, pretty soon, after the initial thirst, I realized AIIM was more technology-oriented. With me being more into Information MANAGEMENT than information management SYSTEMS, I found myself drifting away from AIIM. If it wasn’t for my continued interactions with Bryant, I may have even left AIIM.

Then suddenly, AIIM announces a survey for a new information management certification and before I could say Rip Van Winkle, they launched the Certified Information Professional program. One glance at it and I was at once, both excited and nervous. This is what I wanted to be, yet, this is where I was not. A mirror that left me glad for reflecting my aspirations while honestly letting me know there was some journey to go.

However, the real importance of this renewed AIIM struck me when I came across Cheryl McKinnon’s blog post, “New Challenges for 2012: Putting People First” and I saw this picture:

And my expectations from AIIM were all satisfied in one look. From the early days, I have tried to stay technology and vendor agnostic right through my career. The flip side of this is that I don’t understand codes any more. I don’t pay attention to Application Servers, Content Servers, Web Servers, etc. SDLC or Scrum doesn’t matter to me. But, when you want to plan, search, capture, store, process, dispose information, my antennae go up.

I am your quintessential information manager, I repeat.

I am not your information management technologist, I emphasize.

So, what I want to offer my customers is this in their information management, exactly what they want:

And what does the AIIM CIP cover:

Yes, there are gaps I need to fill and yes; information management is not a one-man show. However, for now I am confident AIIM and its CIP is a path that can take me where I want to go.

This post was originally published in The Information Manager