GUEST SPOT: Message from MER
Managing Electronic Records, Cohasset Associates' preeminent conference, convened in Chicago May 18-20. There, I joined hundreds of ardent information seekers and some of the field’s most perceptive minds to share needs and potential solutions. Fourteen sponsoring software and service vendors respectfully plied their wares and skills.
Legal issues took center stage: litigation readiness, records production, e-discovery, risk mitigation, datamaps, and more. At opening keynotes, lawyers and judges alerted all and intimidated some listeners with case law and opinions regarding bad faith, adverse inference, spoliation, and multi-million dollar searches for records long past their disposal dates. These are not boys-crying-wolf. Hopefully their warnings are heeded.
Another theme, the ascendant value of metadata, appeared to fire a collective nerve amongst attendees. It first appeared in a standing-room-only track session. Consultant Julie Gable, with contributions from former judge Ron Hedges, received a rock-star reception for her passionate presentation on the many aspects of metadata that have been under-considered. She warned that failure to manage metadata may carry more risk than failure to manage data. Gable further suggested that, for multi-national organizations with petabytes of documents/records in diverse and diffuse repositories, the only effective way to manage their information may be through metadata.
At a conference-ending plenary session, Harvard's David Weinberger reinforced Gable's points, provocatively positing that all information is both content and metadata. The author of Everything Is Miscellaneous challenged attendees to vastly expand their view of records, where they exist, and how to manage them. In a fitting conclusion to MER, Weinberger charged listeners to take a message back to their records managers, content managers, lawyers, CIOs, and other stakeholders: Don’t underestimate the importance of metadata…it is the wave of the future.
Currently in its 17th year, MER is always multifaceted, and debate is encouraged. Additional suggestive snapshots from this May's event include:
- "RIM is an umbrella organization... it takes a team," opined Cohasset's Carol Stainbrook. The principles of Records & Information Management now reach into every significant facet of information use and storage, but it may fall to the Records Manager to assemble the stakeholders, build the alliances, and forge the programs that safeguard the organization's very existence.
- A RIM program must cost-justify itself, especially in recessionary times. One center for savings, often overlooked, is e-discovery. "Shrink the universe of documents that must be checked for relevance and privilege," suggested attorney Conor Crowley.
- The Big Bucket plan for records classification and retention retains currency and staunch support. Nonetheless, “Big Buckets” is one strategy among many. With no intrinsic value, its importance varies with how well it supports an organization’s business processes. That varies by degree, but a Big Bucket approach is not universally appropriate.
- Session leaders expressed reservations-bordering-on-fears of trying to manage records in cloud-based information systems. While I have seen no comparative statistics, I suspect that most of the valid fears apply equally to systems with local servers. Whether cloud computing is appropriate or not is really a risk management issue.
- Although he denies it, David Weinberger is the rightful heir to Marshall McLuhan, the 1960s-era Canadian philosophy professor/megastar. McLuhan's catch phrase "The medium is the message," is directly analogous to Weinberger's, "The difference between content and connection is gone." His reference is to the Web 2.0 world where hyperlinking and participatory democracy proliferate knowledge, if not wisdom.
As a RIM conference, MER continues to set the pace. The quality of the sessions is consistently high, the networking opportunities are rife, and the conference administration is flawless. The only limitation is timeliness. Session proposals for 2010 are due next October, meaning the ideas have to be formulated 8-10 months in advance. In a field that evolves as quickly as electronic records (with technology, regulations, and case law unfolding almost daily), it is hard to predict the most relevant issues.
Nonetheless, MER is almost guaranteed to enrich, provoke, and expand the thinking of serious RIM professionals. Bring on MER 2010!
Gordy is an independent consultant specializing in the synergy of Records and Content Management. Previously, he consulted for KPMG, eVisory, and IMERGE Consulting. He frequently presents at conferences and has published over 250 articles, white papers, case studies, etc. Visit his blog at http://positivelyrim.blogspot.com
