The latest issue of ARMA's Information Management Magazine is out. I have the lead article, "Taking the Lead in the Information Race". In it, I argue that records managers cannot watch the technology world fly by - instead, they have to actively develop and maintain their "technology chops" in order to remain relevant.

AIIM, the ECM association, just rolled out two new initiatives to bring together users, vendors, and industry experts in the areas of electronic records management and Enterprise 2.0 - and Access Sciences is pleased to be involved.

Most organizations don’t manage their email very well – and there are a number of white papers out there about how to archive everything, or how to manage email messages as records, or the value of outsourcing email, etc. But very few of them address the reason why email is so out of control – us! Most of us don’t use email very effectively, whether on an individual message basis or in managing our inboxes. So the focus of this post is on steps you can take to be more effective in how you manage your email.

As I mentioned in my previous post, we frequently get the opportunity to speak to various groups and organizations. Here is an updated list of our upcoming speaking engagements. For more information about any of these engagements, please contact Amanda Stringer at astringer@accesssciences.com or me at jwilkins@accesssciences.com.

Our team members frequently get asked whether we'd be able to talk about a particular topic to a particular audience. Sometimes this is a request to speak at a public meeting for an association like ARMA or AIIM. Other times, it's to speak to an organization's senior management, or records management function, or to everyone in a particular office. In this post I will explore how to get someone from Access Sciences to speak at your function.

Earlier this month FINRA, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, published Regulatory Notice 10-06, Social Media Web Sites: Guidance on Blogs and Social Networking Web sites. This is of particular interest for a couple of reasons. First, there are still a lot of people that believe that social networking sites either aren't used for business, or shouldn't be used for business. Now, this is nothing new - we saw similar positions and assertions around instant messaging, and before that around email, and probably the telephone before that. The publication of this note seems to contradict both of those ideas - clearly the question has arisen as to how financial services firms can use these tools for business.

ARMA 2009 is now exactly one month away. The 2009 ARMA Conference and Exposition officially opens on Thursday, October 15, 2009 at the Orlando World Center Marriott. Access Sciences is pleased to be a part of this excellent conference once again. We will be exhibiting on the expo floor in booth 825 (map) and would love to have you stop by to meet us! Access Sciences is also pleased to present five separate sessions during the conference plus two pre-conference seminars.

Here is the outline for the AIIM Email Management Certificate Program. Access Sciences developed this course in conjunction with AIIM and the AIIM Education Advisory Groups.

Blogs are simply publishing platforms that make it easy for users to create and publish content. Most traditional publishing platforms require a bit of a learning curve, whether for the tool itself or for the markup language used to encode the content. Many ARMA chapters for example have a hard time maintaining their websites because that requires someone to know HTML, probably Javascript, and maybe even a particular tool like Microsoft FrontPage or Adobe Dreamweaver.

It’s the latest, greatest buzzword. Every newscast now asks and commentator now asks you to follow them on it. Shaquille O’Neal is there, and so is President Obama; Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore both have real presences, and even the incoming President of ARMA International has joined the party. So what is the big deal about Twitter?