Event - SLA SoCal Award Dinner

Last night I attended my first event since moving to the USA, a very enjoyable award dinner for the SLA's South California chapter.

Just over 20 people gathered at the Almasour Court golf club for drinks and dinner, followed by a very entertaining after dinner speaker.  Nick Smith is a library technician at Pasadena Public Libraries, but is also a passionate historian and storyteller with a speciality of US Civil War history.  Nick told several stories about civil war veterans who had either come from, or retired to, the LA area.  

Some were poignant (the soldier who didn't get his Medal of Honor award until long after he had passed away - it was finally awarded by Bill Clinton), some were funny (the Indianapolis gunboat that was captured by the Confederate army, and then promptly blown up by them when they were worried it would be re-captured) but they were all interesting and told in a very entertaining way.

Joyce Hardy receiving her award

Two awards were also presented during the evening, a merititious service award to Richard Hulser for his work mentoring students, and a lifetime achievement award to Joyce Hardy (pictured), in particular for her work organising the SLA SoCal archives. 

 

Event - SLA 40th Anniversary Reception

View from 15th floor of Rothschild's new offices

Last night an amazing view greeted everyone as we arrived for SLA Europe's 40th anniversary reception.   

Kindly hosted by Rothschild in their newly re-developed and re-opened office building on St Swithin's Lane in the City of London, we were treated to wonderful views of the City, from the Gherkin via the Bank of England to St Paul's from the floor to ceiling glass walls of their entertainment suite on the 15th floor.

The drinks and delightful nibbles got the party going with a swing, as members past and current caught up with the latest gossip.


Darren Chapman of TFPL, current SLA Europe President, welcomed everyone and thanked the Board, members and sponsors, past, present and future, for their support in making SLA Europe such a success.  Veronica Kennard, Information Director at Rothschild and our host, also said a few words commemorating her time as an active SLA member.  

Darren and Veronica then cut the cake, which had four tiers - one for each decade of SLA Europe's operation.  

It was a lovely opportunity to chat to friends and colleagues, old and new, from the world of business information. 

Veronica had challenged all of to meet and talk to at least one new person during the course of the evening, and I managed to succeed by chatting to a lovely lady from the British Library whom I'd not met before.

After a very enjoyable evening I reluctantly set off for home, at the end of a very busy and tiring but productive day.  

Event - NetIKX 'Social Media - What Next and What Can We Do With It?''

Yesterday's NetIKX half-day seminar, with Stephen Dale and Geoff Mccaleb was a fascinating look at where the world of social media is heading.

Stephen kicked off proceedings with a YouTube video which asked a simple question:

Is Google the #1 most visited website?

The answer, of course, is 'no'!  The most visited website is Facebook - which has 30m users in the UK alone; that is almost 50% of the population.  The statistics in the video came fast and furious, but as Steve summarised it all the numbers are "big and getting bigger!"

Key themes for 2012 are collaboration, gamification and networking.  While all the social networks are growing in membership and usage, Google+ has had by far the highest rate of growth, reaching 25m users much more quickly than any of its forerunners.

Importantly for businesses is the fact that we are now in a situation where content and information is in abundance while resources are constrained, two way business, communities and value in relationships rule the day rather than 'top down' one way marketing.

Steve contended that the focus now is all about sharing - sharing user generated content, sharing recommendations, sharing bookmarks, sharing interests, sharing ideas.

He pointed out that curation of all this content and working as community facilitators, was an important role going forward for people with information management skills.  Social media sites exist dedicated to gathering information relevant to a community and sharing it already exist (eg; paper.li, storify, scoop.it, etc).

Other key trends Steve highlighted included big data (where data sets grow so large they cannot be analysed using conventional database management tools), mobile internet  (which will be outselling desktop platforms by 2013), and location based services (including augmented reality where your mobile combines GPS, visual and internet data sources into one display).

Steve summarised by saying that social media is most definitely not a fad, it's ubiquitous, growing rapidly and creating new and interesting ways to share information.  People need help with content overload and knowledge curation - and we are best placed to meet this need.

Geoffrey echoed this theme, starting off his presentation by saying that social is taking over the web.  He gave some interesting examples of this in relation to recruitment, including that 89% of US companies used social media tools in recruitment in 2011, either to source candidates or to screen them.

He illustrated the power of social media not only by referring to the Arab Spring and Occupy protests, but also by highlighting that the SOPA protests were covered by only 1 mainstream media outlet (CNN), so Congress changed its mind based almost solely on pressure from a social media campaign.

Dispelling any lingering feeling that social media somehow 'isn't real' or 'is just virtual' or 'just for kids', he also gave examples of companies whose sales and stock prices have been massively affected by social media (positively or negatively), including Southwestern Airlines, Dominos Pizza and Comcast.  Reputation management has moved far beyond a press release in the newspaper, and time to address customer complaints raised on Twitter or Facebook is down to 48hours or less.

After a break for coffee we reconvened into breakout groups to discuss a range of questions:

• what is the information risk of using social media?
• what role could/should information intermediaries play?
• which social media tools to use, when
• are social media tools appropriate to use within organisations?
• how can social media help engagement with communities?

During the feedback session after this, the main theme to come up was a discussion of the sustainability of social media - both speakers felt it was here to stay, and that while technologies will undoubtedly keep improving (eg, to enable more sharing via audio/video), the sharing itself will continue, with value coming from the leveraging of connections and relationships.

Information professionals will have a key role to play in this development, curating content, analysing big data, creating visualisations and infographics, evaluating information, validating it and being a trusted facilitator.  To achieve this, traditional skills of information organisation and retrieval will need the addition of more ICT skills, for data analysis, mobile apps, and social media network engagement.    

CILIP Councillor Election Hustings - a virtual experience

As I was unable to get into London yesterday evening, I decided to follow the CILIP 2012 hustings online.  This was possible since CILIP was helpfully livestreaming the event (which has been recorded and can be viewed here) and there was also a twitter hashtag allocated (#CILIP2012).

John Kirriemuir has already posted an excellent review of the evening, from an attendees point of view, so I will try and avoid duplicating any of the points he's already made.

So what was the experience like as a virtual participant?  The video worked really well (although from the twitter stream I believe there were one or two people who had difficulty getting it to run).  The only real problem I experienced was with the sound quality.  There were two table-microphones in view, but Sue Cook on the end of the row (and to a lesser extent Maria Cotera next to her) were virtually inaudible at times. 

The twitter stream displayed alongside the video on the CILIP page didn't seem to be updating without refreshing the screen, so rather than risk disrupting the video stram, I ran my own HootSuite stream in the background and checked it regularly as a substitute, which worked out fine.

Some of the key quotes that I picked up on, and tweeted about last night, included:

Q. How should CILIP increase membership?

Liz Mcgettigan we tell each other how wonderful we are - we should have a conference & invite people from other disciplines

Maria Cotera Start by bringing back those that have left - show them a reason to rejoin

Liz Mcgettigan Create a website or tools for people to use to sell the benefits of having librarians to employers

Mike Hosking Make CILIP seem less 'top down' and more belonging to, and owned by, members

Mike Hosking (Provide) better information career development guidance, less focused on traditional (physical?) library based careers

Sue Westcott Widen Chartership so it's more available (perceived as more available) to non-traditional LIS workers, take more care about the language used so it's more inclusive

Sue Westcott Talking publically about issues of wider public interest (Wikileaks for eg), would make more people want to join CILIP

Sue Westcott It's up to us to go out and find other communities who could be part of our profession and take a positive messasge to them

Maria Cotera The key thing is to listen, to what people's requirements are, not just partner for the sake of it, not just listen to friends but to 'enemies' too so we expand our circle

Q. Should CILIP increase its partnerships?

Sue Westcott We should think of partnerships in two ways; to partner with other information groups & to partner with commercial or other organisations to deliver services

Liz Mcgettigan CILIP needs to be selective about who they partner with

Sue Cook We need to be aware partnerships don't last forever, be flexible, and go for strategic partnerships

Mike Hosking CILIP needs to be in a partnership with organisations in the education sector

Q. How would you make members not in London feel more a part of CILIP?

Sue Westcott CILIP needs to think about having an internal dialogue about how people in the regions want to be included and catered for

Mike Hosking Branches & groups are key but we need to look at them with fresh eye, use new tech to bridge distances & get people to band together

Maria Cotera In other organisation I've been involved with, we used to hold a conference & other meetings at different locations around the country; CILIP needs to establish new models of working

Q. Where are borders of LIS profession, which skill sets are in or out?

Sue Cook There is a core set (of skills), but each job I've had has needed new things as well - so it's varied

Maria Cotera The most important skills are the softer ones like communication or advocacy

Sue Westcott Anyone who puts the right people together with the right information = an LIS professional, wherever they work

Liz Mcgettigan The basic skills (I believe she meant the core technical LIS skills) are important, plus the ability to engage, network and advocate are key

*sorry to any of the candidates if your comments are underrepresented, but as I mentioned above I had difficulty hearing some of the replies, some of the time.

Overall it was great to be able to participate remotely, and to see the candidates reactions in real time, which of course isn't possible with the ehustings. In fact, I believe there were more virtual participants (someone tweeted there were 28 viewing the live stream at one point) than physical attendees. 

Even so, that only makes a total of 38 people taking part, which seems a woefully low proportion of CILIP's 16,000 or so members.  Being somewhat controversial here, is it fair to say that, if people don't take part in the democratic process, then they have less right to complain about how things are run?  Of course some of those members had other engagements last night, or no access to an internet computer, but even so surely a couple of hundred could have shown an interest, at this critical juncture in the organisations life? 

Event - NetIKX: Where Next for the Web - Linked Data and Semantic Search

Yesterday saw me at The Energy Institute for a joint event run by NetIKX and the Information for Energy Group.  It was certainly a good workout for the brain, trying to get our head around how linked data is transforming the web from a group of linked text documents into a web of linked objects.

A full report of everything I learned during the afternoons events can be found on the NetIKX blog.

ILI2011 - Navigating the New Normal - Strategies for Success

This week saw the Internet Librarian International Conference 2011 come to London, for an excellent two day programme devoted to the "New Normal" - the new environment, with new technologies and new economic realities.  How can librarians and other information professionals adapt to this new situation?

A full review of my experiences at ILI2011 can be found here

Event - LIKE 29 (Take 2) - Connecting Information with Innovation

On Thursday I spent a very enjoyable evening back at the Crown Tavern, at the second showing of John Davies’ presentation of TFPL’s report on their second survey of the information profession.

In 2006 TFPL conducted a survey of the profession and produced a report “Who is managing information - roles in the e-landscape”.  They have recently conducted another survey to follow up on this work and John described some of their key findings.  In view of the credit crunch and ongoing economic woes, they were surprised to find that there was on balance stability in the numbers of staff in ‘knowledge and information management’ or KIM functions, having expected to see a drop.  Also interesting was that the trend to these staff being dispersed across the organisation, rather than concentrated in an ‘information centre’, has increased since the last survey.

John asked us to discuss some of the survey questions around our tables.  One of these was “what is the point of a professional qualification, and a professional body?”  Amongst the reasons suggested around my table were:

• To widen new entrants' view of the profession
• To give a baseline of skills
• To give a theoretical underpinning to professional practice
• To set standards
• To govern ethics
• To accredit qualifications
• You can't be a profession without a professional body

The point was also made that almost all other professions insist upon a set number of CPD hours &/or revalidation, to retain professional status, and that CILIP should do the same for the profession to have more credibility.

During the survey respondents were asked to say which attributes they felt were important in KIM workers.  Although many permutations were received, they were able to distill these down into several key areas, including:

• Vision
• Perseverence
• Pragmatism
• Collaboration

John asked us to debate which of these were the most important. On the table I was at we felt that vision and collaboration were the most vital, but also unfortunately the most often lacking.  Someone suggested that too many people still came into the profession expecting it to be ‘back room’, and another said that it tended to attract introverted people.

Another point that was made was that many people nowadays may self-identify as ‘knowledge workers’ (eg, information asset managers, or people like immigration officers who manage large databases of information), and yet not have a ‘library qualification’ or be seen as information professionals by CILIP or any of the other groups.

During the feedback discussion, John pointed out that we were naturally talking in terms of ‘us’ and ‘the business’ - and he was sure that HR or IT or other groups did the same - but that in fact we are ‘the business’ and should be talking about ‘we’.  

Dinner arrived while the debate was still in full flow, and the animated conversations continued over the food and afterwards, with Jennifer encouraging us to get up, circulate and share ideas with new people.

Event - BIALL Solos Presentation

Last week I was delighted to speak to a group of solo law librarians who are all members of the BIALL Solos group.  Slightly unusually, the presentation was conducted by telephone conference, with the slides distributed in advance.

This method of delivery allows people who are working in a team of 1, where getting cover to leave the office to attend a seminar isn't always realistic, and also where not all the members are based in London, to get together and share experiences.

The topic was all about how to develop your career when you are working as a solo.  We focused on two approaches to this - either to develop the scope of your current role &/or lobby to be able to grow your team, or else to move on a find a new role elsewhere.

Biall Solos - Career Development - September 2011

View more presentations from Nicola Franklin.

The slides from the presentation are above and this is a link to the audio recording of the talk (BIALL membership log in required).

We managed to cover a wide range of topics during the hour's session, ranging from how to develop a business case and cost/benefit analysis, through to skills analysis, writing effective CVs and preparing for a successful interview.

Event - NetIKX Seminar on River Diagrams

Last week I attended a very interesting half day seminar at NetIKX run by Chris Collinson.  He was explaining and demonstrating his technique for knowledge sharing and performance improvement, River Diagrams.

The diagrams themselves give a lot of information about different stakeholders' level of knowledge on the topics under discussion, and therefore indicate which groups could effectively learn from each other, but there is as much benefit to be gained from participating in the process as in viewing the results.

A full description of the day, and the methodology, can be found on the NetIKX blog.

Event - CLSIG Seminar - Getting Organised

Last night saw me arriving at Charles Russel’s offices to attend the latest CLSIG seminar.  Susie Kay was speaking on the subject of Getting Organised - one of the key components of working as a professional.

Susie made the point that being organised is more than just time management.  It stretches across a number of areas:

• Physical environment
• Mental environment
• Time management
• Processes & procedures

Showing a slide of a very disorganised desk, piled high with untidy papers with a PC peeking out from amongst the confusion, Susie asked whether being disorganised matters?  What kind of impression would it make to have a desk like this?  Does it have an effect on efficiency?  If you can’t find a paper or email with some information you need on it, does that make you seem unreliable?  If a task isn’t completed on time, or information is lost, does that have risk management implications?

Susie made the point that having a less cluttered environment can also lead to a less cluttered brain.  Being surrounded by piles of paper, subliminally representing piles of things you should be doing, acts as a distraction and a stress factor.

Email (and, presumably, shared drives and other storage places for electronic documents) is really an extension of physical organisation.  If your e-storage space is as disorganised as that desk, risk, inefficiency and unreliablity will surely follow.  Susie advocated opening an email once - don’t be tempted to close it again, mark it as un-read, return to it later, perhaps repeat this process several times!  Instead, deal with the request or information enclosed, action it, then either file the email or delete it out of your inbox.

Turning to time management, Susie made the point that we can’t manage time - everyone has a maximum of 24 hours in a day.  Instead, perhaps it should be called time use.  We could all plan better how we use the time we have available.  Susie suggested that we plan, prioritise, set targets and have rewards for using time better.

Two techniques that can help with time planning are the urgency/importance grid, and using a day book and diary in combination.

An urgency/importance grid looks like this:

Important	(when should this be done - diarise or communicate it)	(Do it now! - or make sure it is done)
Unimportant	(Does it have to be done at all?)	(To whom can I delegate this?)
	Non-urgent	Urgent

Mentally allocating each of the items on your to-do list to this grid will allow you to prioritise all your tasks for the coming day.

Susie demonstrated a day book layout that she recommends using.  The left hand page of a double spread is divided into 9 empty boxes.  These are for notes of phone calls, new projects that come up, ideas for future actions, etc.  The right hand page of the double spread is divided into columns.  The column headings include:

• Item name/description
• Priority
• Time to complete
• Final deadline date

The final deadline dates, and reminders days or weeks in advance, also go into your diary or electronic calendar.

Finally Susie turned to processes and procedures.  She distinguished between these by saying that a process is the ‘what’ needs to be done (and by whom) whereas the procedure is the detailed description of ‘how’ to do it.  For you to be organised, processes and procedures need to be documented, so that someone else could pick up your work and continue with it when you are on holiday, leave the role or are off sick.  This documentation could be using flow charts (process diagrams) or text documents, and should avoid assumptions wherever possible (who to get information from, who to send things to, where things are kept, etc).

Susie’s final piece of advice to achieve a more organised life?  Learn to say ‘no’.  When someone interrupts your day’s work with a request, being able to say “I can’t do that right away but I’ll get back to you when I’ve finished this email/call/report/etc” is a powerful way to keep your day on track.

We then spent a very enjoyable time networking, with wine and wonderful nibbles kindly provided by Susan Dennis and Charles Russell LLP.  I was particularly impressed by the 'sausage and mash' - coctail sausages split hot-dog style with a miniature amount of mash piped down the middle - a very nifty idea!

Event - ARA New Professionals Section - Summer Seminar

On Friday 19th August I spent a very enjoyable afternoon with the New Professionals Section of the ARA, listening to some interesting talks and running a careers workshop session.

First to speak was Dr Andrew Flinn, head of the archives and records management programme at UCL and also ex-chair of FARMER, who gave us a very enlightening talk about the factors affecting the content of archives and records management courses in the UK, and some ideas about their potential future direction.

Pressures include the massive increase in the range of areas and duties covered by archivists and records managers over the past 10 years, which means that a far wider range of skills are needed across the industry. However the time allocated to the courses hasn’t increased, and it has become increasingly difficult to fit everything in, and cover each to the required depth.

One solution to this issue that is emerging is to introduction of more specialist Masters courses (eg the one at University of Glasgow is more focused on digital continuity, while Northumbria University just does records management and not archives. Another likely scenario foreseen by Dr Flinn is that the current generalist courses offered by 5 of the 7 FARMER universities will move more towards a ‘core course + options’ model, with a higher number of more specialist options being offered.

These changes are leading to debates within the profession as to what should remain ‘core’ - in the past this would have undoubtedly included medieval paleography, for example, but now jobs for archivists have expanded beyond County Records Offices a lower proportion of roles call for this skills. Is there therefore a case for making this one of the specialist options?

After a lively coffee break with lots of networking and chatter going on round the room, we reconvened for the next hour and half with a careers workshop. I gave a talk covering what types of jobs the skills gained in archives & records management courses could be used for, where to find them, and how to decide which were the right one(s) for you, before focusing on how to write an effective CV and be successful at interview.

ARA New Professionals Career Workshop August 2011

We then rearranged the room into break-out groups (photo above) and people worked on firstly the layout, and secondly the content, of their CVs in groups of three or four. Those who preferred worked on some anonymised CVs, with common suggestions for improvements including:

• spend less space on the address/contact details
• use more bullet points
• move more relevant sections nearer the top

Once we had put the room back together into (more or less) neat rows of chairs, the final two speakers gave two very different but equally interesting talks. These slots were reserved for two new professionals to present, and one chose to talk about the specific archive in which they work, while the other gave an overview of all the different roles and responsibilities that now fall to the lot of an archivist, wherever they work.

Fabiana Barticioti of the V&A, who will be starting her Archives’ Masters course this September, gave us a multimedia rich presentation of her work with the dance materials archive held by the V&A. It was fascinating to see the dance choreography notation and then watch a video of a ballet dancer performing those particular moves.

Sarah Norman of the UK Debt Management Office, who qualified from UCL last year, looked at the Roles of an Archivist, which included:

• Lawyer (FoI and EIR requests)
• Project Manager (lots of funny terminology to get to grips with!)
• Procurement Officer
• Records Manager
• Stationer (from photocopying to supplying paper...)
• Detective (who, of course, knows where the files labelled ‘missing’ in the catalogue are to be found!)
• Line Manager (yes, even after 1 year’s experience)

Sarah said the role was a lot more varied, and more challenging, than she had imagined before hand, and with constraints on resources this shows no sign of diminishing.

As the members of the New Professionals Section got together to discuss what the members of this new SIG wanted from the group, I bowed out to go and catch my train. To round off a very pleasant afternoon the sun was shining, so I could walk along the Strand and over the bridge to Waterloo; in the daylight this time!

Event - Gurteen Knowledge Cafe

A short stroll down Charing Cross road to the PwC offices in Embankment Place after work on Wednesday 17th August led me to my first Gurteen Knowledge Cafe.

I was pleasantly surprised to see around 50 people gathering for what turned out to be a very enjoyable and thought provoking evening. David Gurteen had difficulty dragging us away from our coffee and networking to get things started, but once we sat around our ‘cafe style’ tables we soon settled down.

David introduced us to Theodore Zeldin and his book “Conversation; how talk can change your life” and took a quote from the beginning of the book as the inspiration for the evening.David reworked the quotation into three questions. Rather than the normal format of having 3 rounds all discussing the same question, with participants moving between tables for each round, on this occasion we discussed a different question in each round:

• How does conversation change the way we see the world?
• Can conversation change the world for the better?
• What do we need to do to have such conversations?

During the first round my table first discussed what made a conversation, and concluded that it had to include dialog between at least two people (or could be a “trialogue”... or more!) and that participants needed to be open and willing to change their opinion. The success or otherwise of this would depend on various factors, including culture, risk, trust, and past backgrounds and vulnerabilities.

In the second round we developed the theme of trust a bit further, with some round the table feeling that trust could only be developed over time as relationships deepened, while others felt they could instinctively trust someone within minutes of meeting them. We also considered ‘what is better?’ Better for some people might be worse for others (ie, what is ‘desirable’ or ‘good’ can depend on cultural background, political views, ethics, etc - there are few universals).

We also thought about the participants in the conversation being as important as the content of the conversation itself - whether to influence politicians or business managers, or to bring people from opposing communities together in neutral space for a conversation about an everyday topic, to allow both parties to see their common humanity.

My final group talked about what elements were needed to have effective conversations that would lead to change. We were on the whole against the very formal ‘conversations’ that tended to take place in businesses or government - where board room tables, set agendas, and group politics all constrain people.

The last 15-20 minutes of the evening were spent in one large group circle, continuing the conversation, about conversations, in the round. For conversations to be able to change things, whether in a small way locally or in big, important ways, the importance of participants approaching the conversation predisposed to change their mind was emphasised again. The best conversations were felt to be spontaneous shared dialogues to discover a new truth.

All rather heady stuff for 9.00pm in the evening after a full day at work! A quick sprint across Waterloo bridge to the station, and lovely views of the illuminated South Bank, rounded off the night nicely.

If anyone is interested in learning how to run a Knowedge Cafe themselves, David Gurteen is running a Cafe Workshop on September 13th in London.  See here for more details.

Event – IRMS Site Visit to Dyson R&D Centre

Tuesday 11^th August saw me driving through a beautiful English summer morning from Hampshire up into Wiltshire to the Dyson headquarters.  After getting safely through the rather daunting security gate, I met up with the other delegates and walked through a striking sculpture installation by Peter Burke to reach reception.

Billed as a site visit, I was delighted to find that Sam Steer (Information Manager) and her team had put in a great deal of thought and effort for the day.  Rather than a tour around the site, which was restricted for commercial confidentiality reasons, we were treated to a masterclass of in-place records and information management.

Sam joined Dyson four years ago, and was originally offered a £4m budget to buy and implement an EDRMS.  This led to sharp intakes of breath and jealous looks from many round the table!  However not bedazzled by this largesse, Sam proceeded to carry out a cost benefit analysis of the initial plan, which looked like this:

The characteristics of Dyson as an organisation, founded upon rapid growth, innovation, perseverance, perfectionism and anti-bureaucracy, had led to a particular set of IRM challenges:

·    Rapid growth had meant moving from a simple file share and conversations to share information, to 3,000 staff and a business reorganisation project

·    Innovation meant that competitors felt threatened and resorted to regular litigation as a strategy to try and maintain market share

·    Perseverance and perfectionism worked in IRM’s favour!

·    Anti-bureaucracy meant there was a need for strong business cases and demonstrations of value in what IRM was asking of staff

Because of the number, complexity and frequency of litigation, and subsequent need for legal hold notices and a legal discovery processes, it was felt that adding an EDRM system layer would lead to duplication of information and increasing the cost of discovery.  Another drawback was that the retention of information was largely to meet business needs for information re-use, and moving information into an EDRMS would mean loss of functionality, making it harder to re-find and re-use that information later.

The decision was therefore taken to follow Plan B: in-place records management.  This has meant tackling each of the line-of-business systems illustrated above in turn.  Sam is closely involved with IT in the specification, testing and roll-out of new systems, whether these are to be purchased and customised external solutions (like the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) system) or systems to be developed internally (like the File Share search system, (Index)). 

The roll out and management of all these systems would clearly be too much for one person – so Sam has recruited 60 information custodians around the business who have information management objectives to meet as well as their ‘day job’.

On the roadmap for future development are a new front-office application, for example for CRM, a new web content management system for the website, email management, and an investigation of the use of social media. 

Our day included presentations from the developer of the new PLM system, which is due to go live later this year, and of the File Share search, categorisation and review system, which is already being implemented.  We had a splendid lunch, including fresh berries and either lemon or chocolate cake for desert, and then had a hands-on training session on Index where we learnt to categorise folders and review them.

As the first in a series of site visits organised by the IRMS this was an outstanding success, and everyone got a lot out of the day.