The ARMA (Association of Records Managers and Administrators) International 53rd Annual Conference & Expo, which is Oct. 20-23 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, seeks to help professionals in the records and information management (RIM) industry fuse the business and technology of managing the information that confronts them daily.
This year’s event promises more than 100 educational sessions in tracks such as information technology, RIM practices, risk management, business functions, leadership and communications and marketing, as well as a number of RIM workshops offering expert advice in records and information management.
More than 3,000 RIM professionals, general and inside counsels, legal administrators, RIM and IT consultants, CIOs and IT managers are expected to attend the 2008 conference in Sin City.
In addition to educational opportunities, the conference also features an exhibit hall with nearly 200 exhibitors, including records storage companies, secure information destruction firms, software providers, document restoration services and box suppliers.
CONFRONTING NEW CHALLENGES
ARMA makes educational sessions the cornerstone of its conference programming. In addition to this year’s variety of educational sessions, the conference also features roundtable discussions, a series of Thought Leader Sessions and certified records manager (CRM) preparation workshops. Two keynote speakers from different disciplines help to provoke discussion Monday, Oct. 20, and Thursday, Oct. 23, as they offer their thoughts on the evolution of information management and the hot topic of identity theft.
Monday from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m., David Weinberger, author of Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder offers his insight into the way organizations and individuals use information and how the proliferation of digital information is presenting new challenges to RIM professionals. A philosopher by training, Weinberger’s work focuses on how the Internet is changing communication, relationships and society.
Thursday from 1 to 2 p.m. Jeff Lanza, a former FBI special agent, addresses how criminals steal information from organizations and how organizations can safeguard the information they house.
For those attendees eager to get a head start on the educational opportunities the conference has to offer, pre-conference workshops are scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 18, and Sunday, Oct. 19. Pre-conference topics include "Fundamentals of Records and Information Management," a two-day workshop tailored to new RIM professionals; "Legal Services Focus: Compliance, Collaboration and Conflicts," which features a session on conflict-of-interest issues in the legal field as well as a panel discussion that explores compliance and collaboration issues among chief information officers and RIM and IT professionals; and "Electronic Records Management," which offers a session geared toward intermediate RIM professionals and one for advanced information management professionals.
Educational opportunities at the ARMA International 53rd Annual Conference & Expo do not end at the exhibit hall entrance.
EMBRACING TECHNOLOGY
In addition to featuring nearly 200 exhibitors of products and services—including CA, Oracle, IBM, Google and Iron Mountain—the exhibit hall at this year’s conference also hosts a number of Industry Intelligence Sessions that are sponsored by vendors to the RIM industry.
These sessions include "Decisions, Decisions, Decisions: How Long? What Format? How to Let Go," from 11 a.m. to noon Oct. 22. Presented by Elizabeth Trumbull of Pitney Bowes Management Services, this session addresses governance information from creation through to final disposition and presents information on best practices for minimizing real estate costs associated with records storage, determining the most efficient and cost effective media for retention, managing hybrid records and eliminating fees from storing documents longer than necessary.
Art Bellis of OmniRIM Solutions and Susan Cisco of Gimmal Group present "Federated Retention Policy, Enterprise Problem, Practical Solution" Oct. 22 from 11 a.m. to noon. This session addresses the problems companies face in developing and deploying retention policies and legal hold orders across the enterprise.
A new Legal Technologies Symposium Monday, Oct. 20, through Tuesday, Oct. 21, focuses on the collaboration between legal technologies and records management. Sessions and workshops are held in the mezzanine area of the exhibition hall.
These sessions complement ARMA’s primary educational programming, which begins Monday, Oct. 20, and concludes Thursday, Oct. 23. To aid conference registrants in determining the sessions that are best suited to their skill levels, ARMA offers a numerical designation of one, indicating content geared toward entry-level RIM professionals, through four, which indicates executive-level RIM practitioners who partner with executive management and provide enterprise direction for RIM programs.
A full schedule of events, which includes more information on the conference’s educational programming, is available at www.arma.org/conference, as is registration and exhibit information.
The author is editor of
SDB magazine and can be contacted at dtoto@gie.net.