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Take AIIM: Roadshow Report
Monday, 16th July 2012

By Dale Moore

Abstract:

Contributing editor Dale Moore attended the AIIM Roadshow in London. The key themes of the event dovetail with common themes FreePint readers will be familiar with: cloud computing, mobile content, social connections and big data.

Article:

On the 21st June 2012, I travelled to London to attend the AIIM Roadshow. This is an annual event put on by AIIM (The Global Community of Information Professionals) with the, er, aim, of bringing together information professionals from all sectors and sizes of organisations for the purpose of meeting other like minded souls and hearing about the latest developments in content management. 

The event also provides the opportunity of talking to invited vendors, who are of course very keen to tell you about their content management "solutions". Some of these vendors, along with representatives from AIIM, provide a series of talks, many of which are very informative, insightful and genuinely useful. The lunch was pretty good too. Oh, and the event (including the keynote address and all the talks) is free. This was, in fact, the second time I have been to one of these (the first being last year), and I was curious to hear what the main themes would be this time around. 

Well, somewhat unsurprisingly, the main themes were: the cloud, mobile and social computing and big data; topics which have been the subject of many of our articles over recent months. It's at least reassuring to learn that we're all moving in the same direction! 

This year the opening keynote talk was given by AIIM President, John Mancini, who presented his vision of the future. The theme for this talk was: Information opportunities in the social, local and mobile era. This was a very thought-provoking talk and John used this opportunity to promote his recently launched eBook, OccupyIT: A Technology Manifesto for the Cloud, Mobile and Social Era. This manifesto is well worth a read if you are at all curious about the possible future of information management in our organisations. 

In addition to the main themes mentioned above, another subject to feature heavily in most of the talks was SharePoint. Microsoft's biggest-selling software development platform seems to be growing in popularity among those yet to dip their toe in the Enterprise Content Management sea, and there was a great deal of interest shown by the delegates. While this featured in last year's roadshow, it dominated this year's and looks set to continue with Microsoft’s recent acquisition of Yammer. 

So, the main themes of interest to many information professionals now seem to be the cloud, mobile and social computing, big data and … SharePoint! Be interesting to see what happens over the next 12 months. 

Note: These roadshows take place in the U.S and the U.K. every year in a number of locations, so if you haven't had the opportunity to attend one yet, keep an eye out for next years'. They are definitely worth attending.

By Dale Moore

Dale Moore is employed as an information manager and English language teacher at a private language school in the South West of England. He has a masters degree in information management from the University of Sheffield and over 12 years experience as an information practitioner.

He has worked for a number of organisations of all sizes from the BBC in London to government funded regional entities providing business support to small companies.

Dale can be reached at dale.moore@freepint.com

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