Digital Landfill

We recently asked a group of senior business and organization executives, IT managers and records managers a fairly simple question:

On a scale of 1 (TERRIBLE) to 10 (excellent), please rate the overall effectiveness of your organization in managing, controlling and utilizing electronic information.

The answers are revealing in terms of understanding a major obstacle facing most organizations in getting their act together in managing information.

Most executives simply do not understand how bad the problem is within their organizations -- but often their staffs do.  On a scale of 1 (terrible) to 10 (excellent), executives evaluate their information management systems as a 5.80, exhibiting a fairly high confidence in the robustness of their systems.  Only 33% of executives would give themselves a grade of 5 or less.

The problem is that when you ask the same question of records managers and executives, a much more pessimistic picture emerges.  Among this group, the evaluation is nearly a full point less -- 4.85 -- and the percentage of those basically giving a vote of no confidence to their systems rises to 60%.

IT staff are often accused of having just about as much understanding  of their information management problems as top executives -- and perhaps even less incentive to come clean about them.
   
The data suggests that IT executives share the sense of their RM peers that all is not well, with an average grade of 5.26 and over 56% reporting a grade of 5 or less.

This all squares pretty firmly with something I've noticed at many organizations. 

Just about any organization has -- at its core -- three types of assets -- 1) FINANCIAL assets, 2) HUMAN RESOURCE assets, and 3) INFORMATION assets.

Most organizations invested long ago in systems to manage their money and their people.  To the extent that they have paid strategic attention to information management, their strategy is usually limited to data assets.  Most of the rest of the information just resides in a hodge podge of shared drives and personal folders, mostly unmanaged and definitely not optimized.

So where can you start to help overcome this "awareness gap" in your organization?  Here are a couple of suggestions:

• AIIM conducts a variety of custom one-day "strategy sessions" for organizations to help educate management teams on the issues and risks of mismanaging information, as well as the business opportunities for those who do it well.  Thedra White at can give you details.
• We recently put together a short presentation you can use -- -- to start to build awareness.  Feel free to send the link around to executives in your organization and ask them if they know what's in their digital landfill.  Here's the direct link -- .
• We have recently launched an information and networking site to help organizations get answers to their information management questions -- check out the InformationZen site at http://www.informationzen.org.
• AIIM hosts a weekly series of webinars on information management challenges facing organizations.  The price is right (they're free!).  Just go to THIS LINK to see the list and to register.
• Lastly, we'll be doing a series of educational seminars around the country this fall.  Once again, the price is right (they're free).  Check out the list of cities.  Register here.  This fall's theme --  Automating Document-centric Processes –  Is SharePoint Enough?

In the age of the Web and the electronic information explosion of the last 20 years, we have no shortage of information within our organizations. But how do we FIND content - whether we know it exists, buried in a digital landfill, or are searching for information we HOPE exists within the Enterprise?  Register for the webinar by clicking HERE.

DATE: Thursday, June 26, 2008
TIME:
2:00-3:00 P.M. (EASTERN)
1:00-2:00 P.M. (CENTRAL)
12:00-1:00 P.M. (MOUNTAIN)
11:00 A.M.-12:00 P.M. (PACIFIC)

Speaker: Carl Frappaolo, VP AIIM Market Intelligence

Microsoft recently purchased FAST for $1.2 Billion (USD), and is now attempting an acquisition of Yahoo. Google is now the NUMBER ONE most recognized brand in the world. The search market is HOT  and for good reason.

Content is useless if no one can FIND it.

What are the trends? Best Practices? Worst Practices? Time wasters and time savers? Are devices like the iPod, or sites like NetFlix affecting the way we expect to find and use information in the Enterprise?

Join the AIIM Market Intelligence group as we discuss the findings of our latest Market IQ report on Findability. Learn what the current market reality for Findability as a business practice and orchestration of technologies is today and what it might look like in the future.

Our new executive networking site for those who care about records, document, content and business process management has now topped 700 members (after only a few weeks).

To sign up -- it's free -- just go to InformationZen.  And keep in mind it will take a little time to get to the kind of interactive critical mass to get some really interesting discussions going.  You can help things along by going to "Quick Q&A" and posting a question.

On another front, if you haven't seen our Digital Landfill presentation (named "presentation of the day" by Slideshare, check it out directly or through the embedded presentation below...

Sorry for the goofy title, but my daughter Erin made me match this goofy "So You Think You Can Dance" show last night and it made such an impression on me that I can't get it out of my head.

I was informed that our new presentation, "What's in your Digital Landfill" was named Slideshare's "Presentation of the Day" today.  I don't know if there is a cash prize, but we still think it's pretty cool.  On the left you can see what their home page looks like today (June 13).

If you want to check out the presentation, here it is...

After many machinations with keynote and powerpoint, here's a youtube version of the "What's in your digital landfill?" presentation.

Feel free to redistribute in any way you want...

Here's a presentation I've given to general audiences to try and explain the need to get serious about managing digital information.  It's basic, but designed to try and communicate to general business people, not the converted.

The direct link is -- .

Feel free to distribute the links to ANYONE.  Let's build some awareness.

Have you registered at InformationZen?

In the spirit of encouraging technology that does what it says it will in as simple a fashion as possible, here is entry #2 in my favorites list.

In the DC area, there are redboxes all over the place.  There is a reasonable though not gigantic inventory of DVDs in each.  You can reserve a title and a location on line, or just browse at the kiosk.  The DVDs are $1 per day.  You can return it to any other kiosk, and immediately receive an email receipt acknowledging the return, date, location and fees.

This is what I like about this:

We don't watch a ton of DVDs.  We used to be a Netflix and Blockbuster on-line subscriber.  Our usual routine was to get 3 movies from our queue, which would then sit on top of the DVD player for 4 or 5 weeks before we would return most of them unwatched.

It's cheap.

There is no paper involved.

There are no people involved.

There is static about, "You didn't rent the DVD originally from this store."

Many redbox locations are in McDonalds, which is a good thing.  Unless you are renting the movie, "SuperSize Me."

So what can be done in this industry to speed up implementations?  Make them easier to scale? Easier to use?  Let us know...

There was a very interesting article in today's (June 11) Wall Street Journal by Brian Wesbury from First Trust Portfolios on the impact of technology on business and organization productivity.  Here's the LINK (although I think the WSJ often shuts down their content after a day or two).

Wesbury's point is that we are in the middle of a business revolution the likes of which we haven't seen since the industrial revolution: 

"Rather than watching the sun set on the U.S., as many believed would happen in the early 1980s, the U.S. has experienced one of the greatest booms in wealth creation in world history. And the impact of our technological innovation has helped lift untold numbers out of poverty. This technology has created massive amounts of change. Like the Industrial Revolution before it, the current transformation is anything but pain-free. It's what Joseph Schumpeter called creative destruction. Google, Craigslist and Microsoft have been prospering. General Motors, United Airlines and the New York Times have not."

As I think about the part that revolutions in our industry (document and content technologies) have played in the overall productivity revolution, I can't help but think that we (read AIIM, ECM industry, individual companies) have not done a good enough job of documenting the productivity impact of our technologies.  Sure, there are lots of case studies out there, but if you want to understand more than the impact of one particular company's solution in one particular customer (and written by the company, to boot), there is a woeful lack of information.

Creating a more systematic framework to understand what end users are doing and how they are doing it in an industry specific and process specific context is a tall order.  But I think this is the area where we (read AIIM, ECM industry, individual companies) need to spend some resources.

The above quote is one of my favorites -- from Albert Einstein.  I've used it in the context of voicing my frustrations at time with how complicated document and content management can sometimes seem -- especially for small and mid-sized companies.  I spoke a little bit about the differentiating power of simplicity during my keynote presentation at the AIIM Show, as did well-known New York Times columnist David Pogue.

I thought I would do a couple of blog posts in the spirit of simplicity -- not so much about ECM, but just for fun about the products that I love because they are simple.  And maybe some blog readers might like to chime in on products they love.  Products that are as simple as possible, but not simpler.

Here's product number one.  Presto.

Here's what this product is designed to -- Format and send email (including pictures) to mostly older people who can't use e-mail.

My mother-in-law is of the age where the computer revolution never quite caught up with her.  I am a lousy phone caller, but a great e-mailer.  Voila.  The perfect combination.

The Presto machine is simply an HP printer with some software.  It sits on the phone line at the assisted living facility where my mother-in-law is and pings Presto 3 or 4 times a day.  It has a dedicated, permissioned email address so there's no junk.  I am the administrator for the account, so it notifies me when paper or ink is running low.

I go running around to lots of places on my job, so it's relatively easy to whip out my iPhone (another simple device I love except for the insanity of not including ActiveSych in the original version) and take a shot of where I am and email it from the phone.  My mother-in-law views the machine as magic.

Technology that does exactly what it is supposed to do and does it well and nothing more.

What technology do you love?