Region Message for November

Hello!

I hope that those of you who attended ARMA International’s conference in Chicago made the trip home and have been working over the past month to implement all those great ideas that were presented! There were many great presentations to choose from, including 2 from GNW members: Andrew SanAgustin and Kyle Stannert. Both of these gentlemen had fantastic presentations and some great information to share, be sure to attend if they come to your chapter.

Andrew and I have both had a theme in our recent region messages, hopefully by now you’ve identified that our theme is building blocks and the many variations they come in. I remember the building blocks from when I was kid (wooden and probably loaded with lead paint) in various shapes and sizes including the most popular one shaped slightly like a bridge. They still exist today, you find them every once in a while in daycares and playrooms but more and more they are being replaced by Legos (insert trademark here!). Those fancy things come with more parts then you care to imagine and if you lose one part can you still make the Batman figure correctly or enough that a 5 year old won’t know the difference between the one that you made and the picture on the box?

What does this remind me of? Technology. Obsolete wooden blocks replaced by shiny new pieces of plastic. I still need to know how the obsolete wooden discs work because I’m going to come across them at some point in time. But at the same time I need to know how the shiny new world of cloud computing or social media work because that’s where my organization is going. The technology portion of our records management building block is the most changing and diverse, but also can be the most interesting. And of course ARMA has many fantastic resources from books and webinars to networking that can help us with this building block.

So whether you are dealing with those wooden blocks of years ago (hopefully sanded and repainted with environmentally friendly paint) or trying to figure out all those shiny pieces and why is there one left over, be sure to have the technology portion of your platform well supported!

Hope you are enjoying your autumn.

Jennifer Winkler

GNW Region Manager