From YouTube to YouManage

Steve Bailey kicked off conference in fine style. (Click on the title to go to the full text of Steve's talk)

Iconoclastic and challenging as ever, Steve looked at the techno-centric world we live in...and reminded us that records managers don't live in a vacuum. His argument is that the user community is increasingly developing its own ways of working with retention schedules, tags and deciding on the importance of documents.


Information creators don't work in the same way as they did two, three, five years ago. Or even how they did it last week. None of us are now just passsive users of content.


What implications does that have for records managers? RM can be a conservative profession, that needs to adapt to this technologically changing environment to make sure we keep up.


Typically erudite and forthright Steve, warned us that records managers need to change with the times or be left behind. Our methodologies have to move with the times. Free online tools from such as Google are changing the way we work. Witness the way we are moving towards collaborative tools ...Office2.0... Blogs, wikis etc are just a sideshow...


Mass digital storage is challenging traditional records management. He pointed out the value of older docs as part of a story...in this environment is there a no need for r&d schedules?

Steve's own blog fundamentally challenges what a record is and who it belongs to. He notes the boundaries beween work and home life are blurring. Content is incresingly being stored on places like Flickr, youtube, delicious etc.

For Steve, technology shapes the way organisations function.

I love the work Steve is doing, it's important, challenging and enormously valuable. But yet I still wonder... what about the corporate memory of the organisation? Steve looks at the interface between users and technology and shows us where records managers can either fit in or lose out. My big concern is that he doesn't seem to address what organisations need as effectively as what users need.


Steve points out that applications are becoming both more complex and more numerous. He recognises that the new web2.0 stuff represents a paradigm shift the like of which we have never seen. Can we master this domain? How can we rethink RM in this environment? Can RM still be fit for purpose in this environment? Not by using traditional methods. He wonders whether traditional approaches the best or just the easiest...are we a stuffy rules bound profession? Not in my experience. It's a dynamic, exciting environment where all of us are experienced, if not expert in managing change.


For Steve RM isn't the future...no longer do we manage records...we need to rethink RM for the new world of Web2.0. We need a set of organising principles looking at how we can democratise info management in the same way we have democratised info creation. What we need is Records management 2.0


We're moving to a world where user tagging is better than classification schemes. Tagging gets more reliable the more users use it. We have to find ways of coping with harnessing the innovative wisdom of the crowd. In my experience we don't want to be giving users a new and shiny way of misnaming everything. Hahaha.


We do live in exciting and challenging times. One of the ways forward is for the opinions of the user and the RM to work closer together in harmony.


The umbrella of Web2.0 will affect our ability to manage the future. We need to have these important debates that Steve has rightly highlighted and, what's more we need to have them with our IT suppliers.

Getting started

Conference kicked off this evening with a meeting of all the Regional and Special Interest Group Chairs.

A positive and affirming meeting highlighting the progress we're making as an organisation. The Regional and Special Interest Groups are doing great work but we need to remember the corporate thing. We are one RMS.

Paul Dodgson noted that we need to keep up the momentum. In a moving call-to-arms, he pointed out that we are an inclusive family, dedicated to the success of each other and all of the Society. Well, it brought a lump to my throat, I don't mind telling you. It was a moving speech, enough to bring a tear to a glass eye.

Joking aside, we're all delighted with the progress the Society is making. . .so join us.

More later... is that a pint I can hear calling?

Blogs and blogging

I'm running a session at conference on blogs and blogging and the relationship between Web2.0 technologies and records management.

These issues will become increasingly important over the coming year(s) so it's great we will have the space to discuss them, air our views and perhaps even find some agreement on how we move the agenda forward.

The questions I'd like to consider are

• how useful, interesting and important are blogs/Web2.0 technologies?
• can we build genuine online communities of interest?
• is this the start of a new revolution in records/information/knowledge management?

I don't expect everyone to experts in the subject. (I'll even give you a quick overview of how they all work if necessary.) But it should be a lively, interesting and, I hope, important debate for the future of records management...so join us.

Red Kite