27 June 2023 – Metataxis musings from the annual AIIM conference.
The Association for Intelligent Information Management (AIIM) Forum Europe took place on 20 June in London.
Marc Stephenson, Director at Metataxis, was at this compelling one day conference and exhibition and shares his experiences from attending the event:
Along with my colleague, Noeleen Schenk, we both attended the AIIM Forum Europe at the De Vere Grand Connaught Rooms in central London. Like all conferences, it was a mixture of the mundane, interesting, and surprising. Before Covid, attendee numbers seemed to be on the decline at many industry conferences, but post-covid, there is a real sense that people want to meet in person again.
The most interesting presentation for me at this year’s event was on the uptake of Microsoft Purview. Some insightful user research (albeit slightly self-selecting) was presented that showed many organisations are interested in Purview, but few had actually started the required work, let alone completed it. A case of the implementation of records management technology not being as easy as it seems. This certainly matches the Metataxis experience – developing a realistic records management regime requires a lot more than just applying technology.
The surprising part of the conference was that if we are to believe the range of vendor stalls, paper and it’s digitalising still plays a key role in the day-to-day operation of information management. One could argue that only the major scanning vendors are able to pay for AIIM exhibition stands, but of course they wouldn’t pay for the stand if there was no business benefit. I remember that the “paperless office” was “coming soon” when I was an undergraduate (many) years ago! What happened?! Do we really need all this paper still? Or are we still fighting the backlog?
The conference was of course very pre-occupied with AI and how that might affect the Information Management world.
Now that’s a topic for another blog coming soon…