COME ONE! COME ALL!!! ARMA Gaithersburg December Holiday Meeting Thursday, December 14, 2000, 6PM to 9PM

Location: Willow Tree Inn at the Montgomery Village Golf Club, 19550 Montgomery Village Avenue, Gaithersburg, MD (Off I-270 take Exit 11 East for approximately 3 miles. Go around the lake past the Montgomery Village Shopping Center and at the Clubhouse Rd light after the shopping center go 1/4 mile and then turn left.

Speaker: Tom Dale, President, Applied KM

Topic: "Status Quo: Not A Career Path for Records Managers" -OR - "Convergence is Part-Fact and Part-Myth"

Relentless digital progress continues. Tools allow us to produce more stuff than we can effectively manage. We drown in data and information overload. And we keep on creating more, continuing to compound the problem. Frankly, the collective "we" has been caught in no-man's land, damned-if-you-do-damned-if you-don't, Catch-22. One foot in analog (paper and film) and another in digital. And, for the most part, what we see is a mess. What got us here? What's going to happen because of the mess (that is to say, when the fan gets hit)? What behaviors are observable in the marketplace that hint on how we may position ourselves in organizations and career-wise?

Mr. Tom Dale has served ARMA (Electronic Records Committee) and AIIM (Emerging Technology Advisory Group, Standards -- including those pertaining to Expungement of Public Records). He's co-author of "Indexing Business Records" with Susan Cisco, CRM (and the abbreviation is not 'Customer Relationship Management'). Mr. Dale is a frequent voice in the wilderness who cut his teeth in systems engineering doing work in DoD R&D in the 1980s. Mr. Dale is one of the few crossovers from the digital to the analog world, from IT to records ("Kicking and screaming," he might add). Mr. Dale has a true appreciation of records management, its importance and suggestions for potential positioning. He will present his observations on the technology marketplace to derive implications for records managers in particular and organizations in general.

Status quo, quid pro quo, non sequitor, sine qua non -- which phrase best describes your records management activities?

Menu Choice (Pick One): Breast of Chicken Zinfandel; Pasta Primavera; or Shrimp Scampi Includes rolls & butter; rainbow sherbert; and coffee, tea, or decaf

Cost: $24 for ARMA members; $29 for non-members and second-time attendees

To place a reservation and menu order call the Gaithersburg Hotline at 301-670-7044 x 200 or John Milligan at 301-415-6575, or email John at jsmilligan@hotmail.com or gburgarma@yahoo.com. Leave your name, number and affiliation. ________________

-- Anonymous, November 27, 2000