Continued Communication Project – Collaborate in creating a mind map for RM in a Web 2.0 world

Continued Communication is an international multidisciplinary group investigating communications in the 21st century, conceived and led by ELizabeth Lomas as part of her PhD research with Northumbria University. The group is critically evaluating how to maximise the business potential of communications created through computer mediated technologies, which incorporates any IT systems with the potential for dialogue.

In anticipation of the presentation by Katharine Stevenson and Jon Shepherd at the UK’s Records Management Society Conference next week (when Katharine and Jon will be demonstrating and discussing some of the implications for RM of new communication tools such as Google Wave, Ning, Moodle and MindMeister), the Continued Communication team would like to invite you to add your ideas and questions to a collaborative mindmap looking at the question:

“What are the challenges, solutions and questions for Records Managers in a Web 2.0 world?"

You can log in and add to the mindmap at: http://www.mindmeister.com/44873728/rm-web-2-0-challenges-and-solutions

If you are not already a user of MindMeister then you do need to register a username, an email and password to edit the map. MindMeister is then free for individuals to use and you can edit other maps and produce your own (although there are certain limits on the free service in terms of map numbers). Sign up at https://www.mindmeister.com/home/signup_editions

Editing the map is easy as the process of adding comments is fairly intuitive – click on the box you want to link to and then click on 'add', a new box will then pop up for you to type into. Boxes can be dragged, remapped and linked and you can edit existing comments. Like a wiki, all changes are tracked so feel free to edit text. MindMeister has its own help on the site but feel free to get back in touch with any queries.

The results of the mapping will be used to inform the Continued Communication Group's research and will be shown at the RMS Conference - the group hopes to continue the map throughout the Conference. The map will also be available online for a couple of months so that around the world we can reflect on the professional future (opportunities and risks for Records and Information Managers) around the globe as information creation, storage and management shifts.

Elizabeth can be contacted at elizabeth2.lomas@northumbria.ac.uk

Records Management Myths and Legends

Continued Communication, a Northumbria University led action research group, is running two storytelling sessions for separate groups in central London (British Library Conference Centre) on Monday 1st March 2010, an afternoon session (2.30–5pm) and an Evening Session (6–8pm).

The purpose of the event is to build narrative views of the world of records management through developing short group and individual stories. We hope to capture and convey some of the values and benefits of information management and the RIM profession. Stories will be recorded and with participants' individual permission will be posted onto the Continued Communication website that is currently under development.

The event will be facilitated by Storyteller and Cognitive Edge Practitioner Ron Donaldson. Here is a link to one of Ron's storytelling events http://rondon.wordpress.com/2009/09/08/hexagons-aplenty/.

Elizabeth Lomas (Continued Communication and Northumbria University), Peter Heywood (Development coach and consultant), and James Lappin (Thinking Records), will be assisting Ron - it should be an interesting and fun event.

If you would like to come along and take part then please email elizabeth2.lomas@northumbria.ac.uk, letting her know whether you would like to attend the afternoon or the evening session.

Back to the Future - RMS Conference 19-21 April 2009

It's good to read that Northumbria's research gets a mention in Martin Sanderson's review of the recent Records Management Society Conference - Back to the Future(http://blog.tfpl.com/tfpl/2009/05/records-management-society-conference-april-2009-back-to-the-future.html)

Rachel Hardiman gave a presentation on the AC+erm project, outlining what the project is about, how we are doing it and the type of outputs to date, including vignettes (or tools) we are drafting. She demonstrated the idea of scripting a training video with the first two AC+erm 'movie stars' - Lancelot and Guinevere - using xtranormal's free Text-to-Movie (TM) movie-making software (http://www.xtranormal.com/) She asked delegates for input to a short film aimed at records and information managers to get across ways in which to apply ERM methodologies that suit the users rather than themselves.

Some of Elizabeth Lomas' co-researchers gave a presentation around her PhD study called 'Continued Communication', which Martin highlights as "new and innovative action/participative research". Elizabeth also gave her own presentation on aligning records management, risk and information security standards and models, based on her extensive professional experience.

Reading reports like this helps us understand the impact the project is having and the feedback is important for the work we do to the end of the project. We'll try to respond to it. Thank you.