Dear Colleagues,

I continue to realise how much I enjoyed my attendance at the ARMA 2004
Conference in Long Beach and the quality of the event, the speaker's levels
of excellence and the exhibition with its 215 booths, plus the size of the
operation, it was awesome.
It was great to meet up with all of the listserv members who made it to the
Saturday evening get together at the Shoreline Village Yardhouse and with
whom I have interacted with over the years but without the opportunity to
meet face to face, some who come to mind are Susan McK, Peter K, Larry M and
Fred G plus numerous other persons, too many to list. The interaction and
exchange of ideas started on this list many years past continued into the
late evening hours on a number of occasions.
In addition to those list members who I met on the Saturday evening, I
cannot recall the number (there were so many) who introduced themselves and
we discussed the value of the list and some of my past list outpourings plus
covering a wide range of RIM issues in general, it was great.

On my return to Perth, and based on my strong belief of the growing strength
of RIM activities in North America via the many conversations I had with
numerous attendees at the conference I put together a presentation on visit
to North America. My belief of the growing strength of RIM activities in
North America was also strengthened by the information I gained by attending
as many sessions as possible plus input from persons and Corporations on the
exhibition floor. The presentation that I put together is titled - Why the
Americans are beating us at Records Management!. I believed that my fellow
RM colleagues and others here in Perth, Western Australia needed to be
enlightened as to the growing sophistication of RIM activities in North
America and the changes in the support for good governance via improved RIM
procedures. I made the observation that this change has been motivated by
recent Corporate collapses and the resulting new legislative and legal
environment plus the recent spate of multi million $ fines plus custodial
sentences handed down by the courts to Corporations and Senior Executives.

I presented the PowerPoint session last Friday, the 26th November with
excellent feed back from the attendees with comments like, informative,
thought provoking, and at times challenging.

If anyone is interested in obtaining a copy of this presentation (it
contains 92 slides with notes, which include some pictures and a funny or
two) it is available for download in a .PDF format @
http://www.congresswest.com.au/records/index.html .

If I can ever learn to forget the 27 hours in an aeroplane plus numerous
hours spent during stopovers in Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles and Singapore
with my flight from Oklahoma City back to Perth or alternatively if I get a
lobotomy, I may be in the mood to do the trip again, and hopefully, someday
soon.

I look forward to meeting up with all of my valued contacts from this list,
next time around.

Happy RIMing, Laurie

Mr Daniel Lawrance [Laurie] Varendorff, ARMA
Specialist Technical writer on Records and Information Management (RIM) and
related subjects, available for hire.
Published Articles available @ http://www.microfilm.net.au/articles.shtml
A Records Management Professional, and proud of the fact!
Consultant/Trainer/Tutor/Presenter: Records and Information Management
Imaging and Micrographic Specialist: 30 years experience

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