Taina writes:
"Back in the day, if people had thought carefully about the implications of 
using the then-newly-minted electronic mail as a vehicle for business 
communication, and ensured that proper practices were put in place to 
account for those implications, would we still be having issues with e-mail 
in RM today?"

Ok...I'll bite. Long answer. One of those stories...

I consider myself fortunate to have entered the workforce just in time to 
have exposure to so much of the technological development that you'll read 
about in the history of the internet like ARPANET. The company that I worked 
for was primarily a "busy" company, but we had our own in-house computing 
department (operations & programming) and we also had research & development 
so we had some "bursty" folks as well.

Machines always fascinated me. Computers were no exception. I managed to 
meet many of the key folks in our then large computing staff. I realized 
that if I was going to eventually work in the records & information 
management arena, I wanted to support our IT division.

Originally I worked in the micrographics department. We acquired one of the 
first ever CAR systems. It was called Adstar by Actex. It utilized a Prime 
mini computer. I was its original computer operator. From this system, I 
gained exposure to a very early messaging system. Our R&D had VAX Mail. 
Later we did an office of the future project - I think that was in 1982 (Bob 
D you can help me with this). A group of 64 of us all got IBM PC's. We had a 
terminal emulator installed on each machine - it was an "IRMA" board. We ran 
PROFS. It was cool. We had no programs for our PCs - we just ran BASIC. Then 
we got Lotus 123. We eventually got a program called "Condor" for our 
records & file management. It was great and I used it for years.

I'll never forget my first husband - a bleeding edge programmer on the IBM 
side - trying to use a PC for the first time. It was far too simple for him 
Funny when I think about it.

So where am I going with this? Our first attempts at messaging were of 
course primitive and so very simplistic. Beautiful. No attachments. Just 
messages and meeting notices. Where is the complexity in that?

However, some of us knew that there would be a reason to worry. We wrote our 
schedules and developed our policies to include all "records" regardless of 
media. And that is all so great, but hey reality is that you can say what 
you want. No one did anything to properly comply with the schedules or the 
policies. We all went loping through the 80s' doing what we do. It was all 
about budgets and the bottom line. Computing decentralized. The it became 
distributed. Communication between systems was a key concern. We worked with 
BBN to develop the very first ever data network.  If you'd like to learn 
more about this effort, you can watch an interview with Susan Mersereau who 
is now the SR VP or Technology for the company I used to work for.
The link is:
http://www.uwtv.org/programs/displayevent.aspx?rID=2341
I used to support Susan. I would work for her again in a heartbeat. The 
interview is 50 or so minutes. It is worth watching. Actually the entire 
series is worth watching.  UW TV does some wonderful interviews on their 
show "Technology Leaders."

I think in small groups or teams, we did out our practices in place that 
were good ones. But that was for that time. And this is all background for 
where we are now.

I believe it is time for a paradigm shift on our part as records managers. I 
also believe that there is not one solution. Technology affords many tools 
that have to be welded in the proper sequence. It is different from place  
to place, but what is constant seems to be the needs to work with your 
technology teams. They don't have all the answers, but hey neither do we.

So my 2 cents (well maybe 5 cents) on a nice day in Seattle.

Peace, love & Porsches,
Sharon

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