But I’ll agree that the legacy perception of the AIIM Expo (again, licensed to Questex, and largely out of our hands), as well as AIIM.org itself, might as first blush make the general public believe Enterprise 2.0 isn’t of interest or concern to us within AIIM.org, either as employees or members/associates.

That’s the wonder of evolution and innovation, frequently messy and unevenly distributed!

A few things to help clarify:
1. Although it is billed as being focused on Records Managers and IT, with over 10,000 attendees, it’s certainly not purely comprised of just those camps. I don’t have any further break down beyond that, as I’ll explain in a second below…

2. As confusing as it can be from the outside (of AIIM, the organization), the 2008 AIIM Exposition and Conference is branded as AIIM due to a licensing agreement with Questex, the trade-show/conference company that we (as AIIM, the organization) have worked with for 7-8 years now. Questex runs the show, we (AIIM – the non-profit industry association for Enterprise Content Management professionals, with over 50,000 associates) are partners, but do not have the ultimate decision-making authority on what topics are covered, nor how prominently the marketing language is pushed.

Confused yet? Hard to easily describe in text. Short story – “the AIIM show” is Questex, with a lot more content this year from AIIM (the non-profit association). AIIM (the association) provides research, analysis, training, networking, and a host of other bits that I can further bore everyone with at some other time.

3. All that said, AIIM (proper) is taking a stronger role in delivering content this year, partly due to Carl Frappaolo and I joining to head up Market Intelligence (as of June 1, 2007, and bringing 25+ and 13 years of experience respectively), but also to take advantage of the 2 year (old? young?) training program AIIM has been running on various ECM-related topics, which has provided training to over 5,000 people in the last 2 years, on a variety of topics, including, soon, Enterprise 2.0.

Carl and I are doing a one-day compressed “Intensive AIIM Enterprise 2.0 (E2.0) Practitioner Training Program” – which is the two-day program we’ll have available in Q2, and itself is part of a full 4-days on Enterprise 2.0 we’re putting together. (Register/details)

And from the conference topic list:
Enterprise 2.0/Web 2.0
Collaboration and Social Software
Next Generation Search Tools & Applications
…are among the topics listed, no idea why they wouldn’t be more prominent elsewhere

I’m presenting two additional sessions beyond the Enterprise 2.0 Intensive:
COL06 – Build Smarter Internal and External Communities via Social Networking Methodologies and Technologies
and
BPM02: Do or Die: Innovation by Process-based Information Management

While Carl is presenting, separately, on:
E2W01 – Defining Enterprise 2.0 and the Role of ECM in It
and
SEA02 – Enterprise Search: Why it’s Critical and Why it’s More than Google Inside the Firewall

Might be easiest to look at the speaker list to get a birds-eye view on the options.

Longtime participant in the world of AIIM (as a member and active trainer/collaborator on a variety of topics), Jesse Wilkins is also presenting on Enterprise 2.0 – and has been involved in Office 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0, as well as ECM and related topics for quite some time now.

So, net/net, I’ll bring up to our partners at Questex that perhaps they should give some more prominence to these topics, as they ARE being covered, it’s just hidden in plain sight. Back to findability!

Thanks for pointing this out Bill (hadn’t realized the marketing was this obtuse) – and for anyone coming to the show in Boston, would love to meet you in person, and with any luck, will see you at one of the 5 presentations that Carl or I are giving.

Cheers,
Dan