Open Text is proudly supporting the 25th Anniversary conference of the RMAA (Records Management Association of Australasia) here in Sydney this week. With delegates from all over Australia, New Zealand and Asia, as well as sponsors and speakers from Canada, U.S. and Europe, Day 1 proved to be jam-packed with sessions addressing all aspects of electronic and physical records management practices and trends. Presenters did a great job relating their topics and research to the conference theme of "Adopting and Adapting" - a theme reflects well on the changing nature of the records management profession and its need to keep pace with the increasingly electronic work environment in this era of compliance pressures.

The keynote address, by Julie McLeod, Professor of Records Management at Northumbria University in the UK, highlighted some key research areas she and her task force have been looking at this year. Adoption rates of the ISO 15489 Records Management standard in the UK, a review of four key Information and Records Management readiness toolkits, and a survey of the adoption issues records professional face when instituting new programs were the three key areas of discussion. More by Professor McLeod's team here in their research blog: http://acerm.blogspot.com. They are actively looking for survey participants.

The topic of what Records Managers need to know about Web 2.0 and Social Media is clearly the hot topic of the day. My own session as well as a similarly-themed session by KM guru Kim Sbarcea, were both standing room only. An estimated 100 people in each of the sessions heard more about the changing face of the enterprise and where to start thinking about adopting and adapting to new content creation, collaboration and social software tools that are entering the enterprise and helping to harness the collective wisdom of information workers.

The key takeaways? Embrace your peer-to-peer communities, use 2.0 tools to create your voice as an expert, and take the rewards while keeping an eye on the risks of freeing up channels of communication and information exchange.

Earlier this year, Open Text became the first supplier to achieve full compliance with the demanding VERS (Victorian Electronic Records Strategy) records management standards and have just been awarded panel contract status by the New South Wales Government to provide Information Asset Management System (IAMS) to government departments and agencies throughout the state.

If you are at the conference, please be sure to visit Open Text's booth. Sign up to test your talents in our Guitar Hero competition, learn more about our new offerings and have some fun networking with your peers.