Last week's trip to Las Vegas for ARMA 2008 was great. We were kept busy meeting with customers, analysts, records managers and legal experts. Now that I'm back in the office, I wanted to take a bit of time to share some of the highlights.

There were a few core themes at ARMA this year:

• Is the volume of electronic records and information keeping you awake at night?




• Have litigation demands taken over your professional life?




• The economic crisis and its impact. How to do more with what you have?




• Do you wish you had solutions to the information governance issues facing your organization?

Fortunately, there were a number of experts who shared their experiences, knowledge and best practices in the records industry, including our own CA staff. Our eDiscovery solution director, Pete Pepiton, presented,"What are the key elements every Information Manager needs to ensure response to Discovery? How the U.S. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure affect organizations." Technical consultant Patrick Nicholas presented an in-booth session describing CA's solution entitled "Shed Some Light on Your Information Universe," and a number of attendees were also interested in our senior solution strategy advisor Kapil Lohia's presentation "Exploring the Results of the ARMA Survey" which highlighted the results of the CA sponsored ARMA survey that I talked about last week.

Records and information issues are definitely coming to the forefront as there was a rise in registered attendees from 2200 last year to over 2700 this year. Most of them enjoyed the opening Welcome party sponsored by CA. They listened to the Rat Pack sing, had their picture taken with Elvis, play table games, and meet up with old friends, all in one venue! And I got the opportunity to hand out a $250 Visa check card prize. Check out the great pictures from the party:











On Tuesday I participated on a panel moderated by Ken Chin. Although it was titled "The Role of a Services Oriented Architecture in Managing Electronically Stored Information," the questions from the audience focused around the "reality" of federated records management. It was well attended (45 or so attendees). The other panelists were from EMC and OpenText. It was a very interactive session with the audience driving the conversation. The attendees I spoke to afterward thought it helped them understand each vendor's approach and how much they really do differ. Our in place/Federated approach was well received.

Noteworthy was the U.S. Federal Government Day Program: Recordkeeping in the 21st Century which focused on email management, new legislation and changes in the recordkeeping environment.

I was also able to express my view on Information Governance at the Technology Spotlight panel which broke last year's attendance record. Although we are all competitors, the group had some good chemistry going. I think the session proved to be not just educational, but a little entertaining too. In addition to CA, Oracle, Iron Mountain and IBM were represented.

And finally the closing session with FBI Special Agent Jeff Lanza was funny and informative. He discussed identity theft both from a personal and organizational standpoint and pointed out that records managers are critical and are the first line of defense in safeguarding information.

Overall ARMA was both informative and entertaining, and it's still one of the best shows to learn about managing your information.