We usually ask attendees at our annual Document Management Service Providers a few questions about how business is going and about trends they are seeing in the industry. Here are the results so far, hot off the presses.

The document management service provider industry is changing. You need to catch the wave! Creating a “Blue Ocean” strategy for your company is all about differentiation. You need to reconstruct market boundaries, focus on the big picture, reach beyond existing demand, get the strategic sequence right, overcome organizational hurdles, and build execution into strategy. At AIIM’s Document Management Service Provider Executive Forum, we’ll provide owners and senior managers in document imaging, conversion, and preservation services with highly educational and vendor-neutral instruction in how to create your own strategy for success. And all of this takes place on the blue wave beaches of Hollywood, FL. November 3-5, 2011 at the Westin Diplomat Resort and Spa. (Download brochure)

This is interesting from Lynda Moulton re Enterprise Search. I’ll be speaking with her at the Gilbane Confence in Boston in November. Details are here – http://www.gilbaneboston. Here’s an excerpt from Lynda’s post… Why isn’t “search” the logical end-point in any content and information management activity. If we don’t care about being able to find valued and valuable information, why bother with any of the myriad technologies employed to capture, organize, categorize, store, and analyze content. What on earth is the point of having our knowledge workers document the results of their business, science, engineering and marketing endeavors, if we never aspire to having it retrieved, leveraged or re-purposed by others? However, in Information Week, an article in the September 5, 2011 issue entitled “HP Transformation: Autonomy is a Modest Start” gave me a jolt with this comment: Autonomy has very sophisticated search capabilities including federation–the ability to search across many repositories and sources–and video and image search. But with all that said, enterprise search isn’t a hot, mission-critical business priority. [NOTE: in the print version the "call-out" box had slightly different phrasing but it jumped off the page, anyway.] This is pretty provocative and disappointing to read in the…

October 27 is World Paper Free Day. Attached are some materials to use in preparing for the day, and also on the day itself. Feel free to: a) steal/borrow liberally; and b) pass the word/email/retweet/repost. 1 — Here is the home page for Paper Free Day. 2 — Here is a slide presentation you can use. The direct link is HERE. [An embedded version follows for those who email readers allow them.] World Paper Free Day — Oct 27 View more presentations from John Mancini 3 — Here is a voice annotated version of the same presentation by yours truly. The direct link is HERE. [An embedded version follows for those who email readers allow them.]