Thank you for another great Best Practices Conference!

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CIDM members and colleagues gathered at the 13th Annual Best Practices Conference in San Antonio on September 12-14, 2011.

Best Practices is the premier annual conference for managers of information development, training, and support. You learn from your colleagues the best ideas and innovations in the industry. You discover how organizations are pursuing social media, dynamic publishing, content management, enterprise-wide information creation through wikis and blogs, and much more. You have the opportunity to interact with a community of peers, all of whom are struggling with many of the same challenges that you are. You learn about the experiences of managers and organizations that have introduced amazing innovations or seen significant increases in effectiveness and productivity.

2011 Conference Theme:
The Importance of Measuring Everything—
and How To Do It

At Best Practices 2011, we emphasize the importance of measurements. Many information-developers, whether for training or documentation, would like to find ways of measuring the productivity of their teams, the success of their information among customers, the value of their contributions to the larger organization, and the best ways of working with their colleagues. Join the community of managers to learn how some members organizations have developed measurements and succeeded in using them to further their goals. Participate in our interactive sessions to discuss and plan how to measure seemingly immeasurable intangibles in your organization.

Although you will find a focus on measurements, speakers will represent a range of new and recurring issues for our management teams. You will hear about successful collaboration efforts, best practices in interacting with customers, solutions-based information developing, information searchability, strategic planning, and more. You will join conversations with colleagues who are innovating with new media and enterprise initiatives. As always, you will participate in luncheon discussions and the Showcase presentations. In fact, we hope you have a Showcase presentation of your own to submit today.

I look forward to seeing old friends and meeting new. Come join me and the CIDM members for another stimulating conference.

JoAnn Hackos, Director

2011 Theme Book

Douglas W. Hubbard
Author & Keynote Speaker

Douglas Hubbard is the inventor of the Applied Information Economics (AIE) method and author of the #1 bestseller in Amazon’s math for business category titled How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business (Wiley 2007, 2nd ed. 2010). His second book is titled The Failure of Risk Management: Why It's Broken and How to Fix It (Wiley 2009) and his latest book is Pulse: The New Science of Harnessing Internet Buzz to Track Threats and Opportunities (Wiley 2011). Mr. Hubbard is also published in CIO Magazine, Information Week, DBMS Magazine, The IBM Systems Journal, Analytics and OR/MS Today and Architecture Boston.

For 17 years of his 22 year management consulting career, his focus has been the use of AIE to solve critical problems facing today’s corporations. AIE is the practical application of several fields of quantitative analysis to metrics, risk analysis and decision analysis. It has been used in such diverse fields as insurance, banking, utilities, government, entertainment media, military logistics, R&D, pharmaceuticals and manufacturing. His AIE methodology has received critical praise from The Gartner Group, The Giga Information Group, and Forrester Research. He is a popular speaker at metrics, risk, forecasting and economic valuation conferences all over the world.

Prior to his AIE career, he was in Management Consulting Services at Coopers & Lybrand. His MBA is from the University of South Dakota. He was a captain in the Army National Guard and US Army Reserve

Come to the Conference Free!

CIDM department members receive up to two complimentary conference registrations. Individual members receive a discounted registration. You will also receive a year's worth of valuable services provided by CIDM.

Please visit the CIDM Membership homepage for details.

Rare Bird Award

CIDM is pleased to announce the 8th Annual Rare Bird Award for distinguished contributions to best practices in management of information development. The winning entry will be a best practice that can make organizations more efficient and effective for the benefit of their companies and customers.

To be eligible for the Rare Bird award, an entrant must present their best practice during the 2011 Best Practices conference. Speakers, panel discussion participants, and those participating in the Showcase are eligible.

To learn more or to enter, go to the Rare Bird page.

Join the Showcase

If you have a great idea for change or can demonstrate how a new idea has worked in your organization, propose a Showcase poster presentation for the Tuesday afternoon session.

To learn more or to submit your best practice, go to the Showcase page.

Sponsorship Opportunities

If you are interested in sponsoring an event at Best Practices 2011 please click here.