Events: Conference Crashers

For the party-crashers at heart, “wedding season” is often lauded as the best time of year. But for me, “event season” might just win out. Around the ZL office, “events season” is that magical time of during Q2 where it seems like there are high-profile information governance, IT, and legal events seemingly every week. This year we’re attending an ARMA conference, several Government and Insurance Analytics summits, the ACC mid-year gathering, and my personal favorite -- the pinnacle of electronic records shows -- MER.

Personal interests and frequent flier miles aside, the reason I love event season is because of the exposure I get to the many different people, ideas, and companies across the immensely broad information governance space. I enjoy these interactions for several reasons: the first being that it helps fulfill my desire to always keep learning. I’m usually able to talk to hundreds of people from hundreds of different companies during the course of an event, allowing me insight into workflows, strategies and processes of some of the largest organization in America and abroad.

I mentioned earlier that MER is my favorite event of the season, and this is largely due to the extremely high quality speaking panels they offer. The panels are full of true industry experts, real-world enterprise practitioners, and neutral think tank leaders. The array of topics covered ranges from the incredibly specific – think case studies and granular policy settings – all the way up enterprise-wide strategy. I find this approach extremely fascinating, as you can hear firsthand accounts from professionals regarding how the successfully (or unsuccessfully!) managed information.

Now I would be lying if I said part of my enjoyment of attending events didn’t stem from getting face to face interaction with potential clients, but I truly do enjoy the educational aspects of the events. It helps me do my job more effectively by giving me the industry knowledge required to best represent myself and ZL as a company. It also helps satisfy my innate desire to learn as much information as I can about the Information Governance industry and how it applies into the five day a week life of professionals from organizations all over the world.

So crash weddings if you want, but you’re more likely to finding me crashing a cocktail hour on the expo floor.

ARMA Events MER

As an Account Executive at ZL, I have been able to see how the intersection of big data and legal repercussions has caused large companies to begin a quest for complete information governance. Using my passion for learning and my ingrained competitiveness from my collegiate sports background, I hope to continue to help organizations reach their goal. Outside of work you can find me exercising, watching sports and obsessing over Fantasy Baseball.