Bookish Disposition

Social Media - 1, UnHub - 1, Records Management - 0

The good news:  I attended a great Web seminar today on social media in government.  I learned a lot.

The bad news:  When asked about what his social media program is doing to comply with records management and records rules, the presenter confessed that it wasn't his area and added that he knew there has been much discussion in the social media world of how to get rid of outdated policies like those records rules.  Our records community needs to take note that this big, brave new social media world views them as an outdated obstacle to be eliminated, not a tool that helps protect them and protect history.  It doesn't have to be that way.

Back to the good news:  

The presenter shared all his own social media links using a nifty little tool called UnHub.  I am in love with UnHub's simple, streamlined sharing.  Go to unhub.com, choose your user name, and tell it the URLs for your various profiles and pages.  When another user goes to your UnHub link, they are shown your blog, Twitter feed, or another "main" page of your choosing, topped by a toolbar with links to all your various social media profiles and pages.  It unites your various lives in one spot and gives viewers one easy place to connect to you.  I set mine up in about two minutes.  

Here's a snapshot, but it's easier to go to unhub.com/RobinRiat for the real thing.

The Disposition Blues

Last year, I wrote a series of songs (and I use that term lightly) to celebrate the upcoming ARMA International Conference.  This year, I can't join you at ARMA, and I'm singing the blues.

The Disposition Blues

My baby posts on Facebook

I follow every tweet

But he's creatin' records

That I cannot delete

I got the blues

I got the disposition blues

My baby, he buys storage

By the terabyte

He says they'll last forever

But you know that just ain't right

I got the blues

I got them disposition blues

The server's in Kansas City

Not one paper file at home

Now my baby's down on Beale Street

Doin' work from his iPhone

I got the blues

Got them disposition blues

I built my world on paper

I know I was too proud

And now my baby left me

Stores his data in the cloud

I got the blues

I got them disposition blues

My baby wanted freedom

I laughed at what he said

I locked down the network

Now he's with Google Docs instead

And I got the blues

Got them disposition blues

My baby don't read no file plans

He says they're out of date

He deleted files in Memphis

Now the judge say he spoliate

I got the blues

I got the disposition blues

I can drown my sorrows with whiskey

You know that ain't just talk

But I can't keep printin' e-mail 

And waking up in a Hollinger box

I got the blues

Got the disposition blues

Sister, hear my warning

Pay attention to Web 2.0

Before her siren song takes your baby

And you got no more place to go

I got the blues

I got them disposition blues

Don't you be singin' the disposition blues, y'all.  Learn lots at ARMA, and let your brothers and sisters in file joints across the country keep up with you on Twitter.  We'll be watching for you.  (What's the official ARMA 2009 hashtag?  Anyone know?)

I found him on Google, can I keep him?

It occurs to me that being a records manager is a lot like being a mom. 

• People are always asking you to find their keys, their book reports, and their history textbooks, as though you were the one who last had those items.
• It sometimes feels like you're not wanted until the toilet is overflowing. 
• "What are you doing?"  "Nothing."  "So, tell me about the records your department maintains."  "Nah, we don't have any records."
• You're always telling people to clean up their rooms.
• You find yourself saying, "You're not leaving this house dressed like that, young lady.  Now go upstairs and build records lifecycle management into that electronic system." 
• When you tell someone that the nifty new technology he's using really does create records, and you say he needs to take litigation risks and FOIA into account, he rolls his eyes and sighs.
• Previously-unknown IT projects that have been in the works for months suddenly, at 11 p.m. on the night before the bake sale, need the blessing of the records manager and eight dozen chocolate chip cookies.
• When the kids bring home a brand-new, wet-nosed, tail-wagging Google app, they insist they'll love it forever and won't have any problem retaining the important information they're creating and storing in it.  You wonder what happens when it stops being cute and starts leaving data puddles everywhere.
• You secretly fantasize about running off with Viggo Mortensen to start a new cloud computing enterprise, but you love your family, so you go back to updating file plans.
• You're always telling people to look before crossing the street, put on a sweater, and follow the retention schedule.
• You do what you do because it's important, because you want your corporate family to succeed, and because you want the next generation to have it better than you did.

Thanks, Mom.

Good recordkeeping: Better than a free toaster

Forget the free toaster - the Bank of Skidmore recognized back in 1911 that good recordkeeping appeals to customers.

Skidmore New Era, January 19, 1911

Managing 140-Character Records

There comes a time in any information-generating technology's life when things get serious and someone says, "Hey, what about the records?"  That discussion was sparked on Twitter this week by a great post on Bits, Bytes & Archives.  How can we capture and preserve Twitter feeds for the future? 

The way we use Web 2.0 technology is growing up, and if this stuff is worth saving, it's worth asking some grown-up questions about how we might manage and preserve the information that Twitter and other technologies help us create, share, and access.  The big question is how to adapt our established methods and create new methods when the old ones just don't apply.   Here's my own first attempt at a Twitter records analysis - how would you tackle this?

Dancing with the Stars for Records Managers

      In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that I'm one of those hypocritical people who scoff at reality TV and then end up watching weekend marathons of Top Chef or Project Runway.  (Maybe it's more accurate to say that I despise reality TV unless it involves sequins, cute carpenters, and/or kitchen-prepared non-creepy-crawly food.) 

     As I watch the first results show for this season's Dancing with the Stars, I'm seeing some records management lessons:

• Sell it.  Your records program may not have all the answers, yet, and your big project may not be done, but by golly, it's fabulous, and so are you.  The DWTS couples who succeed bring every ounce of confidence and presentation to their performance.  If you believe in what you're doing, others will, too.

• Be a partner with somebody who's really, really good.  DWTS isn't a solo competition, and neither is records management.  Well-chosen, experienced partners from inside and outside your division / department / company / world can bring new energy and ideas, and they can make you look good.

• Sometimes you have to wear purple sequins.  You can tell that some of the DWTS stars aren't accustomed to the kind of fake tan, fringe-and-sequins style it takes to pull off a samba, but they're giving it their best shot.  Sometimes we have to step out of our comfort zones and learn about cloud computing or talk to the people they keep locked away in the server room.  It's good for us.  It's worth the risk.  We might actually look good in purple sequins.

• Having your friends and fans call in can make all the difference.  You can be good, but if nobody knows about it, you can only go so far.  When people know about you and your program, they're more likely to recommend you to others, call you for help, and speak up for you.  Asking your fans to support you is a good strategy in both the ballroom and boardroom.

Finding Records Management News You Can Use

I've been working on a presentation and handout featuring some of my favorite sources for records management news and updates. 

I'd love to have your input.  What are your favorite sources and news-gathering tools?

The presentation and handout are available here.

Finding Records Management News You Can Use

View more presentations from Robin Riat. (tags: management records)

Disposition and Love Letters

All the hearts and flowers this month got me thinking about some of the things romance and records have in common. People start out the relationship thinking everything will last forever, and it does, until life (or maybe a system upgrade) comes along. When records (and love) are new, they're special, important, and cared for. After a few years, it takes work to remember why we're hanging on to everything.

If you pay attention to the media, you might think this looks easy. Birds twitter, violins swell, brand-new content management systems promise the world, and data experts tell us we should make life easier by saving everything. The next morning, we realize things aren't so pretty, this relationship is expensive, and maybe all that data wasn't what we needed after all. Love, like good records management, is worth it, but it's work.

This brings me to a song written by one of my favorite people, Dale Marsh. He's not a records manager, but he has invented a novel approach to records destruction, particularly when it comes to all those love letters left over when a relationship has passed its retention period.

I made paper boats out of your love letters
Let 'em float down the Brazos river

If you're in one of my Records Management classes, I should point out that this is not an officially sanctioned records disposal method. Some days, though, a little soggy origami might be just what your heart needs. Check it out:

25 Things About Records Management

The Facebook "25 Things about Me" trend has probably generated more trivia than you ever imagined (or perhaps ever really wanted to know) about your friends.  Wouldn't it be nice if Records Management got that kind of attention?  Here's a start - what would you add?

The Reluctant Amaryllis

     In mid-November, I bought an amaryllis bulb from a catalog for my mother.  In the catalog, this was a lovely, blooming trumpet of red with bright green leaves.  It would arrive by Thanksgiving and bloom just in time for Christmas.  When it arrived, though, it was just a sad little brownish-gray stump in a pot full of dirt.  No problem - we'd put it on the table, water it now and then, and wait for the magic.  We put the plant on the table, Dad watered it, and when Christmas arrived, we still had a brownish stump.  No flower, no growth, no magic.

     My father finally decided that the amaryllis was a dud, and he gave it back to me so he could reclaim the table and I could get a refund.  As he handed it to me, we both said, "Hey, was that little green thing there before?"  The tiniest bit of the tip of a green leaf was peeking out of the stump.  I brought the plant home, put it in the window, watered it, and watched as it sprouted one leaf, then another.  I'm watching several leaves and two potential flowers climb a little taller each day.  We might even have pretty red flowers for Valentine's Day.

     This has made me think about some of the records programs and projects I've seen throughout my career.  A lot of them, I've realized, are a lot like that amaryllis:

• Sometimes reality doesn't look like the catalog.  You can read all the articles, take all the classes, and listen to all the presentations, but sometimes, the records program you inherit just doesn't look like all the pretty, shiny ones other people seem to have, especially at first.

• Sometimes your initial assessment of the environment and your customers' needs isn't enough.  In my case, a little more research would probably have steered me toward silk flowers or an already-blooming plant.  In the case of your program, you may need to look harder at what your customers need before you begin trying to convince them to buy into your program.

• Sometimes you need to work on the environment.  My plant needed the right light, water, and attention.  Your program might need some nutrients of its own from the right supporters, or you may need to spend more time on certain fundamentals before the rest of the project can take off.

• Sometimes you have to pick a different spot.  The right windowsill can make all the difference.  If your program isn't taking off in one department, is there another group that might be more willing to work with you?  

• Sometimes things take longer than you and the rest of the team think they should.  This is not a reason to give up hope.

• Sometimes progress comes just when you think it won't.  Sometimes it just takes a little more patience and persistence.  If you give up after the first try, you won't have a chance to see your program bloom.

This is the year your program grows.  Take a look at where it's positioned and how you're feeding it.  Talk to it regularly and tend it carefully.  It may not happen overnight, but when it does - magic.

Digital Natives and the Records Management Old Country

     There has been an interesting discussion on the Second Life Educators (SLED) list this week about "old digital natives."  The term "digital native" is usually used to refer to students who grew up with technology and speak its language with the ease of a native speaker.  This is contrasted with those who arrive on technological shores from outside that world and must learn that particular language.  A digital native isn't necessarily defined by age.  Many on the SLED list this week have identified themselves as "old" digital natives - those who are in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s who have used technology since the days of punch cards and home-built computer kits. 

     There has been a lot of discussion in the education community about how accurate or helpful the "digital native" stereotype is (or isn't), and like any generalization, it can only take us so far.  As I read that discussion, though, I am starting to see a parallel to the way we think about records management.  Our mindsets and our approaches to records management determine how fluently we can speak its language and how comfortable we are with its concepts, but they also determine how we approach the new challenges of the digital world.

Instant history, international connections, and infinite shoes:

Why archivists and records managers should consider virtual worlds

     I have a confession:  For over a year now, I've been living a Second Life.  Last August, I saw a demonstration of the virtual world called Second Life at an educational technology conference.  The speaker showed how three-dimensional online virtual worlds could be used for distance education, conferences and meetings, small group discussions, or even film set design. The possibilities are astounding:  You can fly up to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, tour an art gallery and walk right inside the paintings, swim through a shipwreck, or attend a lecture at the Coliseum. 

     I could see the opportunities for archival collections.  Exhibits could be created and rotated as often as you like.  In a virtual world, it's easy to repaint the walls in two seconds, renovate the entire building in two minutes, or host an exhibit outside under the stars.  Why not show a Civil War map and give the viewer a chance to walk through the battlefield?  I could also see the challenges.  If we think e-records are tough to handle now, how will we archive and preserve collections of three-dimensional objects that interact with the user? 

     I just had to check it out.  I signed up for Second Life, got hooked, and eventually created a simple exhibit using some family photos and stories.  There are many other uses for virtual worlds, and I must confess that I have been sidetracked by live music concerts and filling my virtual closet with a ridiculous number of shoes, but the records manager in me still lives.  I believe my fellow archivists and records managers ought to check out virtual worlds, too.  Here are some reasons:

Risk is right

     One of the songs on my much-cherished iPhone these days is "Risk is Right" by a group called Tin Cup Gypsy.  It's catchy, and although the band might not have realized this, it's about records management. (Play the song on the band's Facebook or MySpace page.  You'll like it.)

     We talk about records management and risk together all the time, and we should.  What are the risks to our company if we don't keep this record long enough?  What are the risks if we keep it too long?  How do we manage the risks to our organization through disaster recovery planning?  How do we manage information and the risks involved with legal discovery?  There are days when risk alone is enough to turn staff, management, and IT into records management true believers. 

     For some of our organizations, though, things like lawsuits and disasters and loss of institutional knowledge don't feel real.  Those things happen to other people, not to us.  You hear things like, "Show me one government official or corporate middle manager who's gone to jail because he/she destroyed records," and "Well, we've never had that problem here," and "I don't have time for this - I have work to do."  Risk is only scary when it's seen as real, and too often, records management is only seen as necessary after it's too late.

Marketing RM is for the Birds

I have a few bird feeders on my back porch.  Over the last several years, I've been Top Chef for a host of cardinals, blue jays, sparrows, chickadees, wrens, possums, squirrels, raccoons, and other critters.  I think there are records management marketing lessons to be learned from the feathered set:

Be on the flight path
My yard has plenty of trees.  To a bird, this is the equivalent of those information signs along the highway that tell you food and lodging are only a few miles away.

In records management terms, being on the flight path might mean sitting in on meetings and discussions beyond records management, especially those involving information technology.  It might mean asking to be included on e-mail distribution lists for topics that involve technology or company policy.  It might mean making a point to introduce yourself to the managers, attorneys, researchers, and administrative staff in your organization.

Don't pounce on them
My highly intelligent (and always inside) house cat sees the back porch bird show as feline premium cable tv.  She usually watches the birds from a safe distance, peeking from behind the curtain or hidden in the shadows under the table.  Every now and then, though, she is overcome by the excitement of it all, forgets herself, and plunges paws-first SMACK! into the glass door.  The birds fly away, she looks puzzled, and the world slowly returns to normal.

Have you ever overwhelmed your audience with too much information about records management?  I'm sorry to say I have.  I'm not suggesting that we peer at our colleagues from the shadows.  I am saying that a little information goes a long way, and when customers already think this records management stuff sounds difficult, confusing, or "extra," we need to think carefully about how we approach what we need them to know.

Songs of Records Management: Holiday Edition

Because the holidays just aren't painful enough as it is, I offer this records management carol.

The Twelve Days of Records

On the first day of the quarter
IT gave to me
An e-systems inventory

On the second day of the quarter
IT gave to me
Two backup servers
And an e-systems inventory

On the third day of the quarter
The company gave to me
New e-mail guidelines
Two backup servers
And an e-systems inventory

and so on, through the last verse:

On the twelfth day of the quarter
The company gave to me
Twelve records schedules
Eleven shredders clogging
Ten archives boxes
Nine trucks for shipping
Eight research questions
Seven scanners scanning
Six clerks a-filing
Five motions for discovery
Architecture standards
New e-mail guidelines
Two backup servers
And an e-systems inventory

Selling the Law of Gravity (and Records Management)

    Seth Godin posted a piece called "Gravity is just a theory" on his blog yesterday.  In it, he describes why the law of gravity is an easy sell and why so many other big ideas are not.  Godin says, "If the story of your marketing requires the prospect to abandon a previously believed story, you have a lot of work to do."  Newton named the concept, he says, but he was naming something that people already believed in.  After all, stuff does tend to stick to the earth.

    I think this explains one reason why records managers have a hard time "selling" what we do to people in our organizations.  We are asking them to give up cherished beliefs like, "This is my stuff.  MINE!  I wrote this document, I own it, I control it, it's only important in the context of ME!"  If you get terrified, skeptical, angry, or amused looks when you point out that the report Joe Employee just wrote on company time using company resources under contract with the company for a salary paid by the company actually BELONGS to the company, you know what I mean.  We do indeed have a lot of work to do.

    Godin also says, "If the timeframe of the message of your marketing is longer than the attention span (or lifetime) of the person you are marketing to, you have your work cut out for you as well."  Gravity is easy to demonstrate in real time, he says.  It's easy for people to see and believe.  That gizmo slices, dices, and makes julienne fries right now.

Government Information and Public Expectations 2.0

If you'd like to meet the Ghost of Federal Records Management Future, check out Tim O'Reilly's blog post, "Put change.gov Under Revision Control" and be sure to read it with the comments.  The post is about changes that were made to the change.gov transition site and the reactions those changes generated.  It beautifully summarizes the attention and expectations Web 2.0 information consumers increasingly apply to government information on the Web.  There is some records management food for thought in all this.

Here are a few things that jumped out at me:

1.  The expectation that changes to the site would be recorded and that revision history would be made available to readers:  O'Reilly says, "But the lesson remains: when public documents can be changed without notice, it's essential for the public to be able to see what changed, and why."   How many government agencies currently view and manage their Web pages as "public documents" and track changes a la Wikipedia?  In other words, as government information moves online, will policies and philosophies be ready for wiki-level expectations? 

2.  The expectation that government policy work is already collaborative and technology-enabled:  O'Reilly says, "Of course, there are major technical and workflow obstacles. Many of the documents in question are probably worked on independently as Microsoft Office files, with bulk merges that obscure the history." 

The E-Gov rulemaking initiative and Regulations.gov have been around for a while.  Regulations.gov allows users to comment, but as its FAQ says, "While Regulations.gov enables Agencies to post rulemaking and non-rulemaking dockets on the site, it is up to each Department or Agency to determine what information is made available on the site."  In some cases, that simply means an electronic copy of the Federal Register notice, with other essential information only available from the agency via snail mail or other pre-Web delivery. 

3.  The expectation that the documentation process supporting government work can and should be retooled to leverage collaboration tools:  O'Reilly goes on to suggest that government learn from the software development community to enhance document development.  He talks about updates to Microsoft products and Google Docs and concludes that "Once the tools are in place, the social pressure to use them has a point of leverage."  How, where, and when that pressure hits the government, and whether its records managers will be ready, is one of my favorite questions.

4.  The sheer volume of comments posted over just a few days suggesting ways to capture and track changes:  Check out this comment from Thomas Lord as one example.  First note: If the government isn't out there capturing and saving this stuff, others already are.  Our nation's digital history is being preserved in at least a few electronic attics and basements out there.  Is that enough?  Second: If a few people brainstorming over the course of four days can come up with multiple strategies for saving revision history for change.gov, couldn't the records and archives community learn from them?  I'm not suggesting that we ask the mob on Slashdot to rewrite years of archival theory and practice, but I am suggesting that Records/Archives 2.0 problems might benefit from some Web 2.0 brainstorming.

On a related note, take a look at EFF's and ReadWriteWeb's discussions of the Change.gov site's adoption of a Creative Commons license.  I still don't quite understand how a .gov project can be subject to copyright at all (since most Federal government stuff is already public domain), but I'm sure someone will enlighten me.

Records Management and the Impossible Web

    I watched the O'Reilly Web 2.0 Summit "High Order Bit" talk by Wired Magazine's Kevin Kelly recently.  Here's the quote that pulled me in:

“If you are producing some information and it's not Webized, it's not in some way online and related and shared to everything else, it doesn't count."

    Kelly envisions the emerging Web as a mega-cloud or network of clouds, a mechanism that pulls in all data and shares all data in powerful ways beyond what we have today.  While that might sound a little Star Trek to some of us, his description has a ring of truth to it.   He describes the early World Wide Web by saying that in the beginning, people worried about whether we really could share packets.  This quickly became commonplace, and we moved into the idea of sharing and linking documents.  There were concerns about that, too, but over time, sharing and linking pages and linking links also became commonplace, giving birth to the Web as we know it.

    Kelly sees the next wave of the Web, Web 2.0 or 10.0 or beyond, as the trend toward even greater sharing.  The future of the Web, Kelly says, takes information even deeper, linking data and "sharing the fundamental elements of whatever it is we're making."  It involves de-structuring information so that a machine can read and process it, then re-structuring it many different ways into information that people can use more intelligently. 

    I imagine that this idea will not sit well with the traditional definition of a record.  We cling to the idea of a document, an e-mail, or an "information system" (usually meaning a database) as "the record."  The information world is racing past that definition, and users already chafe at the idea that their records have a finite cutoff and destruction date.  What happens when the individual data elements that make up those documents take on a life and meaning of their own?

Customer Complaints 2.0

     I checked my e-mail today and found a message from Amazon.com announcing that the 2008 version of TurboTax is available.  I popped over to see the current price and noticed that Amazon's rating system for the software showed an average of one star.  That seemed pretty grim, and when I checked the user comments section to see why, I discovered a raging discussion on the product forum about some changes Intuit has made.  In addition to a $15 price hike, the 2008 software will only allow you to prepare one return, as opposed to last year's limit of five.  If you do your own return and then prepare others for the kids, your sister, and grandma, you'll pay extra to print each one. 

     The commenting customer base on Amazon is livid.  They're using words like "infuriating" and "thievery."  I counted about 40 posts on Amazon's forums in the last 3 days alone.  When you have something like twenty angry people who ditch your product and tell their neighbors about it in the physical world over the course of three days, that's unfortunate but probably no big deal to a giant like Intuit.  When you have twenty angry people on the Web who are motivated to tell the world about how much they don't like your product, and when that discussion stays out there for a lot longer than those initial three days, that can turn out to be a pretty big deal.

     So what does this have to do with records management?  Well, in the old days, customers wrote angry letters directly to your company, and you wrote soothing letters back to them.   You probably captured those letters in your filing system and retained them according to a records retention schedule.  If it was a major situation that got media attention, you probably documented what happened and documented your response in some kind of report and then (hopefully) kept that report for future generations so they'd have fair warning about the dangers of doing risky things like changing the formula for Coca-Cola.

     What do you do now, though, when customers bypass sending that angry letter or e-mail and take their displeasure straight to YouTube, Twitter, and retail sites like Amazon.com?   When other customers (like me) read those reviews on Amazon, we sometimes make buying decisions based on them.  If you're Johnson & Johnson, you've learned recently that while other customers (like me) may not really care about your Motrin brand one way or another, some of us do follow Twitter, and when something called #Motrinmoms hits the top ten tags for the week, we go check it out and then we talk about it, too.  Over time, that kind of Web coverage adds up.  If you're Ad Age, you roll your eyes at it all and declare it no big deal.  Some very smart companies, though, are using Web 2.0 channels to listen, respond, understand, and relate to both the angry customers and those future customers who might see the discussion.

     How do you capture the record so next year's advertising team can learn from it?   If you're Intuit and you decide to take part in the discussion, you could sign up to have Amazon.com e-mail you every time a new comment gets posted to the TurboTax forum and then capture those in an electronic records management system along with your own responses.  You might retain those for the same amount of time that you already keep the angry snail mail letters, but you might want to think about that.  How long do comments stay on Amazon.com?  How long do tweets stay on Twitter? 

     If you're Johnson & Johnson, you could go to search.twitter.com and do a keyword search on your brand name and associated hash tags, then capture the results with a web crawler, screen shots, or a print to PDF.  You could also use a cool tool like Tweetake, which allows you to capture a CSV file with the text of the tweets you've sent.  That could also be handy for an organization like NASA, which uses Twitter as a major public communication vehicle for some of their programs.  Tweetake also allows you to capture basic info on your Twitter friends, including ID and basic profile info, the person's latest tweet, their physical location (if listed), and their Web site address (if listed).  That could be interesting data for analyzing part of your customer base, too.  Tools like TweetDeck can also help you sort through high volumes of micro-discussion - I need to experiment with that one to see if the sorted threads can be captured somehow. 

     I'm sure some will argue that capturing everything that's said about your company on the Web is just too much to attempt.  Capturing what you've said in response, though, doesn't seem unreasonable and in this age of information that's out there on the 'net permanently until suddenly it's gone (only to return again cached on Google), it would be wise to consider that.

Why Selling Records Management is Hard

Seth Godin blogged recently about lessons he learned while trying to sell a new product to bar owners.   It seems bar owners are remarkably similar to some of the managers and users to whom we try to "sell" records management:  they're somewhere else, they don't answer their phones, and they're not that interested in buying new ideas.  It's enough to make a records manager cry in her beer.

Godin outlines some questions we should ask about our customers before we try to sell them anything.  Your world may be more about compliance than Corona, but note how valid his questions are for our profession:

How difficult is it to get permission to talk to our existing customers?
What's your current profile in the organization?  Do you have management support?  Are you that person from the warehouse where they send boxes of old stuff they don't need, or are you their good friend who has saved them lots of time, money, and pain?

How difficult is it to get them to introduce us to their friends, colleagues and competitors?
Do you have records management success stories, and are the people you've helped talking about how great you are?  If not, why not?  Your RM program needs all the evangelists it can get.

What's the worldview of this audience? Do they trust us? Are they looking for new solutions?
There are no "up" sides to big, nasty lawsuits, but they sure do make managing records, having a data map, and having usable records policies all seem like great ideas to other people in your company besides you.   What if your customers got to know you before things with the case/audit/crisis got bad?  What if you asked them about their business processes (and the information that supports them) first and then talked about records management once you understood them better?

Will this audience go out of their way to avoid us?   
I love that question.  If you've ever walked into a records program where the previous regime was known as the "mean records police," this is a serious question.   How do we show them that records management is all about protecting them, helping them achieve their goals, and making their lives better?  If you think it's all about making it easier for you to destroy records per the retention schedule, re-read the previous sentence 100 times before speaking to anyone outside your RM team.

Is there a problem that they know they have? If not, then we have to not only sell the solution, we need to sell the problem too.
There's trouble in River City, and it starts with a capital "E" (e-discovery, e-mail) or a capital "P" (privacy) or a capital "D" (data) or a capital IT and that rhymes with. . . .okay, so I'm not Harold Hill, but there's value in a good story, and we have many opportunities.  If your company is talking about knowledge management or better search technology or collaboration tools, are you right there helping them solve the problem?

In our world, we don't have the luxury of dumping one set of customers for another, and it's very easy to talk about how frustrating it is when users don't "get" records management.  Those sad stories are best left for the bar.  In our world, understanding our customers and the way they think, work, and handle information is just as important to our success (and theirs) as understanding their records.