IGHS55 - InfoCon2024 Recap with Alec Wyhs at Carahsoft

Jim Merrifield (00:00.927)
Well, hello and welcome to the InfoGov Hot Seat I'm your host Jim Merrifield and with me today is Alec Wyhs at Carahsoft Welcome Alec.

Alec Wyhs (00:09.984)
Thanks Jim, I appreciate it.

Jim Merrifield (00:12.157)
Yeah, it's great to have you on the hot seat. Good to ask a few questions. I know we just saw each other recently at Infocon in Houston. It was really nice to meet you in person. And now get to talk to you virtually about the conference and some other items as well. yeah, so let's kick this off. Let's get to know Alec a little better. Can you introduce yourself briefly, current role, and one fun fact about yourself?

Alec Wyhs (00:28.34)
Yeah, yeah, I agree.

Alec Wyhs (00:38.38)
Sure thing. So currently I'm a sales director at Carahsoft Technology Corp. I've been there for about 11 years now and recently have taken over as head of the records management and information governance technology vertical. So that's sort of what brought me into the partnership with Arma and Infocon. And again, just want to thank you guys for that opportunity. It was really cool.

to see everything that you have put together and to have a chance to meet some of those vendors, some of the customers, speak face to face with them. It was a really great event. Fun fact, let's see. That's a tough one, I think I'm gonna go with I was actually a gymnastic gold medalist as a kid in the state of Connecticut growing up. Yeah, for a few different events. that was probably a unique one you haven't heard before.

Jim Merrifield (01:35.325)
Really? Wow, that's amazing. Now you said say to Connecticut. Did you grow up in Connecticut?

Alec Wyhs (01:36.426)
Yeah.

Alec Wyhs (01:40.222)
I did. Yeah. Western Connecticut was born and raised in New Milford over in Litchfield County.

Jim Merrifield (01:46.747)
wow, I'm in North Haven now like in New Haven County, grew up in Fairfield County. yeah, we played New Milford and Litchfield County in baseball. So who knows maybe we crossed paths, I don't know. Yeah, wow, that's pretty wild. Okay, cool. Yeah, I had no idea that you're from Connecticut. That's cool. Two Connecticut natives here talking

Alec Wyhs (01:50.883)
yeah.

Alec Wyhs (01:58.368)
Same, actually. Yeah, that's possible. It's a small world.

Alec Wyhs (02:11.42)
Yep, that's right, just chopping it up.

Jim Merrifield (02:15.615)
Yeah, that's great. Awesome. So I know you just mentioned your company recently attended Infocon 2024 in Houston. I know you were on the main stage as a panelist, but also a business partner as well at ARMA at the conference. What were your key takeaways from the event?

Alec Wyhs (02:36.342)
Yeah, good question. You know, I think one of the biggest things is that records management and information governance is, it's an ever growing field, even today, right? And even more uniquely, some of the conversations that I was having with some of the folks there was focused around some of the future challenges that are sort of on the horizon for IG and RM, right? As both a unified market and industry and individually.

and it's going to be interesting to see sort of how not only the industry addresses those, those challenges around things, you know, like, like AI and, and, and a few other areas, but also, also to see what, policy comes out of it. Right. I feel like, you know, every industry is sort of on their heels, trying to figure out how do we manage this, this beast that is AI specifically and,

It's, yeah, I just think it's going to be interesting to see how the records management field sort of, you know, fields that ball when it comes to them. Cause, cause I've had some, conversations that think, you know, certain things like, Hey, we, everything should be considered a record, right? because at this point we just, we should take that as the default. And right now it seems like it's totally the opposite. It's, it's not a record until it's declared one. So.

I don't know. It's some unique standpoints. And I think those are some of the key topics that we're probably going to be talking about here for the next five, maybe even 10 years while we figure that out.

Jim Merrifield (04:12.755)
Yeah, for sure. I mean, AI is a hot topic these days. It's a hot topic at every conference. It was a hot topic at Infocon this year. I'm sure it'll be a hot topic next year. We'll learn a little bit throughout 2025. So speaking of IG professionals, what advice would you give IG professionals to stay ahead of the curve in relation to AI?

Alec Wyhs (04:36.408)
yeah, that's a good question. I mean, this is my government side of me kind of coming out, but definitely stay on top of the policy, understand sort of how that is going to influence the records field and how that's going to influence, you know, data management, information governance, right? All of those areas. The other thing that I think is going to be absolutely critical is auto classification, right? We're sort of staring down the barrel at it.

at a tidal wave of content like we haven't seen before. And the reason I say that, and I think I talked a little bit about this on the panel that you guys were nice enough to invite me on over at Infocon, but the reason is, you know, for the first time, we have another source of unique and creative content that can be generated that isn't coming from humans, right? So,

In the past, yeah, there's been a lot of data, a lot of content, records, things like that. I mean, now I think we're looking at a tool that is infinitely more efficient, infinitely more creative in some ways. not just that, you know, take some of that, some of that human generated content and data and what AI is going to be able to spin off from that. How do we manage that? Right? How do we govern it? How do we ensure that it's the

though all of that data is compliant with the policies and mandates that are out from OMB and NARA. So I do think actually some of the folks that I talked to have are sort of onto something where we should probably go towards auto classifying everything as a record until we can deem that, okay, yeah, this maybe doesn't fit the minimum bar for what we need to retain or.

make sure we're forensically disposing of or something along those lines. So, I mean, we'll see, but those are some areas that I thought were interesting to hear about and are good ways to sort of get ahead of the curve and ensure that nothing's slipping through the cracks.

Jim Merrifield (06:48.893)
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I mean the federal government kind of sets the bar for us, right? Legislation comes out. We can all do our best to fall in line. There's been legislation that's come out of the EU on AI. And I talked to some counterparts out there at firms and companies. And it just seems sometimes the EU is as far ahead of us here in the.

the US on some of these legislations that happen with GDPR. It seems like it's the same trend with AI, which is fine. What I tell people in the EU is we take the Apple approach. Microsoft usually comes out with all the new toys and everything, and they come out probably a couple of years. I shouldn't even say Microsoft. Google and Microsoft, Android phones or whatever come out with the technology, and then Apple.

usually comes out in two or three years. And they kind of perfect what Microsoft and Google were doing, right? All those years, because it seems to work really well. But anyway, maybe that's what we're doing here in the US with legislation and stuff. But I'm sure we'll be talking about this topic for years to come.

Alec Wyhs (08:08.864)
Yeah, no, I agree. Sometimes it's not always best to be the first person to jump in the pool. You let someone else figure out what the temperature is and then go from there.

Jim Merrifield (08:14.493)
Yeah.

Jim Merrifield (08:19.455)
I agree. I agree. Listen, you don't have to be the guinea pig for everything.

Alec Wyhs (08:23.724)
That's right. That's So true. Yeah, actually, reminds me of a funny story. My dad and I were down on a scuba diving trip. And we were there with this one of the guides that brought us out. He's a funny guy. And he saw us getting ready to jump in. And he looks at us. He's like, Whoa, whoa, guys, no, no, no. You let the locals dive in first, because what if they're sharks, you know? Pretty funny.

Jim Merrifield (08:25.625)
it sometimes doesn't taste that good, you know, so...

Jim Merrifield (08:50.143)
That is funny Unbelievable. So here's another question for you around this around technology Could you just discuss for a little bit the records management and IG technology vertical how it aligns with ARMA and the shared vision there?

Alec Wyhs (09:09.588)
Yeah, yeah, definitely. So, you know, I think there's a few goals for ARMA and and and Carahsoft soft sort of at a tactical level with each but I overall right, the main goal is to start fostering better opportunities for communities and industry to come together in this market and foster better conversations out of these sort of events and like, like InfoCon, for instance, right? Where

We as a larger overall community of industry SME's and government end users who are also subject matter experts in these fields can come to terms on what we think is the true best direction for records management, information governance, and data management for the future. 930Gov, sorry, they do a great job. They're a good partner of ours and we really like working with them.

They have that event every September. But it's sort of the, least to my knowledge and experience so far, it's the only kind of event that public sector has for this industry. So we're hoping that partnering with ARMA, right, we're going to be able to start building out some of those types of events a little bit more. So from a community standpoint, that's hopefully going to be of value.

For our vendors and our manufacturer partners, we're offering a centralized point of subject matter expertise in this industry as well. Carahsoft can serve as the glue to help connect them to the potential end users that they should be talking to, or the industry service partners that they are going to figure out how to work with. But also, for those that just want to

break into that public sector space and maybe they're doing a bunch in, you know, the legal records or, you know, law enforcement, healthcare, right? There's a lot of other fields on the commercial side, but some of these, some of these vendors just haven't quite broken into that, that federal or state and local government space. Well, we want to be able to serve as sort of a, an easy button for them, right? They can come to us, talk to us.

Alec Wyhs (11:30.09)
we can provide some expertise on how we've seen other vendors go about approaching the market and building their go-to-market strategies and provide that advice to them. And then lastly, from a customer perspective, when we think about our government end users, we want to be like an Amazon software of sorts, so that if they say, hey, we got this set of requirements and needs that we need to meet,

How do we go about doing this? Okay, well, we need to do market research. Let's meet with Carahsoft meet with some folks who have some lateral visibility across industry partners and manufacturers in this field and see if they can kind of give us some advice on, hey, here's the short list of providers who can meet those requirements and needs. We recommend that you meet with some of them. Let us know if you'd like us to help and we can maybe set up some introductions.

A lot of different areas that we see this technology vertical kind of playing in, but the goal is to be sort of that central point of aggregation from a value standpoint. So that regardless of where you're sitting in the equation, you know, you can turn to Carahsoft and we're going to be sort of there ready to solve your hard problems for you.

Jim Merrifield (12:50.323)
I love it. I mean, I think it's fantastic what you're you're able to do with with Arma I know there's a there's a joint event that's happening soon right at the end of February at actually the Carahsoft office So would you like to tell the audience about that event?

Alec Wyhs (13:06.772)
Sure. Yeah, I love that. I appreciate you asking about it. So yeah, it's going to be hopefully moving forward, the Carahsoft ARMA Federal Summit, right? We're going to try and hold it annually. As you mentioned, it's going to be at the Carahsoft office and in sort of a weird way, I hope it's the only time we can hold it at the office because I'm hoping that we outgrow the space that we have there. But we've been having a

of really, really good feedback. We talked a little bit about it at Infocon and I had some government end users like county clerks and folks of that sort coming up to me asking, hey, could you tell me a little bit more about this conference that you guys are gonna be hosting around public sector? I'd love to hear it. So we're very excited about that. We've already talked to a good number of head records officers and

I want to say five or six federal agencies. They, most of them have already confirmed their attendance. So they're going to be there. We've had probably about 20 vendors already come to us and say, hey guys, yeah, we'd love to be a part of this. Let us know kind of how we can get involved, how we can add value. So yeah, it's going to be a big event and plan in on having about eight sessions, breakout sessions throughout the day where

We're going to be pulling in some industry subject matter experts, some government subject matter experts, and giving them the opportunity to sort of tell their story around records management from both sides of the aisle. And obviously in the middle, we're going to give folks some opportunity to mingle and chat with each other. yeah, we're pretty excited about it and should be a fantastic event.

Jim Merrifield (14:55.241)
Yeah, it sounds like it. Fantastic. That's amazing. Some records officers, business partners, some sessions, some minglings, probably good food, drink, right? What's not to like?

Alec Wyhs (15:04.502)
Right. Absolutely. Happy hour at the end. You can never forget about that.

Jim Merrifield (15:09.641)
Now, that's why people go to conferences,

Alec Wyhs (15:12.704)
That's right. I see you and I are cut from a similar cloth, Jim.

Jim Merrifield (15:14.772)
That's one of the reasons, right?

No, it's great. It's great to network and I think it's going to be a great event and seriously, we've been we're really excited. You know, know ARMA staff is super excited to be working with you on that event. So can't wait to see how it shakes out and and the fallout from from that event as well. So I know Alec, we've talked about a lot here today. We could probably talk for another hour, but I know you're a busy guy. So.

Is there anything you wanted to leave the audience with? Any final thoughts?

Alec Wyhs (15:51.276)
you know, I think we cover most of it. I think, you know, this, this field is, like I said, it's, it's about to evolve. Right. and, and that's really why, when, when, our, you know, a partner of ours, Mike, Mike Rattigan and a lot of, a lot of the folks in the audience may or may not have, I've heard of him. He's working closely with us and great guy knows the industry super well came to me and, and, and my boss and, know, kind of with the vision of, Hey,

I'd like to work with you guys to build something. And we're super thankful that he came and talked to us because he really showed us what the possibility and the opportunity is with records management, information governance, and not just where it's going, but also the intersections that we're seeing with some of the other technology verticals at Carahsoft We talked about AI. We have a group of subject matter experts there. We've got a group.

that focuses on law enforcement. And I think it's going to be interesting to be able to work with those folks in a bit more of a, you know, significant capacity around making sure that we understand how those fields are changing and how that's going to influence, you know, information governance, records management, and all of that. And again, working so closely with ARMA, we've also had a good chance to meet with a number of federal agencies and

We've even been fortunate enough to meet with a couple subcommittees within Congress with one more still sort of to go. So hopefully that we can tee that up soon. it's exciting to kind of hear from them and get their feedback on where from a legislative standpoint, they see this market going and the policy that we might be able to sort of get an understanding of while it's in its working form.

So that we can again, advise our vendors and industry partners and even customers and reseller partners on how they can sort of stay ahead of that curve. That's, that's definitely coming because this is a, it's an evolving market. Like I said, and it's just, it's exciting stuff.

Jim Merrifield (18:04.659)
Yeah, it's exciting times to be in the public sector and to be at Carahsoft to be at Arma, to be in this industry. Again, Alec, thanks so much for spending some time on the hot seat here and answering some questions. I know I was nice to you, didn't ask you any wacky questions. So thanks for being a good sport And absolutely. And if you'd like to be a guest on the hot seat like Alec here, all you got to do is submit your information through our website, infogovhotseat.com

Alec Wyhs (18:20.2)
No.

I it.

Jim Merrifield (18:34.693)
And thank you so much. Enjoy the rest of your day.