IGHS69 - Top Reasons to Attend InfoNext2025

Jim Merrifield (00:01.183)
Well, hello and welcome to the Info Gov Hot Seat. I'm your host Jim Merrifield and with me today is Sandy Serkes at Valora Tech. Welcome Sandy and also Mike Salvarezza from ARMA. Welcome to you both.

Mike Salvarezza (00:16.056)
Thanks Jim, thanks for having us.

Jim Merrifield (00:18.069)
Yeah, it's great to have you on the hot seat. Sandy, first timer. Micah, long timer. Been on this show a few times. He just keeps coming back. He can't get enough of it, I guess.

Sandy Serkes (00:18.095)
Thank you.

Mike Salvarezza (00:27.074)
Like a bad penny, like a bad penny, Jim.

Jim Merrifield (00:29.673)
Yeah, that's right. That's right. So, all right, so let's kick this off. Sandy, can you introduce yourself and maybe your current role and one fun fact about yourself? Don't forget the fun fact, because that's why people really watch this show, is to find out the fun fact.

Sandy Serkes (00:45.016)
Okay, so I'm Sandy Serkes I'm the President and CEO of Valora Technologies. Most people know us as an auto classification provider. We are, this is a fun fact about Valora, not my fun fact, but Valora's fun fact is we are now in our 25th year, which is just an unbelievable anniversary.

And my fun fact, I couldn't decide, have two. So you guys can tell me which one you like better. The first is, not everybody knows this, but I sing a cappella. And if you're gonna be in the Boston area ever in June or in January, you can come to a concert. So yeah, I sing a cappella. That's fun fact number one. And fun fact number two is we just finished, but generally in February and March, if you come by my house.

I will recruit you to help me with tapping our maple trees to make maple syrup. Which is something fun we started in the pandemic and we loved it so much that we've kept it going. So I am a very, very small maple syrup production entity.

Jim Merrifield (01:55.637)
That's awesome. I don't know, it's hard for me to decide, but I almost wish Infonext was in Boston this year, because then we could have had some entertainment, but maybe next time.

Sandy Serkes (02:04.899)
Yeah. If you want to fly the whole group down, we will show up and sing. Absolutely.

Jim Merrifield (02:12.253)
Awesome, well, congrats on the 25 years as well. That's a big accomplishment for sure. And Mike, we know you, but why you introduce yourself, what you got going on.

Sandy Serkes (02:15.609)
Thank you. Thank you.

Mike Salvarezza (02:24.086)
Yeah. So for those who don't know me, Mike Salvarezza as I'm working with ARMA to help produce the events that they run throughout the year, we have a series of conferences that starts with Infonext, continues with ARMA Canada and culminates in the fall with the signature event in InfoCon. And I'm really here to help produce the content and...

find the speakers and develop the themes and all of that. I've been in this business for far too many years, much more than I will state on this call. But my back.

Jim Merrifield (03:02.126)
I thought that was gonna be your fun fact.

Mike Salvarezza (03:05.6)
No, no, that's not my fun. That's not a fun fact. And I and it's hard to compete with Sandy's fun facts. She's out tapping trees and singing and it's great. I think I've said this on other editions of this, but I'm a big

Mike Salvarezza (03:26.03)
and I produce presentations on what I see. And the fun fact is, the new fun fact is I'm also a horror movie, science fiction movie fan. And I've just produced a presentation that compares some of the wild and weird creatures that you see underwater to the creatures in the movies. And it really, I...

I debuted it at a diving conference a couple of weeks ago and it was a hoot. It just was great. So there you go.

Jim Merrifield (03:59.605)
You learn something new. That's amazing. And Mike does a great job with curating the speakers and the content. So thanks for all you do, Mike, on the ARMA side and even on the scuba diving side. We have to give you some sort of presentation at one of these conferences, how we can integrate scuba diving and IG. There's got to be a connection there.

Mike Salvarezza (04:01.262)
you

Mike Salvarezza (04:21.13)
If I can make that connection, I'd be happy to do it.

Jim Merrifield (04:24.297)
For sure. So let's talk about Infonext 2025. It's coming up in a couple weeks. I know this is the second year of the executive experience at Infonext and we're, know Sandy and I are excited for the executive experience. So Mike, can you tell us what should we expect during this executive experience at Infonext?

Mike Salvarezza (04:47.234)
Well, the InfoNext executive experience happens the day before the official conference actually begins. It happens on Sunday. And it's designed specifically to be a small intimate gathering for more senior level people in an organization, people who have some decision-making power or budgetary power, people who can make decisions that affect the IG strategy of their organization. So

the executive experience that we started it last year, we learned a little bit from last year. And this year, I think what attendees will experience is much more time to interact, much more time to have a discussion, to talk about the issues and the challenges that people are facing. But it's not just a coffee clutch.

a formal presentation that Sandy will be delivering and she'll talk about that in a moment. We'll also be producing a panel of experts that will be on hand so that anybody at this experience will have the opportunity to talk to an expert in the field about anything that they might have on their mind. And Jim, you'll be part of that. Sandy will be part of that, but we have Microsoft there. We have other consulting experts.

So the idea really is to have an opportunity for people to meet peers, develop a network, enjoy the time together, discuss the challenges and opportunities that are facing organizations, talk with thought leaders and experts, and come away with real ideas about how to advance their strategies.

Jim Merrifield (06:45.167)
looking forward to it. It's like a think tank type experience. You know, so that's great.

Sandy Serkes (06:48.345)
Yeah.

Mike Salvarezza (06:50.636)
Yeah, the idea is to create this community. We met a number of the attendees last week on Zoom, and we'll be doing that after the conference. And the idea is to keep the group together, to try to create a cohort, if you will, going forward. So we'll see how goes.

Jim Merrifield (07:10.797)
that's excellent. Looking forward to it now, Sandy, you're kicking things off on this executive experience. I saw the theme on the website, right? It says the theme is IG and enterprise AI adoption and executive imperative. So can you tell us about that?

Sandy Serkes (07:28.621)
I can. And I really like the executive imperative part of that, because that's exactly what I think is going on. And the main theme for the session is to kind of acknowledge and accept that the AI train has kind of already left the station in most of these organizations. But that doesn't mean that we just throw up our hands and go, well, guess we'll never be able to deal with it. There's how do we kind of wrangle control of this thing that is already driving down the track?

and how can we drive an appropriate governance agenda? So there's gonna be discussion around who really should own AI initiatives, who should own governance. Spoiler alert, it's the IG team. And really, know, kind of very practically, how should that work? What are the 10 things that they can do? And also not just, you know, thinking about AI as, it's another problem child that I have to manage.

which is also to understand how can we actually benefit as IG practitioners? What does AI actually bring to the table for us? So, and I'll give you an example of that. So a lot of people, and this is from my area, a lot of people think that auto classification is just creating a record class tag and stepping away. And that's really not, that's just the barest, tiniest little use.

true auto classification will tell you absolutely everything you need to know about every single file. So once you have that, think about the possibilities for governance. Think about the possibility for setting up your AI for success, right? And like, for example, training in AI and making sure it's using the right data, not the wrong data or the best data. So these are some of the ways that the different technologies kind of...

merge together and present both opportunity and challenge. And so I think the thrust of my presentation is going to be about recognizing that duality and then setting them up for success so that they can govern it, they can use it, and that they can be my sort of personal theories that folks in information governance should ultimately be the gurus.

Sandy Serkes (09:47.4)
of information management in their organization so that they become the go-to place on all matters, yes, of retention, privacy, sensitivity, but also AI.

Jim Merrifield (10:00.029)
Makes perfect sense, because usually, IG professionals, know, we're the bearer of bad news, you know, we got to destroy things, we roll out policy, and it seems like AI, this technology is an opportunity for us to actually help our organizations utilize or benefit from the data that we've been managing or governing all these years.

Sandy Serkes (10:25.895)
That's exactly right, Jim. it furthers the agenda that I think we have all always had and not always been able to implement, which is there is benefit, there is upside to getting control of things. And this, think AI really, it's not always about risk. This is now the opportunity side of the equation finally coming to bear.

Jim Merrifield (10:49.589)
Yeah, last of.

Mike Salvarezza (10:49.792)
I really liked that because the sort of reputation that IG often has, records management often has, is that we are the ministry of no. We say, no, you can't implement that system or that technology or that tool because we don't know how to manage the information or we can't govern it properly. And I think, Sandy, you're right. This is the opportunity to be part of the team.

Sandy Serkes (11:01.903)
Yeah.

Mike Salvarezza (11:17.846)
that helps this technology grow within an organization and helps bring business advantage. And I think that, I think we need to step away from being the stop sign and rather being the green light.

Jim Merrifield (11:33.919)
Yeah, I think so too.

Sandy Serkes (11:33.966)
Right, and I think if you view, and this comes from the historical idea of we mitigate risk. So if you think about that instead of just mitigating risk, if you think of that as we provide responsible guardrails to flourish within, it just completely changes from a pessimistic outlook to an optimistic outlook.

Jim Merrifield (11:59.603)
Yeah, it sure does. So let's now that we understand what Sandy is going to talk about, right? The executive experience Mike who's going to attend the executive experience, but I guess that's the part one of this question. And who actually attends InfoNext? What roles do you expect to be in attendance in a couple weeks?

Mike Salvarezza (12:19.17)
So like I said a few moments ago, I think the intended audience for the executive experience is the more senior levels within organizations, the folks that have decision-making power or budget authority or the ability to influence the strategy of their organizations from an IG perspective. And every organization has a different titling scheme and a different leveling scheme, but it's...

It's loosely stated, it's those types of professionals. It's the ones that can influence the strategy. For the conference itself at large, we have a mix. We have a mix of industry demographics and strata within the organization and also different disciplines. So we will have people from

consumer goods, from insurance, from pharmaceuticals, from the law profession, from finance. It's not a conference that is specific to any one industry vertical. So we'll have a mixture of industry verticals. We will have people who are strategists and more senior in the organization, and we will have implementers as well.

But Infonext does generally appeal more to the senior levels within the organization, the folks that are driving the IG business forward. And in terms of why I think it's a mixture of disciplines within an organization, it's because we cover the waterfront of IG. So we'll have sessions on records management for sure.

We'll have sessions on privacy, on cybersecurity, on e-discovery, on technology. So it's a conference that if you're in any way connected to the IG business of your organization, you can find something of value at the conference.

Jim Merrifield (14:28.455)
Excellent. And what I like too, I was looking at the agenda on the site. I think every session maps to a portion of the IGIM model, the implementation model, which is amazing. And to the audience, if you have not seen that model, go download it on the site. Because I can't tell you, I've been speaking to a bunch of even the CIO within our firm and other firms with partnership with ILTA and things. everybody

is looking for a model, right, to benchmark off of, to really understand where the organization's maturity is in relation to IG. So the fact that there's actually a conference that has sessions that dive deeper into probably not every single domain, right? Well, I guess every single domain, but maybe, you know, that you were diving into every single domain to better understand what it actually means and how we can actually apply.

And as Sandy, you mentioned before how you can take actionable results back to your organization is amazing. So Mike, I got a question for you. Listen, there's two weeks left. If I haven't registered, give me your best pitch. Like, why should I register right now for Infonext?

Mike Salvarezza (15:46.434)
because Sandy Serkes is appearing there and will be presenting not only at the executive experience, but also in the main conference agenda. That's enough right there. But if that's not enough, let me put it this way. There are a lot of conferences that an individual can choose to go to. And there are several that compete directly with us in terms of timeframe, right? There are other conferences going on that week.

Sandy Serkes (15:56.961)
it.

Mike Salvarezza (16:15.842)
the before, the week after. The springtime seems to be a hot season for conferences in this area. So there's a lot to choose from. If you don't go to InfoNext, you will be missing out on sessions being delivered by some of the best thought leaders in the industry, Sandy being one of them. These are the folks that have the most

pertinent insight into what's going on technologically, legally, and operationally in this space. You won't get the waterfront of topics that you will at Infonext at these other conferences. They'll be much more specific. They'll be much more granular. I think that the audience at Infonext is far more senior than you might find at other conferences.

So, and I'll say this sort of tongue in cheek, but there are other conferences where people wander the exhibit hall and they're really on a tchotchke hunt. How many, how many pens can I find? How many, how many rubber or, you know, refrigerator magnets can I find? at InfoNext! That's not happening. There are real conversations happening at the, with the vendors, with their peers, with the thought leaders.

about how to advance their strategy in their organizations. And so I think if you don't go to Infonext, you are truly missing out on all of that.

Sandy Serkes (17:56.772)
Can I just second that? I thought about this question, Jim, and I actually wrote down the following sentence. I'm just gonna read it to you. I wrote, if you are a superstar in this industry or an aspiring one, these are your people. That was my sentence.

Jim Merrifield (17:57.041)
Excellent.

Thank

Jim Merrifield (18:13.363)
I like it or an aspiring one, right? That's excellent.

Sandy Serkes (18:16.921)
Come join your brethren superstars, because that's who's at Info Next. It's a group of superstars.

Jim Merrifield (18:25.289)
Yeah, I love it. love it. So Mike, mentioned, isn't there going to be, I looked at the agenda too. There's an opportunity to help draft a white paper, maybe on session, I think it's like on Tuesday or something. You want to tell us a little bit about that? Cause that's pretty exciting.

Mike Salvarezza (18:42.476)
Yeah, and Sandy is part of that. So I'll ask Sandy to also give her thoughts. let me say it this way. We are going to be asking all of the attendees at the conference to take a pause on Tuesday afternoon from going from session to session. And we're going to ask everyone to participate in a group workshop. And that workshop will be

focused on a single topic. And that single topic is how do we better embed information governance and its practices and its imperatives into the culture of an organization. So it's not about how many policies can we develop, but how do we truly ingrain IG into the culture of an organization?

For anyone that's attending the conference, you're gonna hear me say this on stage and you'll hear Sandy refer to this. Back in the day, the office environment was very different. If you ever watch a movie or a television show that depicts office life from the 1950s, office life was very different. And there were behaviors that took place in the office that would never be acceptable today. Things have changed, right? No one is smoking in the office or drinking in the office or whatnot.

Well, how can we make IG such a part of the culture so that mismanaging a record or mismanaging information is completely unacceptable from a cultural perspective? That is the purpose of the workshop on Tuesday afternoon. And the outgrowth of that will hopefully be a white paper that ARMA produces that will, I think, be groundbreaking and leading edge.

Sandy's going to be part of the effort to do that. So I'm going to ask Sandy, you know, what are your thoughts on the Tuesday exercise?

Sandy Serkes (20:43.535)
So I am really excited for this. And I'm gonna give you my observations as a technologist, as a 25 year technologist in this industry. So one of the kind of statements that's gonna be about like kind of a preamble to this whole event is culture eats strategy for breakfast. Sorry, Natasha, I'm borrowing that line from Natasha Cruz Wilson, but she's right. And...

Even as a technologist, I know that that is true. And that's because at the end of the day, organizations are groups of people. And so all of the best intent, all of the best tools, all of the most damning regulations still butt up against people and how they function. And so that is the area that we need to talk about. And honestly, we need to fix so that it becomes like Mike said, nobody would ever dream of not

kind of conducting themselves in a kind of IG appropriate manner. That is the point of this discussion. And we're going to be coming at it from all these different angles. I'm bringing the technology angle. Lewis Eisen is bringing the policy angle and Norm, what is his last name? Norm the ethicist, good enough. He's going to be bringing that side of it. so, you know, between the three of us to kind of lay that framework.

Mike Salvarezza (21:59.554)
Norm the ethicist.

Sandy Serkes (22:09.133)
to say, okay, if that's where we're coming from, how do we actually like move the needle on culture so that we can get to that kind of vision that Mike just laid out?

Jim Merrifield (22:21.301)
That's excellent. I mean, it is all about the people. I mean, you can have the best policy, but if nobody knows about it or reads it, what's the point at the end of the day? And I think that's that's nice. Cause a lot of times you go to these conferences, right? You, you attend to a bunch of sessions. Then you go back to, know, the employer spends, you know, invests in you. And obviously we want to go back to our organizations and show what we've learned or what we can actually implement or.

Sandy Serkes (22:29.101)
Exactly.

Jim Merrifield (22:50.049)
you know embrace change within our organization so i think there's a lot of power you know coming back to an organization from a conference like this and being able to share a document or something and say listen i was just with

You know, two to 300 peers, you know, in experts in the industry from not just law firms, but from corporations, right? Our clients and things from business partners like yourself, Sandy. And this is what people are thinking. This is what we're recommending as a path forward. And it adds a lot of weight, right? When you're able to go into a presentation internally and be able to reference something that is published by.

I think a conference and executive leaders like the ones that are going to be at InfoNext. So that's amazing. Can't wait. So final question. I know we've talked about a lot here. I mean, we could probably stay in all day and talk about InfoNext, we can't. Well, we could, but there'd be other things that we'd have to put aside. So Mike, anything else you'd like to share about InfoNext or anything else?

Mike Salvarezza (24:06.606)
Well, we touched on the culture project. We touched on the executive experience. Those are two big things on the agenda, but we have such a rich agenda for those two and a half days once the conference starts. Our keynote will be discussing

artificial intelligence and all of the latest developments, including agentic AI. We have a, we have a, not a surprise, but a treat for everyone on Tuesday morning. We're going to have a reprisal of, if you were at the conference last year, we were going to, we're going to reprise the great debate that took place. If you remember last year, we had two industry professionals on stage debating some of the contentious IG issues.

Well, this year we're going to come back with the great debate two, but it's going to feature Jason Stearns and he'll be debating an AI chat bot. And I think that's just going to be a lot of fun and insightful. And we'll see what we get out of that. And then we have an agenda that's jam packed with some of the thought leaders in the industry that bring the most cutting edge thinking. And we have sessions on

the Microsoft platform on e-discovery in Google. have sessions on cybersecurity and business continuity and disaster recovery and how it relates to IG. So we really have a lot jam packed into the agenda, not the least of which, as I keep mentioning Sandy, but Sandy is also delivering a session in the main agenda. So I think that that's my final thought, Jim, on the conference is it's these

sort of eye catching events. And then we have our standard agenda, which is jam packed with quality speakers. Sandy, do you want to add to that? And maybe you want to talk about your second session.

Sandy Serkes (26:07.311)
Sure, yeah, so my main session is gonna be on using AI and managing structured data because structured data is often kind of thought of as a secondary concern from unstructured data, but structured data is far more likely.

to contain surprises because it already has so much fielded information and it usually has the ability to calculate other things. So it's kind of a hotbed for AI. So I'm going to be speaking to that issue, like, you know, how do you get your arms around structured data and some techniques? And yes, again, spoiler, auto-classification is a really good solution over there. That's going to be my session on Tuesday, I think.

Mike Salvarezza (26:56.713)
Tuesday morning, yes.

Jim Merrifield (26:57.681)
Thank

Sandy Serkes (26:57.933)
Yep. And if nobody has claimed the betting concession on Jason versus the AI, I am claiming it right now. I will be setting the odds. Come see me if you want in on this pool.

Jim Merrifield (27:13.141)
Yes.

Mike Salvarezza (27:14.286)
So do we have FanDuel signed up as a sponsor? Good, good, good.

Sandy Serkes (27:16.079)
I'm on it.

Jim Merrifield (27:18.997)
I want to know what LLM is going against personally, but.

Mike Salvarezza (27:23.928)
that'll be revealed at the conference.

Sandy Serkes (27:26.713)
nice, so no preparing. Excellent.

Jim Merrifield (27:29.589)
Who knows, maybe it's an auto, know, a lot of these different software apps out there, you can you know, instead of selecting one, depending on the question, actually chooses, the AI chooses the best algorithm or the best LLM for you. So that's interesting.

Sandy Serkes (27:47.663)
It's like kayak, tattoos in your travel. Like AI kayak, I like it.

Mike Salvarezza (27:51.31)
There you go. you go. Yeah. Of course, as the organizer of this, you know, it's a nail biter to hope that the AI doesn't say something inappropriate.

Jim Merrifield (27:54.526)
Yeah.

Jim Merrifield (28:03.733)
You never know.

Sandy Serkes (28:04.173)
That would be hilarious. I hope it does.

Jim Merrifield (28:08.733)
Unpredictable, unpredictable. Well, thank you too for spending some time today to give us a sneak peek of InfoNext. I'll see both of you in a couple of weeks. know, safe travels. Obviously looking forward to being at the JW Marriott I mean, the venue is just amazing in Savannah and it should be great weather, right? Probably mid-60s, I'm sure, or 70s, you know, every day. So.

Sandy Serkes (28:21.507)
Likewise.

Jim Merrifield (28:36.061)
I don't know, maybe I'll hit 80s, I don't know. Probably.

Mike Salvarezza (28:38.944)
That's another thing, by the way, as a selling point, if you've never been to Savannah and have ever wanted to go, this is an ideal opportunity. Savannah is a great city and the venue is right on the waterfront, the Savannah River. So you'll be able to walk out of the hotel and in 10 steps be looking down at the river and watching huge tanker ships go back up and down the Savannah River. It's really an amazing venue.

Jim Merrifield (29:09.333)
Sure, yeah, well, I booked my tickets, so I'll see you there. And thank you both to our audience. Thanks for listening today. If you'd like to be a guest on the InfoGov Hot Seat, just like Sandy and Mike here, all you have to do is submit your information through our website, infogovhotseat.com. And thank you so much. Enjoy the rest of your day.