IGHS7 - Interview with Nitza Medina-Garcia, InfoCompass, Inc.

jim_merrifield:
Well hello everyone and welcome to the InfoGov Hot Seat. I'm your host Jim Merrifield and with me today is Nitza Medina-Garcia from InfoCompass. Welcome Nitza!

nitza_medina_garcia:
Well, thank you for having me on. It's a pleasure.

jim_merrifield:
Yeah, this is exciting. Thanks so much. So I got a few questions for you. I promise that I won't make you feel uncomfortable or anything with the questions.

jim_merrifield:
How about a brief introduction of your role, how long you've been in the field of records management, and then one fun fact about yourself.

nitza_medina_garcia:
All right, so my name of course is Nitza, and I am the founder of InfoCompass, and we work with implementing iManage Records Manager software and just general consulting. As far as how long I've been in records management, I think officially since about 2004, but before that, I was at the actually working in an allied field of archives. And so, if we count all of that, probably back to 95. So I've been in sort of the information management realm for several years. As far as ARMA, I've also been involved in ARMA, which is of course the Records Management Professional Organization, being both a chapter member of New York City as well as in the Greater Sacramento area. And then here in Sacramento, I was the past president, past president, secretary, you know, when you're a small chapter, you kind of circle around the board position. So I've been doing that for quite a while as well. And let's see, you said a fun fact.

nitza_medina_garcia:
So fun fact is that when was in a off-off-off Broadway play that I, when I was an archivist, I had gone and done some acting classes. And so our acting group had been during 2001, so like around the 9-11 time. And so 9-11 happened, and we were just trying to process our feelings about what was happening. And so we workshopped a play and that play ended up going around the city. And so it was, one place was an off, off, off Broadway in that it was kind of a theater that's kind of a not so theater theater on 8th Avenue, if you know what I mean. And so we
ended up having on the second floor, had our play that we went through and it got a lot of local press. But they got more successful, kept going on with that. And I was like, no, my normal job is being an archivist, so we had to separate. But that was my fun fact.

jim_merrifield:
That's awesome. So you chose the field of archivist and records management over a possible celebrity track! 

nitza_medina_garcia:
You know, that's where my heart was, history, archivists, records, so that's where I am.

jim_merrifield:
That's awesome. Now, you've been in records management for a while. I know you've been involved with ARMA for a long time as well. Let's talk a little bit about that.You've been leading the ARMA legal round table. And what made you lead this group and how long have you been doing that?

nitza_medina_garcia:
So I was looking for a place where I could hear more about just legal challenges and solutions. So with being in the Greater Sacramento chapter, our chapter was more based on government representatives with being the capital of the state. And so, I was always looking for kind of more information about law firms, corporate legal, that kind of information. To find someone in my area where we could kind of talk about that. So I was always excited to go to the ARMA conferences and there was the industry roundtables and that was usually kind of once a year. And so in 2019, I don't remember if I approached ARMA or if ARMA approached me, but it was around that time where they were starting to pilot the legal industry groups that are on the website. And so they asked me if I would want to be the administrator there. And I said, yeah, that would be great. And so from there I started being able to, you know, try to encourage people to join. I also encouraged not only myself, coordinators as well to be able to to assist with organizing the legal industry group. And so yeah that's kind of how it started and then it's just kind of continued to evolve.

jim_merrifield:
That's awesome! You do a fabulous job leading that community both by the way of webinars, blog posts, and the MyArma site.So definitely appreciate being in the legal community. So you spoke a little bit about the topics that you kind of discussed, but what are some of the topics that are discussed in this group both on the MyArma listserv and also I know you put on webinars as well, you just did one recently, right?

nitza_medina_garcia:
Yeah, so the topics come from different places. So from our group of coordinators, we have Barbara Dalton and Rishi and Deborah McClaskey, Susan Gleason, there's basically representatives who want to hear about different topics that are of interest, as well as just topics that come up either in our discussion board on the ARMA website the different coffee and chats that we do. But usually the topics are on challenges. Like a lot of them are just maybe some of the basics, like putting together retention policy, questions about schedules from a legal perspective. There was just in our last coffee and chat, there was questions about outside counsel guidelines and what people are doing and how quickly people get conversations or bring in information governance to talk to through those conversations, talk about digital scanning and kind of how that may be used for a mailroom or maybe even backlog of boxes that are off-site, you know, how you determine what to scan or what not to. And then I know, especially during the pandemic time, we were talking about, well, how are you still to move forward. So, we really got started around 2019. So then all through the pandemic, it was sort of like a touch point. So people were able to communicate, especially because chapters weren't necessarily meeting, right? So we were doing a lot of virtual coffee and chats to kind of, you know, go through and communicate with each other.

jim_merrifield: 
How often does this group meet?

nitza_medina_garcia: 
We do alternate. So we meet monthly. And so at first it was kind of just the round table or coffee and chats that we call it. But lately we have been trying to alternate and having like a presentation on, you know, a topic that might be of interest. So last month we had a presentation on just digitizing in the mailroom. So that was a very helpful one and then we have one coming up that's going to be on data mapping and so how to you know if you're a firm or corporate legal and you need to produce a data map of where your information is located you know we'll talk about some some things to consider some best practices as well so we're really open as far as the topics we really want you know the ARMA members themselves to give us topics that are top of mind for them, because we're doing it to make sure that the communication is there.

jim_merrifield:
That's wonderful. And these are all hot topics, that all of us in the law firm community have faced, continue to face, right? We're all kind of in this together. And I like the variety of topics. Now who can join? Do you have to be like an ARMA member? Or how does that work?

nitza_medina_garcia:
My understanding is that you do have to be an ARMA member, but it is free for anybody who is in ARMA. And so it's not like an extra chapter charge when you have memberships. If you're a member of ARMA, then you're open to be able to be in the legal industry group.

jim_merrifield:
Oh, that's great. And so it's really a way for like-minded individuals, working in a law firm to meet one another, right? Because during the pandemic, we were kind of meeting each other in these little boxes. And, you know, it's a way to meet each other, maybe if we're in the same region or something like that. I mean, I know there's chapters as well, but sometimes we as law firm practitioners, almost speak a foreign language, than the corporations. Sometimes our workflow is a lot different. So it's nice to meet like-minded individuals, that are doing similar work.

nitza_medina_garcia:
Yeah, and I think it's helpful to put faces to name. So being able to be in these virtual meetings or even during the conference when we're able to be together in person. I think the relationship building is also very important so that if you have a question and you don't have to wait till the meeting itself to ask, you can, what I would like to do is to help with building those relationships can feel comfortable with calling each other up and saying, hi, I have this challenge. Have you had that challenge before? So definitely having the relationships to be able to speak to one another is great. And when I have gone to some different events, people have come up to me who attended and said, this is a really great resource for them, especially managers that may still, or maybe they weren't technically a records manager, but we're kind of still learning about it. Especially in our group, we have some corporate legal representation as well. And so some of those members may be very new to kind of the records management, so they're just trying to learn. And so this is another place where they can learn.

jim_merrifield:
That's excellent. That's fabulous that you give of your time and connecting people by way of meetups and putting faces to names. That's excellent. So where do you see this group going in the future? I know you've been involved with it for a few years now, head in the group. Where do you see this group morphin' into in the future? Do you see it changing or evolving?

nitza_medina_garcia:
I just, well, we've been growing for many years now. So I think we're at about 200 people within the industry group. I would like to continue to see people, attending the meetings, being able to continue with that. I'd like for that area to become a great resource for the legal industry, whether it's having reference items, their files, I don't know if you'd call it a wiki, but kind of a place where you can store information that might be of assistance for our group. So I think having that area would be great.If we could include increasing our presence during the conference and maybe having, you know, I've heard in the past that there was like even a legal track within ARMA conference. I know we at least have the industry group meetup, but if we can have maybe additional meetings during the conference as well, that would be great. But really it's up to, what the members of the group want and so I can see it evolving based on their needs.

jim_merrifield:
Yes, those are all great ideas. I think at my first conference, there was a legal track that I attended and kept coming back from there. I got introduced to different people in the legal community that were affiliated with ARMA for sure. Thank you so much for talking about the ARMA legal roundtable. I wanna switch gears for a second because I know you're a thought leader in the IG space and I just wanted to ask you one question before we let you go.

nitza_medina_garcia:
Okay.

jim_merrifield:
Where do you see the information governance community or even the landscape evolving in the next 3-5 years? In 2023, there's are so many things going on in the area of information governance. There's chat GPT, there's different softwares out there, there's different AI out there. Where do you see the focus or the hot trends coming from maybe this year and beyond? I know it's kind of a loaded question, but just wanted to ask you.

nitza_medina_garcia:
I feel like at least right now what I'm seeing is that there's just like a lot of trying to clean up after the pandemic. So there's lots of things that firms had to do to get by to survive. And so I feel like in the next few years that we're probably looking at, you know, the repercussions of that, trying to understand, well, where's our information now? Now we need to have a better data map, right? Or you know, maybe there was a lot of electronic information that now needs to be disposed of, well, how do we do that now? And then legacy documents that are paper, we don't want to keep them around as much anymore. How can we quickly begin getting approvals and getting rid of that? So I think that a lot of what we'll see in the next few years is just kind of trying to clean up from the pandemic.

jim_merrifield:
Yeah, I know, I appreciate those insights and it's almost like a back to basics type thing, right? But it's all process improvement that can push our organizations forward. So listen, Nitza, thank you so much for your time and joining me today on the infogov hot seat and for introducing us to the ARMA legal roundtable. I'm sure the group will continue to grow and of course I look forward to supporting you in the group so thank you so much for for spending some time today. If you'd like to be a guest on the infogov hot seat just like Nitza, please submit your information through our website and thank you so much and enjoy the rest of your day.

nitza_medina_garcia:
Thank you.