ARMA Canada Conference: Discover AI & Data Governance

Jim Merrifield (00:01.13)
Well, hello and welcome to the InfoGov hot seat. I'm your host Jim Merrifield and with me today is Shelly Smith at the City of Winnipeg. Welcome, Shelly.

Shelly Smith (00:09.952)
Hi Jim

Jim Merrifield (00:11.71)
Yeah, it's great to have you on the hot seat. So let's get to know you a little better. Can you tell us a brief introduction of your role, how long you've been with the city of Winnipeg, and one fun fact about yourself?

Shelly Smith (00:13.918)
Thank you.

Shelly Smith (00:24.579)
I'm the records and information management coordinator for the public works department at the City of Winnipeg. I've been here for about nine years now. Prior to that, I was doing records information management at the federal government. I've been in the industry for quite a few years now. I've been part of ARMA for quite a while. Back in, I think I was the ARMA Canada region conference director from...

2020 to 2020, I guess, but when it dissolved. So my first conference that I planned was 2020 and that didn't actually happen because, you know, it was 2020, but I've been part of the conferences in the past, 2018, 2019, as a program administrator. And then we pivoted into virtual conferences until the region dissolved. So it's been very active in planning and working with our sponsors and speakers and vendors for the ARMA Canada Conference

So, they asked me to help with the ARMA International Help Team to put together the Canada Conference. So, I said, I'd like you to help with Toronto and now I'm the co-chair of the Conference Education Subcommittee for Canada Conference

Jim Merrifield (01:43.298)
That's awesome. Well, along with your day job, you do tons of work with ARMA and volunteerism and things like that. And we thank you for all your time and efforts and things. So before we get into the Calgary Conference, the upcoming conference, you gotta tell me your one fun fact about yourself. I can't forget it. I told you I was gonna tell you.

Shelly Smith (02:04.087)
So I just give the fun fact. I think the fun fact that I've used in the past is the first time I was ever in an airplane, I went skydiving. So that was pretty exciting to go up all those feet and then realize I'm going to be jumping out of the plane.

Jim Merrifield (02:23.514)
Wow, that is a fun fact. Did you enjoy it? Did you enjoy the skydiving experience?

Shelly Smith (02:28.642)
I was really enjoying going up in an airplane. I was like, oh, this is really cool. And then you're at 3,000 feet. And I'm like, oh, wait a minute, we're jumping out like 10, like that. Yeah, it was one of those things when you're in your 20s. And the free, what is it? The static line, so free flying. Not with attached to anybody. But I don't know if I'd do it again. But.

It's certainly once an experience. And I've flown much as many more times after that. I love flying. I just don't need to be jumping out of the plane.

Jim Merrifield (03:02.794)
Yeah, that seems like a one and done experience, but you're probably happy you experienced that. So let's jump right into Calgary, right? As you can see, I'm pretty pumped about going back to Canada and Toronto last year. So, yeah, that's awesome. I know you've been, as you mentioned, instrumental in planning the upcoming Calgary Conference. So we have a few questions for you about that upcoming conference. And here's the first one.

Shelly Smith (03:04.894)
Thank you.

Shelly Smith (03:13.897)
Yeah, I love it.

Jim Merrifield (03:31.542)
What unique opportunities will attendees experience at this upcoming event?

Shelly Smith (03:37.546)
Well, I think the Canada Conference has always been known for the high quality content and thought-provoking stuff that we bring. So the educational sessions are amazing. This year's program isn't going to disappoint either. We have everything, something for everyone that's, you know, range from records management basics to how-tos to records management at the next level, privacy, Microsoft 365.

data governance, e-discovery, cyber, all of it. In Canada, we love a case study, learning from those who did it, what are the best practices, you tried it, what work quite did it, so we all have those case studies, something that you can actually, feels tangible, something like, they have the same resources, the same kind of organization I work for, so we'll definitely have those. Industry roundtables we'll have, where you can sit and chat with people in the similar industry as you.

There's some pre-conference workshops. I think in like Canada, the intimacy of a Canada conference has always been evident to me when I went to InfoCon It's like Canada, we always just, you always find someone to chat with. You will have the opportunity to meet and talk to the presenters, they'll have a drink with you. Others will just go out of their way to help connect you to somebody if you're looking for something specific. They'll kind of go out of your way. You always just kind of have that.

Maybe it's a Canadian thing, but a sense of belonging in a community when you go to a Canada conference. And probably the biggest thing that you'll see at a Canadian conference is the party, where we love to party. We're very much looking forward to the welcome party, as you all have to bring your Toronto shirt, but also you're going to have to bring your stampede of wear, which is a cowboy hat and cowboy boots for the welcome reception. And we're super excited to be bringing back one of...

ARMA Canada's traditions is trivia night. They've asked that we brought it back and so the trophy is coming back and it's up for grabs and you don't want to miss out. If you have experienced that before, you know that it's always been a great time. And if you haven't had the opportunity, it's great, you're not gonna want to miss it. And we might even found, we found the host Trevor Banks and he's gonna be hosting a trivia night again. So that's what makes it kind of unique.

Shelly Smith (05:55.838)
have their coffee.

Jim Merrifield (05:56.634)
That's great. That's awesome. A trivia night. Trivia night in Canada.

Shelly Smith (06:00.578)
Yeah, yeah, you're gonna have to get up on your Canadian trivia. Might be so specific.

Jim Merrifield (06:07.669)
Yeah, yeah, no chat GPT allowed right

Shelly Smith (06:12.794)
No, I don't. I think we're going a little bit out of pen to pen. No pen, just to give you the good old feel of the trivia. It's a pub type feel.

Jim Merrifield (06:22.914)
Yeah, that's awesome. So thanks for sharing that. So let's talk about the planning of the conference, right? You mentioned there's pre-cons, there's keynotes, there's different sessions, and there's the recent industry trends and challenges in the space. There's no shortage of them. Can you talk a little bit about that? How is the conference kind of addressing those recent industry trends and challenges with AI and all sorts of things?

Shelly Smith (06:46.698)
Mm-hmm. Well, that's what I'm giving a note to, but you always, when you go to a conference, there's some kind of new buzzword, whatever's going on. And I think in the past, Microsoft 365, SharePoint, has always kind of been a big draw, and those kind of sessions were always had quite a few attendees. But I noticed that Infocon in 2023, there was a lot of digitization vendors looking at the digitized things. But we're definitely talking about AI now, aren't we? What's up?

Generative AI really coming into force really quickly in the last few months. All organizations are trying to figure out how to leverage that AI. And it's something new for all of us to try to figure out. So if you look at the agenda, we have everything from email management with AI, preparing your data for AI, drafting policies using AI. So there's a lot of that going to be kind of on the agenda.

And then we were excited to bring in David Chan, who's from the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute, which is an Alberta-based AI research institute that's been around for over 12 years. And it's one of Canada's three centers of AI excellence. And they're part of the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy. So they're partnered with companies of all sizes and industries to...

start driving that innovative strategy. So they've been doing it for a while. So it was in their nonprofit. So it was really exciting to bring them in, to explain to them what we are, ARMA is, and then to get their perspective on what we can look forward to moving forward. So yeah, a lot of AI, but it's cool. We're all learning together. So it's gonna be great.

Jim Merrifield (08:26.422)
Yeah, you're right. We all are learning together. I saw there's even a pre-con, right? That Microsoft is putting on with Purview. So that's kind of going to set the stage for the event.

Shelly Smith (08:33.402)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, there's the Microsoft Purview with then the governance around that, data governance and risk management and how you can use that with AI

Jim Merrifield (08:46.866)
Yeah, no, that's awesome. That's great. No, so you mentioned some of the speakers. I know when we were talking before you mentioned there's some speakers that are coming back that You know, we're used to you know, speak at these events and things What are some of the speakers that you're looking forward to uh to hearing from whether the past or present or maybe even some That you haven't ever heard from before

Shelly Smith (08:48.275)
Yeah.

Shelly Smith (09:10.274)
Well, we're excited for one of the keynotes that's going to bring the energy. So if you haven't heard, know of him, but Shawn Kanungo is globally recognized innovation strategist and we had him in 2018. He was at our conference and we had him back then talking about disruption, digital disruption. So he's coming back, he's a native of Albertan So it's exciting to be able to bring, you know, some locals to the Calgary conference. And he's

spent like 12 years working at Deloitte, working with leaders and trying to get them ready for, you know, moving them into the opportunities with what's coming with AI. So as you know, as a recognized strategist, a futurist or whatever they call them, he's gonna bring a lot of insight into what to look forward to and how we can leverage that. So he'll bring in like a lot of good energy. We have some of the...

Like I said, some of those speakers that you might have known from the past who used to be part of the Canada Regional Board, they're on the agenda. So you'll see like your Trevor Banks, your Courtney Bain and Ken Oldenberger, some of these speakers that we had before. We're looking, we're looking forward to having a data management, vs information management. What's the difference type panel?

We were talking about just doing that as a session, and then the more we talked about it, we started realizing this was actually really like a big, like there's a lot to talk about. So we put together four different perspectives and we have like a pretty cool moderator for that session. So we're able to kind of talk about whether it's a debate or what's the difference. So I'm super excited to hear questions from the audience on that as well.

And then the legal series panel discussion, we got some people together from the legal area talking just about what's going on with records management and legal perspective now, what kind of technologies like AI and machine learning, what should we look forward to in the legal sphere, and then the future of legal records management. I love this panel discussion so you can get those different perspectives and hear from those types of things too.

Jim Merrifield (11:28.214)
Yeah, a lot of high energy, a lot of, it seems like there's topics for everyone, right? No matter what your background is at this conference. So I'm definitely looking forward to it. You know, along with the education, I think there's plenty to do in Calgary, right? There's even a, I think a pre, it was like a pre-conference tour or something in Banff.

Shelly Smith (11:36.543)
Thank you.

Shelly Smith (11:48.258)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. You should come in on Saturday if you're not going to take one of the pre-conference workshops, then go ahead and sign up for the Excursion of Banff If you've never been, you absolutely have to go. It's like not even an hour outside of Calgary and all of a sudden you're deep in the mountains and you feel like you're almost in a different world. So yeah, there you have an Excursion plan so you can go and do some shopping in Banff take a gondola up to the top of the mountain. Yeah.

It's a good opportunity to check in those sites and see what's going on there.

Jim Merrifield (12:23.434)
Yeah, looking forward to it. I mean, I think too, what I read online is bring that bear spray.

Shelly Smith (12:30.726)
No, no, no. Oh, you're scared of bears. No, I used to travel to Red Zero, Alberta, which is in between Edmonton and Calgary with my mother from there. So we used to be in the station wagon to go from Winnipeg, Prague to Calgary every summer. So it's not, none of the news to me. I've got lots of family out in Calgary that way, but you absolutely have to. If you haven't been to Banff or even Canmore, you can go a little bit further, a little bit quieter.

you have to check out the excursion. But the bears are not walking around, usually you'll be all ok

Jim Merrifield (13:04.494)
That's great. We got education. We have bears, you know, oh my so definitely looking forward to this event and you know Shelly thank you for wetting our appetites for this wonderful event upcoming in like two weeks I can't believe right it's just in the I think next weekend, right? So that that'll be great any final thoughts Whether about the conference or the industry that you'd want to share with the audience

Shelly Smith (13:07.314)
Thank you.

Shelly Smith (13:18.618)
Yes. That's great.

Shelly Smith (13:32.002)
No, I just, I think it's going to be a great conference, great opportunity to really like meet and talk and really discuss what's moving forward. Like my own organization, like the mayor's put out a challenge to the public service to try to use AI and try to get that out there. So I'm doing my best to try to learn as much as possible, get ahead of the television because it's like, whoa, slow down. We got to see what's going on.

Bottom line, AI doesn't work, machine learning doesn't work without proper data and information. So this is great. It's going to be a great opportunity to really bring home some of that stuff. This is what we need to learn. This is why we need to do it. Get your business use cases and your case in order. So yeah, it's going to be great. And it'll be great to see some of the old keynote speakers, old speakers, and some of the new ones. So yeah, it'll be great.

Jim Merrifield (14:27.21)
Yeah, that's an excellent point and looking forward to seeing you there as well. And thank you for all your time that you've spent in helping put this conference together along with the ARMA staff and the other volunteers. You know, I'm sure it's going to be a wonderful event. And thanks for taking the time too today to talk to me and our audience about the conference. And, you know, thank you. So thanks for that.

Shelly Smith (14:33.12)
Yeah, me too.

Jim Merrifield (14:56.594)
Of course, too, thanks for attending our episode today. Please visit our website, infogovhotseat.com to view the latest episodes. If you'd like to be a guest on the InfoGov Hot Seat like Shelly here, all you need to do is submit your application through our website. You can ask Shelly, it's that easy. And thank you so much and enjoy the rest of your day.