At last night's annual AIIM awards dinner, Bob Zagami, Vice Chair AIIM, quipped how the ECM industry is green – "just compare it to the OnDemand (Printing) show next door." Funny as the comment was (you had to witness the consumption of paper at the OnDemand show to appreciate the humor in this statement), Bob was right. ECM does indeed have a green aspect to it.
In fact, I am not sure if Bob realized how timely his remark was. Its been a long time coming. For the 20 years that I have been attending the AIIM show, we have been touting the advantages of online content. Perhaps not always with a focus on the ecology side of green, but the financial side. The market has not responded to either "green light" (cost savings/new business models or reduction in paper consumption) with the speed one would have liked, but there is evidence that we are finally reaching a critical mass, not just in business but in the general population.
In a recent article in the New York Times, it was reported that, for the first time, paper consumption in the United States, France, Germany, Japan, Belgium, Sweden, Austria, Canada and Finland actually went down, between 2000 and 2005. (Less developed countries such as China, India, Russia and Mexico continue to increase their paper consumption.) For years, despite the prevalence of computers and electronic content, we watched paper consumption rise globally, as the more content we created (online) the more we printed (on paper). Apparently, in the world's more developed countries, that tide is turning and people are "Doing the AIIM thing", and not only creating electronically, but using, managing, sharing and accessing online. The article points to several business and personal life scenarios in which paper is playing a lesser role in developed countries.
At around the same time, NPR ran a story (listen to it) entitled Digitizing Libraries. This audio article focused on a recent move by several libraries and educational institutions to digitize their collections, for a variety of reasons. While this article also provided evidence for the movement by society as a whole to embrace online content, it also pointed out some of the challenges we face.
Apparently, Harvard teamed with Google to digitize its collections. The Boston Public Library declined to work with Google however. Why? Google wanted to place controls on access to the collection. (Ben Franklin would roll over in his grave). In this regard, Google acted similarly to Amazon with its Kindle e-book appliance (see earlier post). So the library had to go a different route.
Migration to online content at home and in the office is, and will continue to be fraught with challenges and challengers. But, nonetheless the migration has started, in earnest. Whether the migration is motivated by a desire to be green, or make green (cutting costs, new business models, better means to share and collaborate), is somewhat irrelevant. Either way, the end is the same. Digital content (and vicarioulsy the ECM industry) is no longer seen as fringe, and it should not be long before it is the norm, not the exception.
