Bingo. Poker. Underwear with retention schedules. And of course, Laserfiche RME and Workflow. If it sounds like a fun way to learn about Laserfiche and share best practices, it was. For the almost 100 Laserfiche users and staff who attended the inaugural Virginia Statewide User Group Seminar December 1, the day-long experience was nothing short of amazing.

“Everyone contributed, everyone rose to their assignments and when someone asked the rest of the group for feedback, they got it and the end product ended up being even better,” says Laserfiche Luminary Rosalind Collins, Deputy Commissioner of the Revenue for Charlottesville, VA, who helped organize the event. “I’ve never been in a group that had all those ingredients plus excellent communication, a singular focus of outcome and FUN all together!”

The enthusiasm with which attendees learned and participated in Q&A sessions showed both how much effort they had put into learning and practicing on their own, but also the power of being able to exchange the experience in a state with four major user groups. Sessions like “The Art of Searching,” presented by both Collins and 2009 Run Smarter winner the City of Norfolk’s Alondo McClees, “What’s New In 8.1?” presented by Laserfiche reseller and event sponsor Unity Business Systems’ John Lane (a natural compliment to Collins’ “Migration from 7 to 8” session) as well as “Online Forms,” in a joint presentation by e-Forms provider LincWare and Unity Business Systems, showed how far Laserfiche use and efficiency has come in Virginia.

Laserfiche Presales Engineer Steve Hackney’s workshops on “Laserfiche Administration and Security” and “Workflow” gave already-educated users that next level of insight and support to make present use and see future deployments as a necessary way of doing business, not just a luxury add-on. As part of the “Laserfiche RME” session, for instance, Debbie Wolff, Hampton Roads Records Manager, demonstrated how RME can be used effectively within a repository hosting multiple departments. “We had a good mix of users, most on 7.2, and some who have migrated to 8,” she says. “But I was personally approached by about six people afterwards who said they wanted to contact me to ask more questions.”

The fact that all this could be so much fun spoke to the open, inclusive atmosphere of the day, which itself culminated a year that saw the founding of the Hampton Roads User Group, which joined the Central Virginia, Richmond and Northern Virginia (NOVA) groups to regularly bring Laserfiche users together to listen, learn, lecture and, perhaps best of all, laugh.

The laughter this day came from creative team-building games infused throughout the day, encouraging attendees to interact and participate. Ad hoc teams shared bingo cards based on collective group experiences (“uses Workflow;” “bikes to work”) that were then eligible for prizes. For another game, users received playing cards for attending sessions; the more they asked questions and suggested topics, the more cards they received to make poker hands out of. The best—and worst—hands won prizes contributed by event sponsors Esker and Fujitsu.

The lunchtime activity was perhaps the most creative – and most effective. Teams imagined possible home-use scenarios for Laserfiche. One group favorite was using Laserfiche to keep track of underwear drawers, by first using PhotoDocs to input the image, then using template fields to keep track of which drawers held which underwear colors. The scenario also included retention schedules to keep track of when underwear wore out and even white-out redaction tools to cover stains.

“The activities were a way to facilitate that networking and get people talking with each other. We wanted to do something that provided value for our Laserfiche peers by providing opportunities to network across the state. And boy, it looks like we sure accomplished what we set out to do,” Collins adds. “I think I can speak for all who worked on putting this together in saying we imagine this community continuing to grow and going on long into our happy retirements!”

McClees concurs. “At the end of the event, we got an emphatic ‘Yes’ to the 3 questions we asked everyone: Did you have fun? Did you learn something new? Did you meet new people and build new relationships? Each time we receive this type of overwhelming feedback to our Laserfiche user group efforts, it continues to re-energize us and make us that much more excited about what we can do next. I never imagined this user group movement becoming so big so quickly, and I am eager to see it continue to blossom and grow.”

McClees, a Run Smarter Winner and Laserfiche Luminary, will be teaching a class at this year’s conference, “Growing Your Own User Group Network” (IS224). If you haven’t reserved your seat yet, or if you haven’t registered for the conference, register today here.

Tags: Laserfiche Luminaries, records management, RME, security, user groups, Workflow

Posted on Tuesday, December 15th, 2009 at 11:10 am under UserNews. You can comment on this post.