Recap - AI+IM Summit 2025

Last month, I was honored to be selected as a speaker at the annual AI+IM Global Summit, sponsored by the Association for intelligent Information Management, AIIM. (Full disclosure, I'm also a member of the Board of Directors.)

It was great to be in Atlanta with so many members of the AIIM audience. There were several adjustments to the conference format this year, which included consolidating, exhibitors, meals, and keynotes in one location. As a result, the energy and conversation were more engaged and spirited, making this the strongest AIIM event since before the pandemic.

In addition to customer meetings, board meetings, and networking, I had time to present about AI this year.

AI for Information Management

I spoke about AI for information management: 10 “Do’s” and 5 “Don’ts”. Here’s a quick overview:

10 Do’s	5 Don’ts
Remediate oversharing Manage abandoned content Dispose of obsolete content Preserve but archive AI for scaled monitoring Generate new data from meetings Enrich content  with metadata Use prebuilt models Automate security classification Manage personal information	No pilot or plan Deployment without testing and sampling Leadership-only rollout IT-only rollout Amateur agents

It’s long been said that “Content is Queen/King.” In the world of AI, “Text is the Emperor.” AI works best and fastest with text and text-based descriptions and metadata. Meet the new boss.

During the workshop, I ran several exercises, including “Sailboat” - a design lead thinking exercise to inspire visualization about goals, forces that speed things up, and anchors that slow things down. We used it to frame the discussion about AI.

We had a large crowd to consider the AI “Sailboat” goals, winds, and anchors. Here’s what we developed.

Our chart is unscientific, but highlights some common themes for AI deployments:

Goals	“Winds”	“Anchors”
Efficiency Automation Accuracy Cost Reduction	Maintain competitive edge Lean team sizes Sustain profit margins	Cost Security Data Quality Lack of executive buy-in

Banking and Finance Cohorts

Another interesting change this year was cohorts. For the conference, people were broken up into special interest areas, and I shared the banking and finance cohort lead role with Nabih Metri from Hyland.

 There were a range of opinions about whether AI itself is revolutionary, or if it should be treated as the latest wave of technology innovation with similar governance and expectations. One of our cohort members is taking an interesting approach - using AI to look for small quick wins in automation, rather than a big bang approach to large scale data management. There was also a lot of interest in discovering and perfecting the skills required to be successful with information management in the era of AI.

We learned a lot from our first year with the cohorts and have even more insights to help sustain these industry teams outside through the years after the Summit.

Empathy and AI

But if I were to steal a single theme that emerged in the course of my discussion and presentation, it was the importance of empathy.

I've written before about fear of agentic technology replacing knowledge workers. Those fears are real, even if agents are nowhere close to replacing people. Supporting human and ethical considerations is an essential balancing factor with AI innovation – the “human in the loop.”

People are sometimes afraid of AI technologies. However, for more than a decade, most people are perfectly happy using AI systems in Apple Maps or Google Waze to tell them when to turn right.

There’s a great analogy from Major League Baseball. With high-performance cameras and on-site automation, we've reached the point where using AI to call balls and strikes is more accurate than a human umpire. It's better, from one perspective.

But there's a lot of reluctance, properly, to remove the human element from the game. That's why the MLB hasn't yet adopted the technology for regular and postseason games.

It's also why some have proposed that each team gets a number of challenges to an umpire's call which would be resolved with the AI robot cameras. (Professional tennis has a similar approach with the “Hawkeye” system for determining if shots are in bounds.)

To sum up, integrating AI as part of the human experience, with empathy, is essential for success.

Those are some of my impressions from the AI+IM Summit. I can't wait for next year's event. What were your highlights? If you attended, please add your thoughts in the comments section and let us know. Thank you.