My first encounter with Dan Antion was as a SharePoint poobah with American Nuclear Insurers, and member of the Board and Chair of AIIM. That’s Act One for Dan.
But Act Two - and all good OxyMorons have at least a second act - reveals a rich vein of somewhat hidden creativity. I LOVE Dan’s creative side - woodworking, creative writing, cycling, photography - and that doesn’t even include a 30-year love affair with a Triumph Spitfire and routine maintenance of a couple of Dodge pickup trucks. Check out his blog, No Facilities - Random thoughts, life lessons, hopes and dreams, for details.
What was your favorite binge during COVID?
There were two. First, and most importantly, Peanut Butter M&Ms. And the second is talking to my brother. I started calling him during COVID - it started with just one phone call - and then that just kept going. We've been doing that now for about 18 months. It’s interesting because he's a little older than me and there are things about our family that each of us knows that the other one doesn't.
What is the most surprising song or artist on your playlist?
The one that people find surprising is Foggy Mountain Breakdown by Earl Scruggs and friends.
Tell me about your background in SharePoint.
In the late 90s, I was managing a systems development group for our company. Our board told our CEO that we needed to think about document management and preserving institutional knowledge. And my boss said in a staff meeting, “That's sounds technical, Dan, so that's yours.” I really didn't know anything about it. I had no idea unstructured content was other than the pile of crap on my desk. That’s when I went to an AIIM New England meeting, and it went from there. So, I wound up the SharePoint guy for 13 years.
Why the “No Facilities” name for your blog - what’s that about?
I went to the University of Georgia my freshman year and then I transferred to West Virginia University. And for those younger than me, the interstate highways were not always there. From beginning somewhere in mid Pennsylvania, I had to get off the interstate and drive these curvy, hilly, no guardrails, mountain roads. I got back on the highway for the last 10 miles to Morgantown, I had to go to the bathroom, and thankfully saw that there was a rest area ahead. I pulled into the rest area, and there was a big sign that said, “no facilities.” And my 19-year-old self thought, “If I ever write a book, I'm going to call it No Facilities.” Of course, that never happened. But I decided to use it for a blog name.
Tell me about your post-retirement creative pursuits and your blog strategy of “organic growth.”
After I retired, I decided that I was going start a personal blog that would just be telling stories, I ignored all the advice about picking a topic and building an audience. I decided I would just do what I wanted to do, and if people follow me, they will follow me, and if they don't, they don't. It's been about 11 years and I've gone from 30 people a month reading it to a good group of followers.
I’ve written a LOT of blog posts, and people seldom post comments. Why do think you get such good interaction on your posts? [Note: The post I did with Dan, John Mancini Visits the Bar, got 48 individual comments, plus replies from Dan and me, astounding number.]
I think it's the storytelling. People like to hear stories. Some of the comments aren’t even so much about what I wrote, but rather that the post provokes a memory or something they want to share. I have people following me that have a WordPress account but don't have a blog, and they'll share their own stories in the comments. I think people simply want to share the stories they have and they like listening or reading stories.
How did your creativity help back in your workdays in overcoming obstacles?
Because we were very small company, creativity was an attribute that I looked for in the people that joined our team. Our budget for IT was just a tiny portion of the IT budget of the customers we served, so we had to find creative ways to meet their needs. For example, I couldn't buy an ECM system; my IT budget was barely six figures. My total hardware budget per year was $80,000 and my software budget was $25,000. You may recall that my first presentation at an AIIM Conference was on “Robust Communication on a Modest Budget.” We stressed great creativity in hiring because sometimes what we wanted didn’t exist, and sometimes what we wanted, we couldn’t afford. So, we had to build it.
What kinds of people drive you crazy?
People who won’t listen. My definition of what I was trying to do with SharePoint – lessons absorbed from all my ECM friends – was that I was doing things to make somebody else's job easier. But that wasn’t how they approached it. Their usual reaction was, “I don't I don't need any of this. I know where my stuff is. You're making me do all this so other people can find it; give me a break.
What do you know NOW that you wish you knew then?
It would have to be not realizing earlier how easy it is to overthink things and what a huge waste of time it is. I have always tended to be that person who just wants to look at things from 25 different angles, as opposed to three.
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Some other OxyMoron titles in the series…
S2E2 – Digital Transformation in the Publications Business
S2E1 – How can you use Information Governance to change organizational culture
S1E8 – Information Management: How to Bridge the Generational Divide
S1E7 – How Can You Get Your Organization to Take Content Management Seriously
S1E6 – Creating an Information Strategy from Scratch – and at Scale