The Certified Information Professional is not an island
In “AIIM’s CIP Certification – it’s a map.” I compared AIIM’s CIP certification to a land made up of different villages, and areas, each with their own skilled residents.
When I originally started writing that post, I had a vision of an island where each knowledge domain represented a part of the island, which further contained representations of the “sub-domains”.
And, that’s when I drew the “map” that can be seen in that post.
However, after I had written the post I realized that that map shouldn’t have actually been of an island.
An island, by definition, is not a continuous landmass and is surrounded by water.
The Certified Information Professional is not an island
With an island, there is no connection with other islands or, for that matter, with other countries (especially if you looked at the map I drew). It is separate from everything else.
This was very, very wrong.
The whole idea of an Information Professional, as defined by the CIP certification is, (and as Jesse Wilkins described it in his post “Are you T-shaped?“), someone who has a good, broad, knowledge of the different territories (knowledge domains), someone who has travelled the highways of the land, and knows enough to be able to get around each territory without the use of GPS, or SatNav.
The Certified Information Professional knows enough about the customs of each territory, city, or village that they can communicate and interact easily with the locals of each area. If they need more in-depth local knowledge, they can hire a guide, but they have enough knowledge that they can see how each city, town, or village, interacts with the others.
And this why the CIP map that I drew is not right. The land that I described is not isolated. It makes up part of a “global” environment and it interacts with other “lands”.
Think of it as a landlocked country in a continent made up of multiple countries (Europe for example). It takes advantages of its local talent, and specialized knowledge, but it interacts with the other countries. It requires them for services, and resources, that it doesn’t have. Just as the other countries, in turn, require the local skills and resources that it can provide.
So, from this, you can see that “CIP Land” is not an island. It’s a country. A country surrounded by other countries.
Information Management can’t exist without databases, without networks, without hard drives, or storage areas. Hell, if CIP Land was an island, my friend, the certified Information Professional wouldn’t exist for long.
Clearly my map of “CIP Island” needs to be redrawn…
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