By: Jessica Enders
Region 8 Coordinator
On the Wednesday of Symposium, I facilitated a discussion group on "the future of forms". The session had a great turnout, with about 20 attendees from both private and public organizations. It was a lively, diverse and interesting discussion.
Last month I reported on the future of forms as a whole and this month, I am reporting the comments about BFMA in particular. Many thanks to everyone who participated in the group discussion. I hope you feel that I've represented your views accurately.
BFMA in the future
When assuming the role of devil's advocate I asked the group whether BFMA should be wound up, especially as there are many other organisations overlap with BFMA at least partially. The response was a fairly consistent "no".
As one participant described it, forms have a foot in lots of different camps and BFMA is the one way to get it all in one place. Another described how a demonstration of, for example, Adobe Livecycle would be very different if were being done for a general IT/management audience rather than an audience packed with forms professionals. These are reasons that BFMA should continue on.
A key challenge for BFMA is people finding out about it. Many participants felt that this was BFMA's biggest problem at the moment.
One participant suggested that BFMA market to employers to help identify forms professionals in their organisation. Another suggestion was to have BFMA go out and market at IT, business, government and legal conferences. A third participant argued that we need to be evangelists for our profession.
Some participants felt that the areas of process management and user/customer experience will be especially relevant for BFMA in the future.
Other suggestions for BFMA in the future included:
- consider having two parallel programs at Symposium: newbie and experienced;
- use the website as a place for conversation about forms management and debate about terminology and definitions (e.g. via a wiki); and
- buy Google Adwords to ensure BFMA comes up when people search for forms and related terms.
Unfortunately, we ran out of time to discuss these suggestions further. It was clear, however, that participants felt there was much BFMA could do to help improve its own exposure and the exposure of the forms profession.
What now?
The conversation shouldn't stop here.
Please make a comment (below) and let us know what you think about the future of BFMA. What do you think BFMA should look like in 5 years time? What are the challenges you see for maintaining a professional organization? What key things should BFMA be doing over the coming years to ensure it remains relevant and delivers value to its members?
We look forward to your thoughts.
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