Yesterday I voted in the upcoming Boston City
Councilor and Mayoral election – two weeks early.  Why?  Because I
will be on the road making presentations at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in San Francisco on
Election Day, actually all that week. But that is not why I am blogging about
it.

As often happens to ECM geeks like me,
we experience ECM moments in doing everyday things such as “voting”.  When I arrived at the election
department in Boston City Hall, much to my surprise I had to wait in queue. (Apparently
absentee voting is more prevalent than I thought. It was my first time.) Standing
in line I looked around the rather large room, brightly lit with fluorescents,
many diligent city employees busy doing what they do, and everywhere, and I mean everywhere -
lining the walls, filling bookshelves, on carts between desks - there were
volumes, no I mean VOLUMES of three ring and spiral bound binders.  Labels such as “voting rosters”, “registration
logs”,and “democratic election results”, many with years appended to them,
helped to identify the value of the content co