Insci conference shows changing role

The greatest obstacle in staging a successful users group is getting users to attend the first year. Insci (Westborough, MA,

http://www.insci.com) overcame that stumbling block and lured more than the 50 it had predicted to the first annual CoinServ users conference. Held May 21 to May 23, Connections '97 went beyond Insci's flagship COLD products by including sessions on topics such as the future of integrated document archive and retrieval systems (IDARS), hierarchical storage management (HSM) systems, data mining and imaging systems. The conference addressed overall industry trends, as well as changes in the use of COLD data.

"The digital document has come of age," said Insci President John Gillis, following the conference. "What's happening is COLD used to be a way to do what you used to, only electronically. But, today with Internet, CDs, data mining, workflow, these allow us to take a quantum leap beyond viewing and faxing of analog."