I have heard from several former ARMA officials over the last week or so and I have spoken with a couple of them over the phone. All of these people have one thing in common: they are terrified to speak up, but know it is the right thing to do.

As it turns out, ARMA has had a long-standing nondisclosure agreement that all ARMA leadership is obligated to sign and it explicitly forbids ARMA leadership to speak to any member about ARMA’s finances. I have been told that this NDA is strictly enforced and is in effect in perpetuity.

Despite this, my conversations with these courageous folks have been extremely helpful. I’m making great progress in discovering who “the woman from ARMA” is and with whom she conspired. But I’m also hearing some things that transcend unethical behavior and may cross the line into something far more serious. I’ll continue to keep everyone posted on my progress here on this blog.

In the meantime, consider this. The member of ARMA’s leadership who initiated the attack on my career first reached out to one of IBM’s Executive Vice Presidents about me on Friday, September 15, 2017. A week and a half later ARMA sent out this unsolicited spam email advertising a ‘records management solution’ vendor the Association was partnering with:

Note that the solution was intended to be maintained in IBM Bluemix data centers (highlighted in red). At the time, IBM was desperate to gain adoption of their cloud services and would do anything to make potential cloud customers happy. I have no doubt that the “woman from ARMA” and her co-conspirators at the Association used this agreement to further coerce IBM senior management into forcing me out of the company.

_________________________________________________

I’ve been playing the Infinite Game my whole life. Long before Simon Sinek put a name on it. My philosophy has always remained the same: the people and organizations who oppose me may have more money than I have. They may have smarter staff. And they may have an endless supply of lawyers. But they will never match my patience. The truth, as it always does, will come out eventually.

That said, if you have any inside knowledge of ARMA’s successful efforts to have me terminated from IBM or any other unsavory behavior, your profession and your fellow records management professionals need your help.  Please contact me via my encrypted email at: don(dot)lueders(at sign)protonmail(dot)com. I promise to keep your identity in the strictest confidence.