Monday, April 20, 2009
LegalIT 3.0: 90+ Legal Tech Tips in 90 Minutes
Ross L. Kodner
Metadata removal - Metadata Assistant from Payne Group
Google Chrome browser
Ultimate Gear Management Clothing - carry all of your gadgets! Fill all the pockets before going through airport security
NeatReceipts - scanner plugs into PC $230 US - the software takes the receipt and recognized the information on the receipt, categorizes it, puts it into a spreadsheet that can be exported as a Quickbooks format - extremely accurate
Remote-Controlled Golf Ball - fool the people you are golfing with
Electronic charging stations for all your gadgets
Disposing of old PC systems - beware packed with confidential client information - how can you eradicate this information - "electronic shredders" delete the data - he recommends the Red Dragon Jet Torch Kits
iPhone - he thinks the keyboard has to improve before widespread adoption by lawyers
Virtual law practices - onebox.com - your staff can be anywhere, acts as your receptionist
Lifehacker.com - focussed on tips for everything useful in your life and business - worth someone 10 minutes every day in your office to monitor for tips you can use.
Document management & email management - Worldox - how much substantive content is buried in your email folder? This product is good for a firm 250 lawyers or smaller. There are other products for larger firms
Virtual Legal Assistants - LegalTypist and Virtual Paralegal Services - e.g. call in and dictate; send electronic email - trained North American legal paralegals & assistants. Typically charged by word (1-3 cents per word) [Connie's note: check out Canadian legal paralegal Halo Secretarial]
Ross Ipsa Loquietur - his own blog
YouSendIt.com - send large attachments for free, secure - comes from you, far more secure than open Internet email
Logmein.com - an alternative to GoToMyPC.com - run the programs on your office system from home
Crosley USB Turntable - transfer your album tracks to your iPod via USB
Netbooks - small laptops (9 or 10-inch screens) e.g. Lenova Ideapad - runs Windows XP home edition - incredible amount of computer power for tiny amount of money - sweet spot is around $400. Easier for travel; turn on and turn off much faster.
Long-lasting keyboards - http://www.cvtinc.com/products/keyboards/stellar.htm
Xavier Beauchamp-Tremblay
He gave a number of Firefox and Twitter tips, and also:
Zotero - personal research assistant inside your browser - add commentary to sources
KeyPass Portable - secure password manager
http://www.cba.org/abc/activities_f/code - proposed minimum technology skills base for lawyers
Simply File
Inbox Zero - tricks for reducing your email from the people at 43 Folders
Yubnub - social command line for the web - he is sing it with CanLII, for example
http://feedity.com - uses with RSS such as with Canlii - post a feed to a website
http://search-pdf-books.com - PDF search engine
PDF Hammer - edit PDF documents online
OmniFormat - "a free document conversion utility which allows dynamic conversion and image manipulation of over 75 file formats including HTML, DOC, XLS, WPD, PDF, JPG, GIF, TIF, PNG, PCX, PPT, PS, TXT, Photo CD, FAX and MPEG"
Zamzar.com - change files from any format to any other format
Evernote - capture hand-written notes, place notes onto web pages.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Legal IT 3.0 Conference - Montreal April 20 & 21, 2009
I will be speaking at the upcoming Legal IT 3.0 conference in Montreal. I will be part of a panel with Steve Matthews and Kevin O’Keefe discussing how lawyers and law firms can go beyond having a website to build a better web presence.
For more information, please see my Crosby Group Connection blog post, or better yet visit the Legal IT website directly.
If you can make it, I hope to see you there.
Cheers,
Connie
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Third Tuesday Toronto: Talk by Mathew Ingram of the Globe & Mail
Mathew Ingram is a former columnist, reporter and blogger. He is @mathewi on Twitter. http://www.mathewingram.com/work. He is now the communities editor for the Globe & Mail.
This is a repeat of the session he did at Podcamp Toronto but will give us lots of opportunity to ask questions.
What is the Globe & Mail doing in social media?
Public Policy Wiki: http://policywiki.theglobeandmail.com
The idea for the wiki already existed when he started, but became his project when he started. A way to let people tell them their thinking about important policies such as with regard to the federal budget and Canadian involvement in Afghanistan. They are now looking at the environment.
The LA Times Wikitorial was a bad wiki experience in newspapers - people started defacing the site, gave a bad reputation to wikis in news circles.
The Globe & Mail took a chance and still went ahead with their wiki.
Cover It Live - a Toronto-based company (formerly Altcaster) live-blogging tool - the way of doing the same things they do with a news story but in a more interactive way. Pulls in photos, tweets from Twitter, comments, etc. in addition to the newspaper's own coverage. During one discussion they had the former head of digital for Rogers take part; it would have taken a lot of effort to book him in advance.
Twitter - growing number of their writers and staff are on Twitter. Do you get someone to tweet under the company name, or do they tweet under their own names, or do you do both? They have some automated feeds (e.g. Globe technology feed), but they also have personal Twitter feeds. The reason why people like Twitter, it is the personal connection. If you make it too "corporate" you are missing out on what makes it powerful. It is also possible to track "flash crowds" on Twitter i.e. can track fast-moving opinions e.g. Motrin Moms fiasco. Tools such as Tweetdeck help to track.
Why are they doing it?
Newspapers have always been social, but conversations always take place elsewhere. Social networking tools are helping to connect them to the conversations.
Connecting with readers can benefit the readers and also the Globe. Frequently what they pick are often different than what people pick themselves to talk about. They can also get direct feedback from readers; if they can find people who are touched by a story and have information for them, they can get a better story. It becomes a win-win situation.
What have they learned?
Wikis are easy to start. Policy wiki runs on Tikiwiki, an easy to use tool. The hard part is the "gardening", keeping it going, getting people to respond and feel comfortable in sharing things there and doing things there. These tools are not hard to use, but hard to keep going.
He didn't think people would care that much about the federal budget, but they had people create 35-40 policy proposals. That surprised him. They asked for input by a certain time (a time limit), it was topical, and they set the goal of sending the 2 best policy proposals to the government.
By contrast, they had very few participants, however, for Afghanistan and the current environment issue. There isn't a tangible goal or end. He believes they didn't get a lot of vandalism because a lot of people didn't know it was there. They also purposely set it up as a very serious discussion. The vast majority have been well thought-out contributions.
Cover It Live - some people want to experience the news in a different way. Some people with a live event are okay with a bit more chaos than the typical, organized news story. It feels like they are more part of the news story. Some people hate it, they see too many people's comments, they just want to see the reporters' takes.
Twitter - people like to connect with people. Just a corporate entity - smaller number of people following it. They are trying to find a happy media between corporate and personalities.
What is coming?
They are going to try everything, regardless how silly the name sounds. Allows them to understand what their readers are using and how they are using.
They have a new Globe & Mail beta iPhone app.
More writers using Twitter.
Why not think about a story about a blog? Blogs give you a better sense that journalism is a process, doesn't really stop.
Q & A
Q: As the paper of record, how does the Globe & Mail archive all of this stuff?
A: It doesn't right now. The idea of "paper of record" is an anachronism, from a time when there was no other way to find information.
Q: How do you tell people what the value is of things like Twitter?
A: There are a lot of people who are ambivalent or actively hostile. Twitter sounds inconsequential and very hard to get past that. People are used to something important sounding important. He finds someone else who is new to it, the lightbulb has gone on, and have them talk about why they are doing it. Frequently when you first learn why it is useful, you are the best salesman. Since it is his job to promote it, more difficult for him to promote it than someone who spontaneously talks about it. There is nothing that is going to reach people if they don't see the value. He suggests they try it, and if they don't find value, stop using it. Not everyone needs to use Twitter.
Q: What are the risks of putting your information out their e.g. privacy
A: Those are important things to be concerned about, privacy is an important issue. We have lost a lot of privacy. These tools are turning everything into a small town, both in good and bad ways. People pull together and help each other out, but also you get everyone knowing each others' business, pettiness, gossip. Everyone is going to find their own place on the spectrum maintaining their privacy.
Q: In the future, are hospitals, schools, newspapers going to go away?
A: Hospitals and schools are not going to go away. Newspapers will fit in somewhere even if not as prominent as they have been, just the way fewer people now go to theatre.
Q: Was there any thought in making the leap to the communities editor role?
A: There was some trepidation about the risk, but mostly he was excited. He fairly quickly got past the fear of being visible online by writing a column online for 5 years with comments from readers. He's now beyond the point where negative comments irritates him, and he can see the jewels from someone who makes an intelligent comment. He hopes to get everyone at the Globe & Mail to that point, where they can see the value among the noise.
Q: You are a journalist, not a regular blogger. How do you manage that risk?
A: There is no existing law that says who is liable if someone makes a comment online. He argues it is the Globe & Mail's duty to get sued so that law can be developed in this area. There is a little law in the U.S., but there isn't much knowledge of what would happen.
Q: Have you ever had negative comments on a story about a company that was also a big advertiser?
A: Companies do get concerned about negative comments on the story. They explain that is how the Internet works. The Globe has gotten good over the years of separating the journalism side from the advertiser side; however, may becoming more difficult with online.
Q: What do you do to attract more interesting comments on the stories?
A: The number one thing people suggested when he started that the comments needed to improve, that the trolls and garbage had to be dealt with.
One problem is a tools problem - their publishing system is older and doesn't necessarily do what they would like it to do; they need to add tools so that people can vote and elevate the good comments. They want to incorporate a reputation management tool so that people who do not identify themselves are at the bottom; people who jump through certain hoops get elevated and receive incentives for writing better quality comments. Currently they are doing the equivalent of giving them a blank wall and a spray can. He is actually surprised at the number of thoughtful comments that do get posted. The other problem is an attitudinal problem.
When they close down the comments to a discussion, so people just tend to move the conversation. They need to find a better way to explain why they close comments, and to keep the conversation on the site. The need to deal with it better.
Q. How do you decide when to cut your losses and move on to the next thing?
A. They haven't given up on anything yet. The Policy Wiki isn't super busy, but if it became a ghost town they would shut it down or turn it into something that would bring people. He doesn't see how Twitter is ever going to fail unless people move on to something else.
When he says "do everything" he does not necessarily mean use every tool every time. They have to think about what the tool does, what they want to achieve, then try it out. They may use it differently next time.
Q: How are the number of people reading online changed compared to reading the print newspaper?
A: Online readers have definitely increased. They have roughly the same number of people who just read online as who just read in print. There is a growing number who read both. He doesn't expect in his lifetime to see no printed version of the Globe.
Q: What about internal use - is social media being used internally to collaborate on stories?
A: Not really in a great way or terribly effective way. They have a wiki-type-thing (MS Sharepoint) and they are trying to do it, but not working that well since people don't know it is there, don't care, don't feel comfortable with it. They are battling the same types of issues internally as they are externally. He is trying to evangelise inside the Globe as well as outside, trying to show people why these things are valuable.
Q: Are you watching what conversations are taking place about your stories?
A: Yes, if they watch the traffic and keep stories on the page longer. Do they report the stories differently? Not always, but possibly. He remembers the comments affecting how they covered a story when someone pointed out they only covered one side of the story. The reporter added another interview to get another perspective. She could have seen the commenters just as trolls, but she used it as valuable feedback. Another example just after they launched the comments, someone in the comments gave an essential piece of information for a story that they wouldn't have otherwise gotten.
Q: When you first started at The Globe, your job wasn't well defined. How do you know you have been successful?
A: He still has a job. A job is the new bonus. He doesn't know how to measure whether what they are doing has an effect yet or not. Does his posting a link from Twitter affect readership--would they have found the story anyway? How does he know he has any affect at all? Their biggest story to date, he couldn't find any large site that he can give credit to. He thinks it was due to Twitter and blogs, but he can't prove it.
They are trying to measure engagement. How do you measure that? Time spent on a page, clickthrough, feedback? You measure all of those things.
Q: Would people be able to engage reporters online to make comments to articles?
A: He can't think of any example specifically, but if you are part of the conversation, you will be part of what they take into account when writing a story. If you are putting a spin on something, you will probably rate lower in the mix.
Q: How does the speed of things affect the old style of journalism?
A: He feels things are actually now better. Two benefits of how we are doing it now:
- it is a lot easier to find things and do investigation now. Now everyone is online, so it is easier to find key people
- news should be much more of a process; stories develop, get updated, new information comes to light. You are not pretending the story is whole and shaped in a certain way and will never change.
People have been hinting at what the benefits for The Globe or any company. They have customers (readers), reaching those people is good. There are going to be things they don't want to hear, but the process is good for them and for companies in general.
Live-blogged at Third Tuesday Toronto. Any inaccuracies or omissions are solely my error made during my note-taking and should not reflect on the speaker. Thanks to the Berkeley Church Heritage Event centre for the free wifi so I could liveblog this!
March 25 update: Rannie Turingan, who also took my current bio photo on this blog, took outstanding photos from the evening. See them on his website www.rannieturingan.com including this one of me in action liveblogging this post!
Ada Lovelace Day 2009: Dr. Margaret Ann Wilkinson
Back when I was doing my Master of Library Science at the University of Toronto, my library management professor John Wilkinson told me if I was interested in law librarianship, I should meet his daughter. It turns out that Dr. Margaret Ann Wilkinson had both a library and a law degree in addition to her PhD, and had just started teaching for both the library and law faculties at the University of Western Ontario.
Now a full-time professor at Western Law, she is currently Director of the Area of Concentration in Intellectual Property, Information and Technology Law. Dr. Wilkinson still teaches LIS 9868 Ownership and Governance of Information at FIMS (Western's Faculty of Information & Media Studies) and is listed as a PhD supervisor for FIMS. She is also an Adjunct Professor at The Richard Ivey School of Business.
Dr. Wilkinson writes in a number of areas concerning IP law including copyright, privacy and personal data protection. She wrote Chapter 12 "Filtering the Flow from the Fountains of Knowledge: Access and Copyright in Education and Libraries" in Irwin Law's groundbreaking work In the Public Interest, edited by Michael Geist. She has also written on ethics, professionalism, and librarianship.
Looking through her list of publications, I also smile at “Genie in the Bottle: Intellectual Property and the Flow of Information," Canadian Law Libraries 28: 206-211 which she wrote in 2003 following her talk at the Canadian Association of Law Libraries 2003 annual conference at the invitation of the program committee I worked on. Our theme had to do with wine bottles (we were holding the conference in Niagara, after all) and she gracefully worked with the unusual title we pinned on her session.
Students who have taken courses with Dr. Wilkinson speak very highly of her. She has been an important part of two important faculties, and has had an influence on many library and law students over a number of years. Thank you to Dr. Wilkinson!
What is Ada Lovelace Day?
From the Ada Lovelace Day website:
Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology.
Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines. Entrepreneurs, innovators, sysadmins, programmers, designers, games developers, hardware experts, tech journalists, tech consultants. The list of tech-related careers is endless.
Recent research by psychologist Penelope Lockwood discovered that women need to see female role models more than men need to see male ones. That’s a relatively simple problem to begin to address. If women need female role models, let’s come together to highlight the women in technology that we look up to. Let’s create new role models and make sure that whenever the question “Who are the leading women in tech?” is asked, that we all have a list of candidates on the tips of our tongues.
To see a list of all Ada Lovelace Day 2009 blog posts worldwide, see: http://ada.pint.org.uk/list.php.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Information Management Fundamentals - March 27, 2009
To take any of the courses in the Practitioner's Toolkit courses or the Manager's Toolkit Courses, you need to have at least one of the two introductory IM courses as a prerequisite. The Professional Learning Centre have added another class of the Information Management Fundamentals course this coming Friday, March 27th. Don't miss it! Even if you just want to take courses ad-hoc without doing the full certificate, you need this course first.
Connie Crosby's 7 Reasons for Taking an Information Management Certificate
What keeps coming up is the question, "Why?". Why am I taking this program? Didn't I already learn information management in library school? How is it that I am consulting in information management, and yet need to take courses? All excellent questions!
Here, then, are my top 7 reasons for taking this program:
- Information management is a relatively new discipline. When I embarked on my Master of Library Science (MLS) degree twenty years ago, it was not on the radar of any library science program. While many of the skills of librarians are transferable to information management (or IM), we do not necessarily have formal training in this area.
- I am more studied in Knowledge Management. Much of my reading and learning has been in the area of Knowledge Management (or KM). Often times KM embraces IM, or IM embraces KM, depending on the organization. I learned from Deirdre Grimes that they are two separate disciplines that have developed in parallel. As I learn more about IM, I see a lot of overlap between the two. But, there are a lot of differences as well.
- I want to supplement my practical experience. I have practical experience in IM, including many of the projects I work on for clients, but I do not have formal training in this area. Most people working in this area do not. What the program is offering me is a methodical look through each of the areas encompassed by IM, so I can learn about areas I have not yet experienced. I am also broadening my understanding and pulling together ideas that I already know, as well as finding out about practical tools for use in my work.
- Learning from the other participants. We come from a range of organizations and disciplines, and can all learn from one another. It is not just librarians taking this program, but records managers, those in IT and, yes, some consultants. We come from government, non-profits, and businesses. The course, much like an MBA program, is set up so that we all get to discuss our experiences and learn from one another. This technique helps to bring the curriculum to life.
- Timing of the program is flexible. I can jump in and finish up the whole program by the end of June, or I can do the courses as I have time. The whole set is being taught again in the fall, and again both in the spring and fall next year. I am playing it by ear and signing up for the courses as I feel it will best fit in with my client work.
- The instructors. The instructors come from a range of industries, so I get the benefit of hearing from another point of view. These people are expert practitioners in their areas, so they are putting this information to practical use themselves and bringing their extensive experience to the program.
- I am applying what I learn immediately. I have been able to take the assignments and adapt them to work I am already doing, thereby learning directly from the course and giving the immediate benefit to my clients. I wish a lot of what I am learning I already knew when I was library manager.
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
Slaw.ca currently unavailable
Thank you to readers and contributors alike for your patience. We hope to have the site up as soon as possible.
Cheers,
Connie
Update 10:30 am: The site is back up. We are still investigating the cause of the problem.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Understanding the Facebook Terms of Service from Rocketboom
Monday, February 09, 2009
Government and Public Policy in a New Collaborative Age
Recently in Toronto ChangeCamp was held to "Re-imagine government and citizenship in the age of participation." If that doesn't quite sink in, watch this quick promo video by Mark MacKay:
ChangeCamp '09 from Mark McKay on Vimeo.
Results from the one day are being tracked on the ChangeCamp wiki. Mark Kuznicki, one of the most influential leaders of the event, was interviewed by Nora Young for Spark over on CBC Radio. The full interview and blog post are here. Some additional impact on the media is also traced on the ChangeCamp blog here.
It is amazing to see change taking place, and it is not just Toronto. Social media professor of Stanford and Berkeley Howard Rheingold discusses the affect of the Internet Age on Public Policy in this video discussion:
New Information Management Certificate at University of Toronto's PLC
Overview:
Information Management Fundamentals
Overview of ECM Technologies
Information Management Analyses
Classification, Taxonomy and Metadata – Basic
Classification, Taxonomy and Metadata – Advanced (Elective)
Information Architecture – Basic
Information Architecture – Advanced (Elective)
Manager's Toolkit:
Strategic and Business Planning for Information Management
Setting the Management Framework for Information Management
Getting Commitment for Information Management in Your Organization
The whole thing starts up next week. I was speaking last week with Eva Piorkowski (who I know better as Eva Kupidura but alas will have to re-learn her name!), and she was telling me they are committed to running the courses at least twice each year over the next two years minimum. So, if you start now there is plenty of time to work your way through the program.
Or, if just one or two courses grabs you, you can always take the individual courses without following the full certificate.
All the courses look outstanding, but what really grabbed my attention is the last course listed above which will be taught by Peter de Jager, who I have seen speak a few times now on change management. I expect that course will be a real highlight.
As an instructor and someone who helps to get the word out, I have to be honest and let you know I am receiving some free time in the program. But I was all planned to pay the whole thing out of pocket personally, I am that jazzed about it. And I'm looking forward to working through what I learn, and expect the results will show up in some of the writing I do including here on the blog. I'm hoping to see others out and learn from you, as well.
Cheers,
Connie
Wikis as Intranets
I thank Heather and Hicks Morley for sharing their innovative ideas with all of us. It is an inspiration as to what can done with a smaller time-frame and smaller budget than available at a really big law firm. This sort of innovation starts to level the playing field with implementing current technologies inside the organization.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
New Dean Starts at University of Toronto's Faculty of Information
For immediate release from the University of Toronto
January 21, 2009
SEAMUS ROSS JOINS U OF T’S FACULTY OF INFORMATION AS EIGHTH DEAN
(Toronto, ON) –– The Faculty of Information, University of Toronto, is pleased to welcome Dr. Seamus Ross as its eighth dean, for a seven-year term. He commenced his term on January 1, 2009.
Dr. Ross' areas of research include preserving cultural heritage and scientific digital objects, humanities informatics, and the application of information technology to libraries, archives and museums.
“The Faculty of Information had what I was seeking in my next challenge ― contributing to research and teaching in a highly relevant field given society’s reliance on information consumption, a young faculty offering fresh ideas and insights, and graduate students eager to contribute to society,” says Dean Ross.
His top priorities include increasing research initiatives and grants, expanding facilities and space, and establishing an undergraduate program. Dr. Ross also hopes to build upon the Faculty’s long-standing commitment to students by hiring more faculty members to offer an even broader range of learning opportunities.
Dean Ross is the founding director of the Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute (HATII), at the University of Glasgow. Under his leadership, HATII conducted innovative research into the use of information and communication technology (ICT) within the humanities, archives, libraries, and museums, and promoted collaborative IT-based research within the Arts and Humanities. From 2004 until the end of 2008, Dean Ross was also the Associate Director of the United Kingdom’s Digital Curation Centre.
This news item is also posted here. See also the appointment notice from the Provost's Office (May 2008).
Monday, January 19, 2009
New: Lawyer Addiction Blog
In his Stem Legal news release, Steve explains:
According to the American Bar Association Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs, the rate of addiction amongst lawyers is estimated to be 50% higher than the general population.Steve is teaming up with his newest client, The Meadows Addiction Treatment Center in Arizona, to work toward these goals with the Lawyer Addiction Blog:
- to increase general awareness of Lawyer addiction problems;
- to raise the profile of related web content sources, including the growing network of Lawyer Assistance Programs based in North America and around the world;
- to help align The Meadows brand and professional staff with the modern web publishing and the flow of information to the legal profession.
Congratulations to Steve on a significant addition to the Stem Legal roster.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Seen Reading: Torontonians are still reading books
Julie Wilson, who works in the publishing industry, likes to observe what people are reading as well as who is reading, and she makes note on her blog Seen Reading. As a writer, she takes some poetic license by writing the person into a little scenario. Her blog is very readable, especially if you are interested in books and people as I am.
Adam Schwabe of Dear Toronto blog created a video allowing Julie to explain what she is doing and how she puts her blog together:
I thought this would be interesting to all of us in the book business, whether publishing or library.
This video and another write-up of Seen Reading was found via Jaime Woo.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Who is Canada's Most Influential Woman in Social Media?
I encourage you to head on over to Dave's post to check out who else is in the running to be Canada's next top social media diva! Lots of my friends and women I admire are there--it is quite a list. Vote for your favourite. Hey, and if you happen to want to vote for me, fantastic.
By the way, you do not have to be Canadian to vote. In fact, the further afield you are, the more widespread the influence is proven I suspect. ;-)
On a related note, after opening this up, Dave also started up a contest for Canada's most influential men in social media. You can vote on that one, too.
Cheers!
Connie
Monday, December 22, 2008
2008 Blawggies - Law-related Blogging Awards Announced
Not only was Slaw (the cooperative Canadian law blog I help author) named the "Best Overall Law-Related Blog" (wow!), but also he posted Canadian law-related blogs as the best overall category, with special mention to Canadian law librarian bloggers. Nice. There is definitely a Canadian flavour to the full list. Here is the full list, but I encourage you to read his explanations and check out the runners-up:
THE 2008 BLAWGGIE AWARDS
1. Best Overall Law-Related Blog - SLAW
2. The Marty Schwimmer Best Practice-Specific Blog - Evan Brown's Internet Cases
3. Best Law Practice Management Blog - Bruce MacEwen's Adam Smith, Esq.
4. Best Legal Blog Category - Canadian Law-related Blogs
5. Best Legal Blog Digest - Stark County Law Library Weblog
6. Best Blawg About Legal Blawgging - Kevin O'Keefe's Real Lawyers Have Blogs
7. Best Legal Podcast - Tie: This Week in Law and Bob Ambrogi's and Craig Williams' Lawyer2Lawyer Podcast
8. The Sherry Fowler Best Writing on a Legal Blog Award - Chuck Newton Rides the Third Wave
9. Best Law Professor Blog - Jim Maule's Mauled Again
10. Best New Law-related Blog - Jordan Furlong's Law 21
11. The DennisKennedy.Blog Best Legal Technology Blog - Futurelawyer
12. Most Important Trend in Law-related Blogging - Microblogging
Congratulations to all the winners! And thanks to Dennis Kennedy for putting these awards together again.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
New Facebook Feature: Embed Videos onto Other Sites
I took the embed code and put it into the HTML editor here on Blogger. It is supposed to also honour any security settings I have on facebook. I marked this video so that 'everyone' can see it. I am curious to know if you can/cannot see it. Can you?
Original size above; increased size (with HTML tweaking) below.
Monday, December 08, 2008
2008 CLawBies - Nominations Now Open for the Canadian Law Blog Awards
Steve Matthews of Stem Legal is again running his Canadian Law Blog Awards (a.k.a. the CLawBies). He is, however, changing things up by asking us, his readers, to nominate our favourite Canadian law blogs. From his post:
2008 Nominations
Between now and Friday December 27th, you may nominate a Canadian authored legal blog in one of two possible ways.
- Simply email your favourite blog (yes, you can nominate your own) with some of your finest 2008 posts or any other notable highlights to Steve Matthews at steve@stemlegal.com.
- Or method number two, and this is much more fun … write a blog post about three other Canadian law blogs you currently read and tell us why those blogs are important to you. Now, here’s the bonus: in doing so, you are expected to be a humble Canadian and tell us NOTHING about your own blog. In return, your blog will receive a thorough review, as will your suggested peers, AND you get a chance to plug a fellow Canadian blogger!
Noted: No, we’re not voting like the ABA… but linking out to fellow Canadian legal bloggers adds to our infrastructure, and let’s us share audiences. That way, the process helps everyone, and the award is simply a final recognition.
My nominations
Oh, who to nominate? It's a tough one!! Here's my stab at it--
- Law is Cool - this blog has gone far beyond being simply a student blog, and has become an essential part of the Canadian law blog fabric over the past year. It is a must-read!
- Precedent: The New Rule of Law and Style - this blog, which is now also a magazine for young lawyers, consistently has Canadian legal news before other sources. This blog gets big style points from me for a streamlined, simple but sophisticated "look-and-feel". It's no wonder the ABA Journal included it in its recent "Blawg 100" list.
- Slaw.ca - it may be a bit of a conflict including this one in the list, but even if I didn't contribute to Slaw, I would be a huge fan (and am a huge fan). It was also included in the ABA Journal "Blawg 100" list. There is a continual stream of essential reading and provocative posts. Slaw stepped things up in the past year by adding a number of new contributors, and has had some excellent columns. I should start highlighting some of my favourite content from the past year for those of you who may have missed some of it.
There are so many others I would have liked to nominate!! Here are just a few--
- Law Firm Web Strategy blog - Yes, Steve Matthews' own blog is on my must-read list. I am always learning something new from Steve. I find his focus extremely inspirational--I am not so nearly focused either in my blogs or in my real life interests. Still, it is something to strive for! Steve is extremely smart and is generous in sharing his thinking with all of us both on this blog and over on Slaw.
- Thoughtful Legal Management by Dave Bilinsky - Dave is very thoughtful in his posts. I love his synthesis of thought and his style on this blog.
- Halo Secretarial Blog - I had never really thought about virtual legal assistants until I met one in the blogosphere! Laurie Mapp uses her business blog to talk about social media, work efficiency, and how virtual legal assistants are playing an increasing role. I like that her blog strikes a perfect balance between a personal and a professional tone. She has recently launched a new look--love the new green!
- All About Information - Dan Michaluk has done a great job of putting together a consistent, focussed blog on access to information and protection of confidential business information. He is one of the few out there talking specifically about case law, and is a great model for what could be done in other subject areas.
- Library Boy - Michel-Adrien Sheppard is a master of pulling together key resources on timely subjects. If you are doing legal research on "hot" topics, you should check his blog first.
Monday, December 01, 2008
Happy Movember!
Only a day late--November was "Movember". The Canadian campaign raised $550,000 in November 2007. Your Canadian donation goes to the Prostate Cancer Research Foundation of Canada.
Friday, November 21, 2008
JD Supra Launches Facebook App
I haven't had a chance to try it out myself yet, but Steve Matthews has done a write-up with screen shots over at his Law Firm Web Strategy blog. I can't wait to try it out--it gives me the opportunity to post a feed of the documents I have loaded in JD Supra (screen shot of Steve's feed):
as well as have my JD Supra profile reposted (again I have snagged Steve's):
I can't wait to try it out over the weekend! If you are in a law firm, are a lawyer, or work with a law-related organization, I encourage you to have a look at JD Supra. It is a way to share your expertise with others and raise your profile at the same time in a very Web 2.0 way.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Innovation in Tough Economic Times
This Thursday I will be facilitating a roundtable discussion at the next Toronto Girl Geek Dinners. I have been attending meetings of this group for about a year, and have found them to be very collegial. It is a fantastic group of interesting women from a range of industries. The group also encourages younger members by having a number of students sponsored for the evening.
Usually we have a speaker, but the group has gotten so comfortable with one another that we thought an opportunity for us to talk with one another would be a nice change of pace. Inspiration for the discussion:
The ability to do sustained innovation is the one competitive edge left. Innovation is the driver of performance, growth and stock market valuation." - Bruce Nussbaum, 10 Worst Innovation Mistakes in A Recession (Business Week)
The details:
Toronto Girl Geek Dinner #9
November 20, 2008
Hot House Cafe at 7:00 p.m.
Sign up on the wiki
The 9th Toronto Girl Geek Dinner, sponsored by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, will feature a discussion about how we, as leaders in our respective areas of technology, can continue to innovate during tough economic times.
Some of the topics we will cover include taking smart risks, using a downturn as a catalyst for innovation, finding a solid strategy, and the opportunities for people inside organizations and for entrepreneurs.
To wrap up our Toronto Girl Geek Dinners for 2008, PricewaterhouseCoopers has graciously agreed to pick up the tab for everyone's dinner. We all thank them for their generosity are thrilled to have them on-board and participating in our event!
Monday, November 10, 2008
If the Matrix was on Windows
More on Ubuntu.
Hat tip to Kevin Lim for the link.
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
New Business Books - Don Tapscott and Shel Holtz
Monday night I attended the book launch party for Don Tapscott's latest offering, Grown Up Digital. Long-time readers of this blog will know I "crashed" his last book launch for Wikinomics almost two years ago. This time around I didn't have to resort to such drastic measures since invitations were going around Facebook. (As an aside, when I search for "Tapscott" on my blog, I discover how deep this fandom really goes).
This book is a follow-up to his previous book Growing Up Digital. The premise is that those currently between the ages of 11 and 30 (the "Net Generation") have new ways of thinking and interacting. This is going to have an impact on society, so it is in the interest of all of us to understand this change. After all, this age group was the differentiating factor in getting Obama elected U.S. president last night. Tapscott and his team interviewed almost 10,000 people in putting this book together. I was fortunate to be able to purchase a copy and have him sign it, so have started working my way through it already. For more information, see the website grownupdigital.com.
Tuesday night I attended a special Toronto Third Tuesday dinner for corporate communications celeb Shel Holtz. He was in town to speak at a conference, and a group of us were privileged to have him tell us about the work he did on his new book Tactical Transparency that he wrote with John C. Havens. He explained that companies are reluctant to embrace transparency because they believe this means giving away their business secrets. On the contrary, he explained there are areas that do need to stay confidential such as client information, business intelligence, personal information and health information, and that keeping these confidential is very different than acting in a transparent way.
You can find more information on the tacticaltransparency.com website. I am particularly impressed they have shared the audio of the interviews they conducted with 50 business executives for the book at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/transparency. I'm looking forward to reading and listening through all that and sharing my thoughts over on Connections, my Crosby Group blog.
Finally, during his talk Shel also mentioned another book coming out from his publisher Jossey-Bass that sounds of interest, The Credible Company: Communicating with a Skeptical Workforce by Roger D'Aprix. Essentially it looks to be about internal communication during difficult times of change. On the one hand I wonder if there are ever any times of change that are not difficult, but on the other hand acknowledge that we are coming into particularly difficult times. A book like this that can help show management the way to working with staff to ease the stress at a time when morale may be low is particularly well-timed.
What new business titles are you excited about? Please share with us!
Monday, October 27, 2008
Community Divas Episode 6: Adele McAlear on Video
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Internet Librarian 2008 - Closing Keynote with Liz Lawley
Internet Librarian 2008: Liz Lawley closing keynoteTalking about the tangible of today's society.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Internet Librarian 2008 - Day 3 Afternoon
This is Steven Cohen on Google Reader. I haven't listened to it yet for sound quality, but his best line was at the very end. This is from his presentation What's Hot With RSS.
Internet Librarian 2008: Defining & Measuring Social Media Success
jeffw@pitt.edu
How do you measure? Is 2 comments a week good, bad?
Why be social?
- marketing yourself without doing traditional marketing
- Google page rank improves the more social you are; critical for libraries
- most of the people using social media, vast majority are anxious to interact with you and your organization online. There is a delicate balancing act, you need to take care to not interject yourself into someone's personal social space. People appreciate brands being in available online and authentic e.g. Zappos.
- Facebook is the social glue for those coming to university for the first time - see: http://www.physorg.com/news143200776.html - there is a lot of potential here for us to do interesting stuff
- listen - is there a conversation online about your library? What is the nature of it? If there isn't a converation, that is okay
- prepare - define a strategy: goals, pick a platform (or two), the right platform depends on your goals - Sun Microsystems has a great presentation on picking a platform: http://www.slideshare.net/lordorica/social-media-at-sun-microsystems
- engage - start blogging, leaving comments on blogs, responding, uploading photos to Flickr, etc.
- measure - this is the hard part! Traditional measurement (ROI) doesn't work very well.
Need to measure success to sell our ideas. What are your goals? What are we getting out of this activity?
What you are not measuring:
- friendship
- happiness
- karma
- enlightenment
- girl power!
Behavior - quantitative:
- number of blog posts - Boyd's Conversation Index - measures relative success of blog posts and comments + trackbacks - should be greater than 1 - otherwise you may be investing more than you are getting back for your library
- will depend on your goals e.g. if you add photos to Flickr to increase traffic to your native digital photo collection, don't just look at stats on Flickr but also look to see what kind of traffic was referred from Flickr to your site.
Activities
- monitoring search engine results - focus on Google - Google is search engine used by everyone BUT ALSO they take into account social media results - the only one where they show up with great regularity.
- technorati - which blogs are linking to your blogs; are they in your target audience? - for blogs and feeds - authority score & qualitative
- delicious - is your content bookmark-worthy? How many people have bookmarked it? Comments posted?
- check conversations on twitter - Seattle Public Library has great results on Twitter
- create Google alerts - e.g. "university of pittsburgh" library and Pitt library - choose "comprehensive" - get results from news, blogs, web, video and groups
Ottawa Course - Social Networking Tools: Hands on learning
For details about the class and registering, please see the Professional Learning Centre course description.
Cheers,
Connie
Internet Librarian 2008 - Connie's Day 2 Wrap-up
Internet Librarian - Connie's Day 2 Wrap-upConnie talks about being newly inspired at Internet Librarian. Check out http://www.shanachietour.com for more info.
For more details about the Shanachie Tour see http://www.shanachietour.com/.
I no sooner posted this, then I had a response from Kathryn Greenhill based in Australia who saw my video discussion just as she was about to head off to a meeting. She created a response video:
Re: Internet Librarian - Connie's Day 2 Wrap-upYes - we should be using video more - I'm with you
and here is my response to that which I think furthers the discussion on improving our new literacies:
Re: Internet Librarian - Connie's Day 2 Wrap-upResponding to Kathryn Greenhill's video about the challenge of interviewing people spontaneously with video.
I hope that someone else will find us on seesmic and continue the conversation!
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Internet Librarian - Stephen Abram on Enterprise Trends
This presentation will be posted to Stephen Abram's blog http://stephenslighthouse.sirsidynix.com/.
Connie's note: These are notes from Stephen's talk. Any errors or omissions are mine.
You need to be ahead of the curve.
The opportunity finally exists to use social software inside the organization. We can finally use some of this social software to lift ourselves up.
We can't wait for everyone to change at once. You've got to keep up. Anyone who doesn't use the Internet is looking to be unemployed; if you don't have a Facebook account you are looking to be irrelevant. However, it takes a while for things to filter through and people to adapt.
If information isn't in text, how are you accessing it?
Stephen Abram on Enterprise TrendsAt the Internet Librarian 2008 conference in Monterey, CA. Stephen Abram speaking on world trends in learning. il2008
We see a fundamental shift in how questions are asked and answered. People will ask questions on Facebook and MySpace. Open Social, G3 phone coming out today - if everybody's stuff is on their phone e.g. geotagging - customize a search and customize search engine rankings. You can change the search engine rankings of your organizations based on geographic location e.g. Obama campaign money spent on localized search engine rankings - political searches show up different results in different neighbourhoods. Does democracy start to become at risk?
What is not advertising-based search engine ranking? Us!
Some of us are coming to the realization that we are not creating information just for us - we are doing the work for others who work differently than us.
Enterprises exist because people need to work together. Need to work to coming to the same conclusions when you are working together.
Circles of trust inside organizations - we see this exactly replicated in social software such as Facebook - you have your inner circle of friends who you trust.
He is having to re-discover people from his past; his children will never lose their friends because of the new tools.
What does social networking look like inside the organization? Librarians retiring after 40 years of work, doing excellent local research. The first thing we do when they retire is wipe their computers clean, as if all their bookmarks and tools they have developed are not still useful.
Why do we exist in enterprise? To have conversations. That is what social networking tools are now all about. What is happening with these tools that is similar to inside the organization?
- The power of formal versus informal language
- The sharing economy - sharing the insights is most valuable - how do we add people's notes - context is what helps you understand where the friction is - inside a company you can codify the context, which you might not want to do outside the organization e.g. are there different strategies you use to appeal to a female-dominated market compared to a male-dominated market?
The new Web 2.0 era distribution models remain largely untapped. How can we change the corporate culture to collaborate more. Take something like mapping the human genome - they sat it in social space and communicated with each other - was supposed to take 50 years, was done in just a few.
We are seeing a fundamental shift in having to adapt to how our clients learn - lawyers learn differently than surgeons do. You don't want your surgeon arriving for surgery saying "it's okay, I read the article last night." Surgeons learn as auto mechanics do.
Most librarians not good with visual interfaces. Show us a satellite system and we are not as comfortable as with text.
Does your intranet move up to the space so that you can share objects/documents, collaborate, put into groups. How does it relate to others? What actions can you take?
How can you be where your users are, and then move to the next space.
If you are a news librarian and not in LinkedIn, you are looking to be irrelevant. He gets a lot of interviews from being on LinkedIn.
Get good at the cloud - cloud applications - core applications online - Zoho, zotero, Google Docs - they give it to you for free and be willing to take your ads. They already know what you think and they will will serve up ads and search results based on your behaviour. As a Word-based profession, we need to get better at Internet and intranet behaviours.
The kindle is not about being an ebook reader, it is about being a device. The iPhone is not about being a phone. The U.S. is 5-7 years behind the rest of the world. The U.S. is going to hit it very hard and very fast.
Changing to a mainly mobile focus - how are we going to adapt? Thinking at Yale - what is library going to look like in a mobile environment - Joe Murphy, Yale Science Libraries.
Second Life is not going to survive - it will be something else - but we go in to figure out how we are going to relate to each other - their real life behaviours are moving into Second Life.
Private Enterprise social networking - search for "White label social networking" on his blog.
How do you make yourself discoverable? How do you make others in your organization discoverable? How do you tell people what you are good at?
Browser plug-ins - have you built a plug-in so you can show people how? Change the browser at the top so that it can become the standard. Why won't we have our search engines search those services that we actually subscribe to, rather than everything? Right now we have "meat hacker" search engines. You can build search toolbars to search the best stuff.
Presence management - Twitter, Meebo, IM, Skype - convention management now uses Twitter
It is all about play - you play with the stuff to learn about it; you can't put a committee to learn the 2.0 stuff.
SLA has a commitment to helping people to learn via 23 things. Build a petting zoo. Make your intranet a sandbox.
Added note: Carol over at Teching Around with Web 2.0 managed to record the list of ten social networking sites that have influenced the U.S. election.
Internet Librarian 2008 - My Presentation on Instant Audio & Video
If you are looking for presentations by other speakers, many are being collectively posted to the IL2008 event on Slideshare.net.
I missed most of today's sessions, but I did make sure to attend the keynote this morning by Howard Rheingold, Berkeley & Stanford professor and the world's leading thinker/professor/teacher regarding online communities. I took notes and attempted a few photos--will try to get those up here shortly. I did take down one quote from him during the keynote which I included in one of my slides in my presentation.
Cheers!
Connie
Monday, October 20, 2008
Connie Crosby - Upcoming Events
Internet Librarian - Monterey, California
Monday, October 20, 2008
4:15 PM – 5:00 PM
Instant Audio & Video: Tools Igniting the Digital World
- Connie Crosby, Principal, Crosby Consulting Group
No time to learn how to podcast or make videos? Seesmic, Utterli, ooVoo, BlogTV, Qik, and Talkshoe are just a few of the new audio and video tools letting people create their own instant web content with a small learning curve. Some are meant for short, quick thoughts by individuals on the go, others for longer conversations among a group connected to the web. Compare these exciting new tools and discuss their roles in community building and collaboration.
Internet Librarian - Monterey, California
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
3:15 PM – 4:00 PM
Law Library 2.0
- Camille Reynolds MLS, Director, Research & Information Services, Nossaman LLP
- Liana Juliano, Technical & Electronic Services Librarian, Nossaman LLP Vice President/President Elect American Indian Library Association
- Connie Crosby, Principal, Crosby Consulting Group
- Jaye Lapachet, Manager of Library Services, Coblentz, Patch, Duffy & Bass LLP
How do you introduce 2.0 technologies into the law firm library? Law firms are notoriously slow in adopting new technologies and are often steeped in the traditional. In the first presentation, learn how creative law librarians spearheaded a project to create a firm intranet in a culture that doesn’t embrace technology or sharing easily. Working with several other departments the speakers bridged the gap between many different user groups with competing ideas and helped lead the change through collaboration as they introduced the law firm to new technologies. They share how they used focus groups, marketing, and involved key users to “sell” the intranet, first to management, then to staff; what tools were used to create buy-in; and the strategies that were involved, as well as experiences with an internal wiki as a project management tool for the intranet and a way to introduce library staff to 2.0 technologies in a user-friendly format that spawned other uses, including collaboration, policy development, resource sharing, training, and more. Drawing from her experience as a law firm library director, Crosby provides additional examples and describes where law libraries are headed next.
Sustainability Camp - Toronto, Ontario
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Using social networking tools to promote community [tentative title]
"Community Divas" Eden Spodek & Connie Crosby
Ottawa, Ontario
November 17 or 18, 2008 - 2 full-day classes available
Social Networking Tools - Hands on Learning
Professional Learning Centre, Faculty of Information, University of Toronto
Connie Crosby, Instructor
-->the Monday, November 17th class is either full or almost full. We have added a second date
Friday, October 17, 2008
Internet Librarian International 2008 - Can't be there in person?
Thanks also to Ã…ke Nygren for sharing his presentation on the build-it-yourself social network site Ning, itself built on a Ning site: http://2008ningthings.ning.com/forum. (Use the menu at the top of the page to explore the rest of the site.).