Blog Buddies | Knowledge Management

Robert Scoble wrote a nice piece in Fast Company about “how to get good PR for yourself in the blogosphere.” It’s called Meet the Press. He notes how Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Work Week, went from relative obscurity to a “media darling” in about a year’s time by — among other things — making real-life connections with bloggers.

A good tip from Scoble: use Upcoming.org to see where other bloggers have indicated they are going. Scoble is using Upcoming.org to “watch” the Enterprise Search Summit and Blogger Social ‘08 (and a lot of other stuff). If nothing else, you may find something interesting to do (I was “reminded” that the Five Boro Bike Tour is coming up in May and I learned that a band I like is apparently back together and will be playing in NYC in June). A friend [no blog reference] recently reminded me of another resource for this type of thing: MeetUp.com.

I like Scoble’s ideas and I like Ferriss’ book. I recommend that anyone interested in knowledge management, efficiency, productivity, or just making the most out of your waking hours [and your sleeping hours], give the book a read. (It’s not necessarily about working only 4 hours a week). Need some incentive? Check out Ferriss’ blog.

And if you’ve got a blogging strategy, Scoble would like to hear about it. He invites readers to email him about it at scoble@fastcompany.com and “he’ll post the best ideas at” Scobleizer.com. Looking forward to that.

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

Twitter and Follow | Knowledge Management

Another great Common Craft video (see below). This one is about Twitter.

I like Twitter (see the link to follow LawyerKM on Twitter on the right –>>). But I’m getting a little inundated with information these days, and Twitter isn’t helping. Neither is following people like Robert Scoble, the self-proclaimed “tech geek videoblogger” and prolific twitterer (or is it tweeter?). More than 11,000 people follow Scoble on Twitter.

I like following him as a Google Reader friend because he essentially vets content for me. Well, not directly, but you get the idea: I read the stuff that he has shared because if he thinks it’s interesting enough to share, then it probably is interesting enough for me to read. (See RSS Overload is the New Black to see how Scoble rips through 600 RSS feeds in a flash with Google Reader).

And for me, “following” is the killer app of Twitter. Socially, it may be interesting to learn that a friend is shopping for a new sweater or is exhausted from a six-mile run, but in a law firm - we can take the “following” concept to a business level. Whether it’s blogs, micro-blogs, instant messages, or tagged / favorite documents, if my boss thinks it’s important, I should too. If certain information flows to (or from) smart, important people (like the senior partners in my law firm), I want to catch that flow, too.

Give young attorneys a way (other than email blasts) to capture information flows and follow senior attorneys so that they can benefit from what these smart, important people are consuming (or generating).

And by the way - if you, too, feel inundated, check out one way to get a lot of content in one space: the LawyerKM Netvibes Universe.

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

Social Network Aggregation (Pull yourself together with Netvibes) | Knowledge Management

“What is Ginger?” you may ask. It’s the new and improved release of Netvibes (the last release was called Coriander - there’s a spice theme going on here).

What is Netvibes? It’s an “ajax-based personalized [internet] start page much like Pageflakes, My Yahoo!, iGoogle, and Microsoft Live.” (see Wikipedia) It lets you bring in customized widgets and all types of other feeds or streams of information - everything from RSS news feeds to various web applications. The new release embraces social media sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc. Last night, I tweeted from Ginger. I know that doesn’t sound good.

The Netvibes folks probably say it best: it’s a

“dashboard that’s updated live directly from all your favorite Web services (email, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, widgets) and media content (blogs, podcasts, video). Everything you enjoy on the Web, available at a glance, all in one place — spend less time surfing and logging in from site to site and more time enjoying your web, your way.”

As Doug at KM Space noted, this is about aggregating yourself (or your stuff) - and this type of thing can be used inside the enterprise. Ginger is yet another way to help you aggregate your stuff - to bring all of these streams into one place to access (and use) the various web applications via widgets.

The killer thing is that Ginger gives you a personal space and a public space - the public space is called your “universe” - and it’s there for all of your Facebook friends, LinkedIn contacts, Twitter followers (and anyone else you want) to see. There are also universes by companies and news providers, like Slate, USA Today, and others.

In addition to the private and public aspects of Ginger, you can see and “follow” friends’ activities.

I could go on and on, but your best bet: check it out here. Or see what Ars Technica had to say about it.

Here’s a link to the LawyerKM Netvibes Universe. It’s still in its infancy, but includes a feed of the LawyerKM blog, a KM blog search feed, the LawyerKM Twitter feed, and a wall on which you can write. I’m not crazy about the color, which I’ll likely change.

Please add LawyerKM as a friend. Use the Contacts tab at the top of the screen, search for “LawyerKM” and click the icon. On the following screen, click the “Add Friend” button.

Will I replace my iGoogle home page with Netvibes’ new Ginger? Not sure yet. But iGoogle, you’d better get in this game. You’ve been warned.

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

Social Networks, Blogs, Privacy, Mash-Ups, Virtual Worlds and Open Source

PLI presentation:

Information Technology Law Institute 2008: New Directions: Social Networks, Blogs, Privacy, Mash-Ups, Virtual Worlds and Open Source
Mar. 6 - 7, 2008
PLI New York Center — New York, NY

Here’s the agenda:

Day 1

9:00 Introduction (Peter Brown, Leonard T. Nuara)

9:15 The Newest Forms of Communication: Social Networks and Blogs (E. Judson Jennings, Lori Lesser)

• What is the business model of social networks?
• Who are the users and what are they saying?
• What are the critical legal issues for social networks and blogs?
• Are blogs and social network postings covered by fair use under copyright law?

10:15 Cutting Edge Litigation Issues (Paul R. Gupta, Peter J. Pizzi)

• Litigation in the Web 2.0 world
• Content owners turn to litigation
• Social networks lead to litigation
• Virtual worlds - “real” litigation

11:30 The Maturing of the Open Source Movement (Stephen J. Davidson)

• Business and government turn to open source
• Understanding the new open source license - GPLv3
• Current open source litigation

1:45 Privacy and Data Breaches (Thomas M. Laudise, Marc J. Zwillinger)

• Complying with state notification laws, a comprehensive strategy
• Lessons learned from data breaches big and small
• What your IT staff and your vendors don’t want to tell you when data goes missing
• Secondary fallout from breaches: Dealing with vendors
  and banks
• New risks created by new technologies and Web 2.0

3:00 Developing Corporate Policies for Information Security and Privacy: The In-House Perspective (Michael F. Cronin, Lynn A. Goldstein, Tracy Pulito)

• Panel discussion by in-house counsel
• Defining the duties of a Chief Privacy Officer
• Only collect what you can protect - What data are you storing and where is it kept?
• Are data breaches inevitable? Simple ways to eliminate common causes of data breaches

4:00 Ethical Issues Arising from Virtual Worlds, Social Networks and Blogs (Justin Brookman, Sean F. Kane)

• What can you say on a personal or law firm sponsored blog?
• Risks in using the internet to investigate potential employees or adversaries
• Monitoring blogs of employees
• What real-life ethical consequences arise from “virtual” legal or business activities?

Day Two

9:00 What You Need to Know About Virtual Worlds (Peter Brown, Leonard T. Nuara)

• The purchase and sale of virtual property
• Advertising and promotion in virtual worlds
• Trademark and copyright infringement in virtual worlds

10:00 Resolving Disputes in Outsourcing Transactions (Kenneth A. Adler)

• Analyzing and identifying the critical issues
• Negotiating new contract provisions
• Crisis points in outsourcing contracts and how to draft meaningful protections

11:15 Employee Mobility in a High-Technology World (Victoria Cundiff, Steve Fram)

• How to maximize protection of trade secrets when employees leave
• How hiring companies immunize themselves from trade secret claims
• Using technology to protect trade secrets and detect misuse
• Protecting trade secrets in a virtual workplace
• Choice of law issues in a mobile environment

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

Knowledge Management for Law Firms :: In case you missed it… Feb 17-23, 2008

Here are some of my favorite legal knowledge management & technology blog posts and other items from the week of February 17 - 23, 2008:

• Best practices in law firm blogging (Real Lawyers Have Blogs - Kevin O’Keefe)
• Will Social Bookmarking Pay Dividends with Search Result Augmentation? (Read Write Web)
• Decent Search v. Good Librarian; Social Search and Iterative Questioning (Caselines - David Hobbie)
• Embed PDFs YouTube-Style with Scribd iPaper (LifeHacker)
• Digg Gets More Mainstream; But Are Their News Sources Too Narrow Now? (Read Write Web)
• LifeHacker Overload (LawLibTech - Cindy Chick)
• Law Library of Congress Adds RSS (Slaw - Steven Matthews)

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

Wikis outside of the law firm

Collaborative book writing is nothing new. Wikinomics authors Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams have an “unwritten chapter” of their book in a wiki.

One of my recent favorite books — The 4-Hour Workweek — by Tim Ferriss,

is heading into its expanded and updated version [read his blog entry about it here] and he is asking his readers to help him edit it on a PBWiki wiki. The wiki password is in the blog entry.

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

Thomson-West Acquires Contact Networks | Knowledge Management

From Contact Networks‘ website:

Thomson, the world’s leading information company, has acquired Contact Networks, the global leader in Enterprise Relationship Management, providing social networking for the corporate market. Geoffrey Hyatt, CEO and Founder, states “Contact Networks has built a dominant leadership position with ContactNet, the first and most successful product for enterprise social networking. The best companies around the world already use ContactNet to harness the power of their relationship networks. Joining forces with Thomson continues and accelerates this rapid growth with the full resources of a global leader in information and technology.”

This should help Thomson-West compete with Lexis’ InterAction product, which is the market leader in law firm CRM.  It should also give Contact Networks a major leg up over competitor BranchIT.

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management for Lawyers and Law Firms

This is ALSO Social Search | Knowledge Management

Doug Cornelius over at KM Space is a prolific blogger.  More importantly, he writes about some really good stuff.  He commented on Now THIS is Social Search about how Vivisimo is doing the Aftervote thing with enterprise search.  Check out Doug’s excellent post on Using Social Search to Drive Innovation through Collaboration for a great explanation.  Here is an excerpt: 

First thing [about Vivisimo's Velocity 6.0 tool] is the ability to vote on whether the item in the search result is useful. It displays the percentage of people that voted up and down. This in turn is fed back into the relevancy algorithm of the search engine. The next step is adding a rating. You can give up to five stars. It also displays the average rating and the number of votes. Administrators can get reports on the rating and use this highlight useful items and bury bad ones. 

Thanks Doug! 

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management for Lawyers and Law Firms
 

Now THIS is Social Search | Knowledge Management

Google announced Google Co-Op back in May of 2006, but there hasn’t been much buzz about it. There is another Search tool — an aggregator — called Aftervote.com, that really is a social search site. And this sort of technology may have a place in law firms.

Here’s the deal: You search for something and you get results. Then you can sort the results by rank according to the Aftervote ranking system (more on that below), or the ranking systems behind Google, Yahoo, MSN, Digg, Alexa, or Google Page Rank. (See the red arrow in the picture below). The results display those relative rankings (see the green arrow on the right) and any comments by users.

But best of all is that you can “vote up” results with the Aftervote ranking tool that appears to the left of the result (see the pinkish arrow). In a way, this is sort of like Digg for search results (See Can you Digg it…?) So, the Aftervote community can influence the ranking of results.

But wait, there’s more (see below the picture) …

Because it’s a search aggregator, you can customize the weights of each search engines’ results. Go to the My Settings page and you’ll see sliders for each of the search engines. Increase Google’s weight if you like it more than, say Yahoo. And you can adjust the number of results returned by Yahoo and MSN (but not Google for some reason) by adjusting a different set of sliders from 10 - 100.

There is also a URL blacklist and whitelist feature to remove from (blacklist) or promote (whitelist) certain URLs from your searches.

Pretty cool stuff. But don’t take our word for it, apparently PC Magazine declared Aftervote to be among the “Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites of 2007.”

Now, for all you lawyers out there, this has potential. What if your document management system or KM system search results had a little “vote up” [or down] button next to them. What about that nifty little comment option. You could start socializing the search results of your firm documents. Take it a step further and the “vote up” [or down] button could count toward “on-the-fly” relevancy ranking for your precedent documents.

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management for Lawyers and Law Firms

Harnessing the power of informal employee networks | Knowledge Management

Interesting article from The McKinsey Quarterly: Harnessing the power of informal employee networks. (Registration required).  Read it and/or look at this picture: 

Here is the synopsis: Most large corporations have dozens if not hundreds of informal networks, in which human nature, including self-interest, leads people to share ideas and collaborate.Informal networks are a powerful source of horizontal collaboration across thick silo walls, but as ad hoc structures their performance depends on serendipity and they can’t be managed.By creating formal networks, companies can harness the advantages of informal ones and give management much more control over networking across the organization.

The steps needed to formalize a network include giving it a “leader,” focusing interactions in it on specific topics, and building an infrastructure that stimulates the ongoing exchange of ideas.

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management for Lawyers and Law Firms