One of the quotes I go back to often is a quote from a 1945 paper by the economist Hayek where he says:

The economic problem of society … is not merely a problem of how to allocate ‘given’ resources – if ‘given’ is taken to mean given to a single mind … It is rather a problem of how to secure the best use of resources known to any of the members of society … a problem of the utilization of knowledge which is not given to anyone in its totality. (Friedrich Hayek, The Use of Knowledge in Society, American Economic Review, No 35 (September, 1945) pp. 1 – 18)

I am fascinated by the timing of this quote (1945) and the insight that Hayek brings to a problem we still face today — getting the “many minds” in our organizations (or in society) to produce knowledge. So when I saw the title of Cass Sunstein’s book Infotopia and its subtitle (how many minds produce knowledge) and the one word endorsement from Lawrence Lessig (Extraordinary) I was drawn to purchase and read this book (Sunstein, 2006). At writing, Sunstein was Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School — a perspective that will interest many Slawyers and Slaw readers.

Given my research and practice interests, I am fascinated by anyone exploring the notion of human networks, collectives or connectives for the production of knowledge. This includes a collections of authors such as: Levy’s work around Collective Intelligence (Levy, 1997); Derrick De Kerckhove and his work exploring Connected Intelligence (De Kerckhove, 1997) – note that Derrick makes a distinction about the collective versus the connective; Fisher and Fisher’s work on the Distributed mind (note again the reference to collective intelligence) (Fisher & Fisher, 1998); and, Surowieki’s book on the Wisdom of Crowds (Surowiecki, 2004). To this list, I can now add Sunstein’s Infotopia (Sunstein, 2006).

In Infotopia, Sunstein explores and builds explicitly on the Hayekian view of markets as a means of producing knowledge. More specifically, the emerging uses of prediction markets inside organizations (e.g. Google, Microsoft, HP) and in public spheres (e.g. the Iowa Electronic Market). He explores and eclectic collection of technologies and techniques as a means for knowledge production in groups: wikis; prediction markets; open source software; and (almost as an afterthought) blogs. It is an interesting selection, which, with hindsight, one might broaden. Nevertheless, his exploration is worthy of review and examination.

With prediction markets (a form of knowledge marketplace) he shows how reasonably broad (not thin) prediction markets have demonstrated eerily accurate predictions on broad subjects. Organizations use them to examine their external environments as well as to predict and explore future scenarios they may face. They have also outstripped polls and surveys as a way to predict outcomes – even, for example, in elections.

He marvels at Wikis as a democratic way of aggregating and producing knowledge. He uses the obvious example of Wikipedia; but also uses a number of other examples where wikis provide the basis for knowledge aggregation – where no one has the knowledge in its totality.

He explores open source software as a movement and the rewards of reputation and rank that come through performance. While I pick at his use of terms such as “open source science” and open source biotechnology” (I prefer to drop the term ‘source’ and refer to these as “open science”; “open biotechnology” since there is no source code involved) this language does not detract significantly from his underlying arguments. However, he misses the movement towards open access to academic publications and notions such as open innovation. Perhaps this too is the difference of three years of activity and hindsight. He misses as well, in my estimation, the role strong leadership and community play in successful open source initiatives (for every successful open source project there are many failed ones and my hypothesis is that leadership is at the core of these successes).

He speaks to jury decisions and explores the Condorcet Jury Theorem. Sunstein deals with the near-real-time production of knowledge involved with things like decision making and policy setting. This is opposed to our large focus in KM communities on the collection, storage and retrieval and re-use of knowledge over time. He speaks to both sides of the coin – the good and the bad of knowledge creation within groups. Building optimistically on a Hayekian view of the markets and an efficient means of knowledge aggregation and production; while exploring the dark side of groups (e.g. groupthink; mob psychology; the suppression of dissenting viewpoints through social influences and informational signaling in groups.

He explores in some detail “four big problems” with groups:

…They amplify the errors of their members. They do not elicit the information their members have. They are subject to cascade effects, producing a situation in which the blind lead the blind. Finally, they show a tendency to group polarization, by which groups go to extremes. (Sunstein, pg. 75)

He draws distinctions between statistical groups (Surowiecki’s Wisdom of Crowds) and deliberating groups (where positions can become more entrenched through things like information cocooning and the echo chambers of thought created by homogenous cognitive models). He explores, in some detail, the reasons why deliberating groups amplify cognitive errors and result in super-entrenched positioning.

He touches on the needs for rewards and incentives to encourage the sharing of information that individuals have; noting that often the sharing of information does not benefit the discloser but usually the group – while disincentives can outweigh these dramatically. This leads to the under-explored area of knowledge economics.

He promotes the emphasis and development of strong norms of critical thinking. He encourages organizations to embrace, not suppress, information diversity through a variety of explicit techniques. He focuses on the role of the Internet in supporting both a utopian and dystopian view of groups and knowledge. And, in so doing, offers antidotes to protect against some of the potential pitfalls.

While this book feels a bit dated, it is well worth reading. Finally, I am interested if you have other books of resources that fall into this line of thought – exploring the connections between us mere mortals or experts. If you have any contributions to make to this expanding list of authors and the literature, I would be happy to hear from you.

De Kerckhove, D. (1997). Connected intelligence : the arrival of the Web society. Toronto: Somerville House.

Fisher, K., & Fisher, M. D. (1998). The distributed mind : achieving high performance through the collective intelligence of knowledge work teams. New York: AMACOM.

Levy, P. (1997). Collective intelligence : mankind's emerging world in cyberspace. Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus Books.

Sunstein, C. R. (2006). Infotopia: how many minds produce knowledge: Oxford University Press.

Surowiecki, J. (2004). The wisdom of crowds : why the many are smarter than the few and how collective wisdom shapes business, economies, societies, and nations (1st ed.). New York: Doubleday :.

I was attending a KM session in NYC a few years ago when Michael Mills (Director of Professional Services & Systems of Davis Polk & Wardwell) was leading a session. He indicated, at that time, that the focus of the firm’s KM efforts was on helping each lawyer manage their own personal knowledge; hence Personal Knowledge Management (PKM). Several of the law firm KM leaders in attendance saw this as heretical — after all, most of the efforts in our KM teams are aimed at helping the firm or groups within the firm (e.g. practice groups) manage knowledge. This knowledge is often tied up in individuals and is not shared and traded across the organization. Let’s call the KM work we do at the group or firm level Organizational Knowledge Management (OKM) so we can explore the distinction.

Is the idea of helping individuals manage their personal knowledge as radical as it sounds? Is it a zero sum game (either PKM or OKM)? Many KM theorists argue that knowledge is personal. When we store knowledge artifacts in various repositories (think precedents, research memos) it is reduced to information or data. When this is retrieved and used by someone else, it is through their interpretation of the artifact that it becomes personal knowledge for that person. So, if we accept the premise that all knowledge is personal then why should we not support the notion of PKM?

Despite this perspective, most organizations focus their efforts on OKM and pay lip service or run scared of PKM. But how can we achieve organizational effectiveness if we don’t first build and support personal effectiveness?

There is an inherent polarity between PKM and OKM that needs to be managed. It is possible that as individuals manage their own information and knowledge artifacts they each take different approaches. For example, they could store things in personal ways; using their own categories and labels (e.g. document names and document types). This is not only possible, but highly likely since we all have our personal views of the world. Because of this, we try and impose frameworks at a group or organizational level. Lawyers often come to these shared repositories reluctantly and make compromises on the organizational structures. But there is one place where this takes shape differently – in Outlook /email. In Outlook, each person organizes their collection of documents and correspondence as they see fit. Perhaps this affordance makes it hard for us to get people to give this up in favour of a shared repository.

PKM requires empowerment of the individual. Team members have more of an impetus to manage their own knowledge development (learning) and need to play an active role in knowledge distribution (sharing or trading) within organizations.

Let us examine what PKM might look like for an individual. We might allow people to set their own learning objectives and manage their own learning and expertise development over time (personal human capital development). Individuals would store and organize information and knowledge artifacts as they see fit (own structural capital frameworks). They would maintain their own social relationships (social networks and social capital). Individuals might also be able to trade their intellectual capital resources (knowledge artifacts) as they see fit and in their own benefit. Most of this is what we fight against as OKM proponents. Indeed, participation in a Firm brings with it tradeoffs, some of which are at the knowledge level. Unbridled personal systems could result in chaos or anarchy.

Could we support both OKM and PKM? Perhaps.

What if we allowed people to personally tag items stored in organizational repositories? This need not be done instead of the frameworks we impose (err… suggest) in the interest of the broader group or community. This could be done in addition to established group level knowledge organizational frameworks. In such a set up, each person may assign his / her own tags to documents and may use these personal tags as a way of finding things. Over time, others may also be able to find documents and other artifacts using these tags.

Personal repositories need not be stored on laptop or desktop hard drives; they could exist in corporate repositories (centralized storage) and exist in virtual or logical form only – not physically. Our corporate collections would then be a super-set of individual collections.

To support PKM, we need to focus on people and their personal needs. A human-centered view of PKM would encourage corresponding analysis. The challenge would be to find and support commonalities and not necessarily the outliers. But be careful here as well. What about the outliers whose view and practices are not mainstream? They may be the innovators who we should try to understand and emulate across the entire Firm.

We also need to give individuals the tools to cope with the ever increasing mounds of information inside and outside of our organizations. Google realized this when they put efforts into their desktop search products and tools such as Picasso (for organizing photos). The (now Microsoft) Groove product allows individuals to manage a collection of documents while synchronizing and sharing these with other team members – inside or outside the firm.

We practice PKM in managing our personal bookmarks – some firms have augmented this with shared bookmark tools. On the web, we have services like del.icio.us that help us manage and share bookmarks and hence the associated knowledge. Again, the goal here is to balance individual needs with larger groups.

In order for a PKM program to be effective, we would still need an OKM perspective. We would have to teach individuals how to make use of the tools and frameworks available to them – and not assume they will learn through osmosis. We could encourage the sharing of best (and next) practices – for example, effective use of search tools and search strategies.

On a personal level, we use PKM to manage our personal libraries and collections (books, articles, files and digital materials). We attend conferences and training session with a view to increasing what and who we know. We spend time with interesting people; learning from them. We explore new technologies and tools thinking of ways to use and apply them.

The challenge to KM practitioners is to find ways to leverage PKM for OKM and teams. Find ways to incorporate the personal into our corporate / firm wide strategies.

If I was honest with you, I would admit that I read with glee the flurry of news reports noting that Facebook and other Web 2.0 media (such as Twitter, Yammer, and Friendfeed) had surpassed email as the preferred form of communication particularly for teens and young adults today. If you pardon the pun, the inner geek in me let out a loud Yahoo!

For years I have been struggling with the notion that email had become the place to work for many lawyers. It seemed that a bad technology had taken root to the point that it would be hard to dislodge; even when there are better ways to do things out there. I know it is hard for many of us to think about email as a legacy application – but guess what, folks, it is.

The problem with email is also its strength – it is simple to operate / use and costs very little to send messages around the globe in a matter of seconds. Indeed, email is an improvement over previous technologies such as Telex (for those of us old enough to remember choosing every word carefully when sending a message to an overseas office) and fax (which I never thought would be dislodged) became a “good enough” form of communication for quite a few years. An analysis of fax traffic shows that this is no longer the preferred means of sharing documents and information between and within organizations. Now email seems to be heading in the same direction.

So what is the problem with email? There are several problems. First, we are using email for a number of secondary purposes – some of which have become the primary purposes. The primary purpose of email was as a communication system for moving ‘messages’ from one point to another. As with many technologies, secondary (unintended) uses emerged. These secondary purposes include email as:

Personal Information Manager – people send themselves emails as a way of making notes to file

Records Management facility – since correspondence comes in via email mostly today and very little of is comes in through the post office, many people use email as their replacement for the filing cabinet. Although I know many people who still print and file emails in hard copy.

Personal Document Management facility – after all, the folder structure in most email clients.

Contact Manager – many of us do not have complete contact details for people we know. After all, having their email address is enough, isn’t it?

Task Manager – many emails are requests to staff and others to carry out specific tasks.

I doubt the creators of this application had all of these things in mind. While some may look at this and consider email to be ‘a success’, I am suggesting it is a failure. Anyone with a 15 Gigabyte Outlook PST file knows the concept of ‘having all of your eggs in one basket’. Many in that situation have probably had IT call them to ask them to clean it out.

Earlier, I reviewed the book Keeping Found Things Found. For this discussion, I would direct you to spend more time with the chapter on email which reinforced for me many of the things I have been thinking about over the years. While many consider email a successful application, the overuse of this tool has created a few problems. The authors of that book highlight two things in what they call “the one–two punch” that is associated with email: information overload and information fragmentation. Most of us understand information overload; however, fragmentation is an interesting concept. In the same way personal computers spread corporate data over many machines – email clients spread corporate information / records over several inboxes and personal folders without the discipline required across the organization. Finally, they posit two possible futures for email: email takes over as our primary information and task manager; or, email disappears and is replaced by better suited tools. Make no mistake, I am cheering for the second of these two alternatives and hoping that we arrive at a better place.

I remember attending a session a few years ago in Colorado with a number of law firm CIOs where email management moved from nowhere on their radar to their number one issue in less than a year. Email management is a problem for all organizations – not just law firms – also think electronic discovery. Perhaps we can explore this in more detail in a future posting; but for now, let’s realize that this is a broad topic that focuses on everything from managing the correspondence records that arrive and leave our organizations as email to enforcing policies on email content.

We seem to forget that we have an array of communication tools available. We would not play a round of golf using only our driver. So why do we use one tool for communications? We have heard of colleagues sitting in adjacent offices using email to communicate when they could talk to each other. We also hear stories of people forgetting to use the phone for conversations that would be best suited to that technology.

The PIM concept is a result of product design from tools such as Outlook which try to do everything for the user. With a bit of defense for my friends at Microsoft, I like the concept they were floating a couple of years ago by promoting a range of communications tools from Instant Messaging (IM) to email to the ability to have a LiveMeeting (even one-on-one) and telephone (think Voice over IP) or video conferencing calls. Each of these has their uses and affordances. I think they had it right with this array of tools – however part of the problem they face is the problem of dislodging the legacy tools (Outlook) they have sold so well into the enterprise.

Before I close, allow me a confession. I use Gmail as my replacement for Outlook. Why? I like to be able to access all of these email records from anywhere / any machine. I also like the search and tagging capabilities built into to Gmail and the ability to read email from various POP3 servers thereby maintaining my various email identities. Notwithstanding that, it suffers from the same problems mentioned earlier.

So, what would I like to see? I am happy to see that at least part of the population recognizes that social media / networking tools provide better ways for us to communicate. Coupled with blogs, wikis and other web 2.0 tools there is hope that as these tools get better and users realize email is not the ‘be all and end all’ we will embrace other ways of communicating with each other. Some good strides have been made under the umbrella of email management. I hope we continue to make progress.

I encourage you to think about the alternatives we have and champion them. Think also about the new millennials coming into our organizations and their expectations, and also what we can learn from their use of technology.

Most knowledge management systems and frameworks are built on the premise that we can encourage people to share what they know. However, sharing is what we do in kindergarten – trading is what we learn to do later in life. Most organizations could benefit from looking at knowledge strategy initiatives through a market lens rather than a simplistic sharing lens. We need to rethink some of our KM strategies and examine the knowledge processes in our organizations with a market perspective in mind. Consistent with that thought, Larry Prusak said “people don’t just give knowledge away. Knowledge does not flow smoothly and for free. There’s a market for it. It has buyers and sellers. It has brokers. It has a price system, coins of the realm”.

The term “knowledge market” traces back as early as 1970 when Doug Englebart, a visionary computer scientist, talked about the concept of a Knowledge Market as a consequence of computer networks. With great foresight, Doug said:

It seems not unreasonable to assume that survival value in our cultural evolution will favor institutions which support the most efficient Knowledge Markets (organisms which support the most efficient nervous systems). Then certainly the Knowledge Market will someday operate with more open trust in its knowledge interchange, to release for constructive ends a great deal of otherwise entrapped human energy.

Our work in studying knowledge markets started about ten years ago when we started to examine what we called e-knowledge markets. We developed a definition:

Knowledge Markets are formal or informal community contexts, platforms, or environments (real or virtual) used to promote knowledge commerce, trade and exchange, demand and supply, between knowledge buyers and sellers. They are used to organize, coordinate, aggregate, facilitate, communicate, broker, and network flows and exchanges of knowledge between knowledge seekers and knowledge providers.

We also developed a taxonomy based on an examination of emerging trends on the web — start-ups and other initiatives that have tried to provide frameworks for inter- and intra-organizational knowledge trading. We saw a number of initiatives and sites being set up to facilitate: Knowledge Auctions, Expert Knowledge Exchange or Question and Answer Exchanges; Stock Market, or Investment Knowledge Exchanges; Talent Markets (Human Capital, work, projects, free agency, or professional services); Prediction Markets; Intellectual Property Marketplaces (Idea Markets); Business-to-Business Knowledge Exchanges; Intellectual Capital Exchanges; and, e-Learning Marketplaces. This intrigued and challenged our curiosity and has remained a central focus of our research over the years.

So why a knowledge markets lens? When you adopt this framing for your knowledge strategy (at a personal or organizational level) you see and play the game differently. You realize that people (especially professionals like lawyers) don’t just share information and knowledge, they trade it. If one gives and gives and gives with nothing in return, one stops giving. The currency of the knowledge marketplace includes hard dollars and billable hours (“Can I bill this time to your client?”) as well as intangibles such as trust, reputation and reciprocity.

Back to Prusak — in the book “Working Knowledge” by Davenport and Prusak, the authors say: “The first step in any initiative is recognizing there are markets for knowledge”. They claim:

knowledge moves through organizations. It is exchanged, bought, bartered, found, generated and applied to work. In contrast to individual knowledge, organizational knowledge is highly dynamic: it is moved bya variety of forces. If we want knowledge to move and be utilized more effectively, we need to better understand the forces that drive it.

And therein lies the challenge that the marketplace lens allows us to examine.

Don Tapscott also explores the related concept of 'idea agoras' (or idea markets) in the Wikinomics book; and also in the book Digital Capital. Don and his co-authors talk about the markets (or agoras) that exist in various organizations and suggest ways we can harness these in the new knowledge economy.

So, if you do decide this is a good idea, then what can you do?

First, you should look at the rewards systems in your organization. Chris Boyd, from Wilson Sonsini, once told a group of us at a KM workshop that he was handing out Starbucks certificates to people in exchange for potential precedents. We used this approach for two initiatives (one for precedent collection and another to encourage participation in a research study looking at a portal) and were delighted and overwhelmed at the results and response we received. Especially when compared to previous initiatives. A little reward goes a long way. But, what about the primary rewards in your organization — how do you recognize and reward contributions to organizational knowledge stores and repositories? Is it a onetime event or is there some recognition of future revenue derived from usage? Some professional service firms explicitly recognize such contributions as important to the firm whereas others force professionals to do this in “their spare time”. Many organizations are reluctant to have this be explicitly part of the remuneration / compensation system. If contributing to the knowledge repositories is important — then deal with it.

Second, establish the systems and mechanisms you need to support an internal marketplace. This goes beyond the traditional tools we have in most organizations. You could consider variations on the various exchanges and marketplaces we are starting to see on the web. Services like a Question and Answer Exchange or an Intellectual Property or Intellectual Capital marketplace may allow others in the organization to make better use of the enterprise’s resources.

There is much for us to explore on this front. I welcome any suggestions you have on how a knowledge market mindset could allow us to accelerate or facilitate better knowledge practices in our firms.

Earlier in the year, I came across an article in New Scientist titled “Forgetfulness is key to a healthy mind”. In this article a case was described:

A 42-year-old woman from California, AJ remembers every day of her life since her teens in extraordinary detail. … AJ is locked in a cycle of remembering that she describes as a "running movie that never stops". Even when she wants to, AJ cannot forget.” … “She described her constant recall as "non-stop, uncontrollable and totally exhausting" and as "a burden" of which she was both warden and victim.

The syndrome was given the name “hyperthemestic syndrome” (from the Greek "thymesis", for remembering) by the neuropsychologist James McGaugh and his colleagues at the University of California, Irvine, who investigated this case.

The article describes this malady that affects a handful of people like AJ. It also presents a convincing argument from neuroscientists as to why the process of forgetting is as important as the process of remembering. As humans, we have developed ways to remember important stuff, but not cloud our memories with all of the nitty-gritty details that swamp AJ on a regular basis. I also saw this situation reported elsewhere on the web. More recently I discovered that AJ (aka Jill Price) has written a book about her experiences.

The article also quotes Dan Schacter of Harvard University who says "A system that records every detail willy-nilly and makes that information accessible on an ongoing basis is one that will result in mass confusion." Dan says ‘we forget because the brain has developed strategies to weed out irrelevant or out-of-date information. Efficient forgetting is a crucial part of having a fully functioning memory.’

Almost immediately, as I was reading this article, my thoughts turned to the computer systems we have in place in most organizations. It is interesting to think about our computer systems in a similar manner. There are striking parallels to the concept of information overload brought on by the massive digital data and artifacts stored in our organizations. Do we really need to return all of the versions of all of the documents that match the search criteria when looking for something in our repositories? How do we determine which is the best version to start from the final one with our best positions negotiated away or an earlier version?

With the cost of storage falling dramatically from year to year we have been accumulating reams of information (or should I say ‘digital reams’ to avoid the cheap pun). Our Document Management systems and other repositories have accumulated tens and hundreds of millions of documents and the quest to store more continues.

So, as I do often, I went looking for other material on ‘the need to forget’. After wading through the usual pile of material that Google churns up, I found a faculty research working paper from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. This paper, Useful Void: The Art of Forgetting in the Age of Ubiquitous Computing, speaks to issues of a more broader societal nature that result from our obsession to store everything. They use, as examples: Google – "In March 2007, Google confirmed that since its inception it had stored every search query every user ever made and every search result she ever clicked on. Google remembers forever” (p. 3); our obsession with keeping all digital photos we take – good or bad – just in case; companies that keep our air travel enquiries – whether we purchase a ticket or not; the information stored on credit bureau databases; and a variety of data services that store and hoard information on individuals.

It occurred to me, however, that we are doing the same thing in our own data collection and retention practices within organizations. Not only are we storing all of the digital photos we take; we are also storing draft versions of documents and other objects ‘just in case’. As one lawyer friend put it to me, we have moved from ‘just in time’ to ‘just in case’.

In this paper, the author, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, does a good job of illustrating the problem of ‘remembering everything’ on a personal and societal level. I posit that this is true, as well, for groups and organizations (read as law firms and in-house legal teams). We store everything because it is cheaper and faster than ever to do so. Paper files, in their analog form, are harder to organize, search and retrieve relevant information. With the cost of storage dramatically falling every year we now have ways of storing huge amounts of digital artifacts in ways we could not five or ten years ago. So we do.

Viktor claims that data retention is now the default and suggests we need to reverse this. The fact that everything we say / discuss is retained causes us to pause and reflect on the chilling effect this has on the development of thought. He points out that information is often retained even when its accuracy is disputed. He goes on to explore the wider issues this presents when GPS and RFID technology in our cell phones, cameras and cars add to the datasets that track our every move and record them over time. He claims that “living in a world in which our lives are being recorded and records are being retained, in which societal forgetting has been replaced by precise remembering, will profoundly influence how we view our world, and how we behave in it”.

This leads me to believe there are a number of issues we must address in our corporate information technology, information management, knowledge management and records management practices and programs. Do we need to retain everything? Do our massive collection aid or hinder our KM objectives? What are the privacy and ethical issues associated with data retention – on our employees / staff as well as on customers? Does the fact that everything we do is being watched affect our behaviour (what we say and do)?

All of this needs to be examined in the context of our records management and archival processes as well.

This raises a number of additional questions. Do we need to prune information from our vast databases so that we create better functioning systems? Do the strategies we use in our massive databases differ significantly because of the raw computing power that can be applied for organizing and searching these repositories? Is David Weinberger right when he claims “Everything is miscellaneous” and we should just allow the computer systems to store, sort and reposition / display digital artifacts when we need to retrieve them? Is David Gelernter right when he challenges us (in his manifesto) to stop using old metaphors such as the ‘filing cabinet’ in the new computer medium (after all these new systems have affordances not possessed by those we are replacing)?

I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on these issues.

A colleague, John Gillies at Cassels Brock, introduced me to the book “Keeping Found Things Found” earlier in the year. This book should be a key reference for Information Technology (IT) and Information Management (IM) professionals. The book’s subtitle says it all “the study and practice of information management”. Information Management and Knowledge Management are often used as interchangeable terms. However, to do this implies information and knowledge are equivalent. Not! I quote from John Seely Brown who makes the distinction – we say to people “I sent you the information, did you get it?” But we would not say “I sent you the knowledge, did you get it?”

Information Management has roots that go back to the seventies and eighties when proponents like James Martin. As early as the seventies, the concept emerged that information was an important corporate resource and needed to be treated as such – even though it is an intangible. Information exists at many levels in our organizations – personal, group, enterprise-wide, intra-organizational. Herein lies part of the dilemma. There are tradeoffs to be made when managing information at any of these levels. Personal information management may introduce practices that run counter to organizational IM. Notwithstanding this issue, there may well be benefits to managing our personal information better.

William Jones (the author) and his colleagues embarked on a comprehensive research project to examine and recommend best practices for personal information management. The Keeping Found Things Found™ initiative undertook a number of related projects. When most of us think about Personal Information Management (PIM) we call to mind the various software products that adopted this label over the years. These products often included things like: to-do lists, calendars, contacts, and email. However, Jones takes a broader view of PIM not limited by the constraints of these packages. Jones has a much broader view of this application space.

The book – Jones uses the results from this research undertaking as the basis for the book. He provides guidance for how we might go about managing our personal information. He describes the activities most of us carry out to manage our personal information. He presents solutions using an array of tools from email to the web. And he presents (as conclusions) frameworks for PIM practice, associated tools and his vision of what the future might hold for us.

His research provides a number of explanations about why we do things the way we do them. We use email to organize ourselves because it is what we know, it is easy and convenient. We are reluctant to give up our folders. We have taken this paper-world metaphor into the digital world and use folders as a way of visualizing related information. Concepts like tagging – embraced by Google as an alternative to folders are not as popular – maybe they will be with the next generation as they grow up without filing cabinets. Frankly, folders in the digital world may be as absurd as using the floppy disk as icon for “saving” a file. Both are carryovers from an old paradigm.

Jones points out that organizing and finding are not solo activities – but rather two sides of a coin. We organize stuff so we can find it later. And more importantly in organizations, so others can find things (think Document Management System). Increasingly, more of what we do is organized in teams – client groups; departments; practice groups; and, project teams. So while the focus is personal information management, our challenge is to extract lessons from this work and place it in the frame of group or corporate / firm IM. Very little work is personal today other than a job application.

Jones talks about creating a ‘Personal Space of Information’. I liked the term Personal Information Space instead – but can see why he stayed away from this acronym. He says our information space can at times be more real than the physical world in which we operate. He offers a framework for organizing information in this space that introduces the concept of mapping between information and need. He tackles a number of topics including: how to organize information for future use; managing privacy and the flow of information; sensemaking (making sense of things); and provides guidance for IT folks involved with tool development.

I particularly liked the analysis he presents in the chapter on email. He challenges us to think about ways of integrating email into other modes of communication (e.g. telephone, instant messaging). Email has become the environment in which most people live for a large portion of the workday. But it is not an optimal tool. Email often brings reference material, corporate records, tasks (often more than one in a single email) and all of this is dumped into the email pile with the only form of organization for most users being folders. Jones challenges us to find ways to link email with other tools such as wikis and discussion forums.

So why is IM a technical issue? Users in our firms may get out ahead of the technology – introducing a plethora of tools for personal purposes. When IT leads in introducing tools and frameworks we will have a better, more cohesive solution in the long run. Good IM is a prerequisite for good KM.

The KFTF website – also provides other related resources and some background on the various projects undertaken under this initiative. It is worth browsing on its own – even if you don’t read the book.

Our challenge – is to find ways to move forward with PIM. Even though current software offerings are early stage solutions to PIM problems, we cannot wait and hope for software vendors to provide the “proverbial golden shovel” and bail us out of this problem. Read the book. You will find strategies you can adopt personally or, with adaptation, to support the lawyers and other professionals in your organization.

Thanks John, the book was a great read.

When the subject of “finding experts” comes up in most groups of legal KM professionals, the discussion often polarizes into two camps – either automated solutions or self-declared solutions. Indeed, some of this is fueled by early solutions that either tried to mine email, document and other work product to determine who the experts were (based on frequency, but not depth or quality, of conversation) or systems that allowed an individual to tick off the boxes indicating their self-declared expertise or interests in particular areas. But the landscape is more complex than that. It is simply not an “either / or” situation.

The problem of managing expertise inside and outside organizations goes beyond just finding the expert. In-house lawyers of those in practice looking for an expert share similar problems. There are many reasons one might want to find the “best person for the job”. It may be to: solve a problem; assemble the right team for a project or proposal; find the best (external) expert for a case; or, make a decision using the best input available. In any case, finding the right expert in the quickest fashion is one of the goals for a successful knowledge management environment. Doing this well can help your organization be more competitive and differentiated in the marketplace – by harnessing expertise to be innovative, creative or inventive.

When asked, most veterans in the organization will tell you they know from experience who the go-to person is. But is that the most knowledgeable person? Or is that a colleague they know and have gone to in the past? And, what about the new team member – the lateral from another firm – how will she be discovered or how will she navigate her way to the best help within the organization? Or, how is the young associate who does not have that institutional memory yet tattooed into his cranium to find the help he needs?

We need to find ways to accelerate the learning and enculturation of new group members so that they do not have to spend years acquiring this valuable knowledge.

A fair bit of research has been done on finding, networking or sharing expertise. Indeed, this work can be found across a number of interrelated disciplines. First, as foundation, the work of expertise researchers is rooted in cognitive science and psychology, education and sociology. These researchers focus on the nature of expertise and how it develops in individuals and organizations. Other researchers have taken a collaborative view of this looking at how experts collaborate (with other experts and with novices); in addition, there are those that focus on a “communities of practice” view – examining communities of experts. And, others are focused on the tools – systems and frameworks for supporting and managing experts and expertise.

A few years ago, we conducted a small user centered design project. In our research, we took a task based view – we asked lawyers to walk us through the activities (or tasks) they would follow when trying to find an expert that was not in their area of practice and in another city. The framing went something like this: “a colleague calls you from Vancouver and says she is looking for legal help with a xxx problem – how would you go about finding the right person to refer her to?” We found that in most cases, people used their social network connections to traverse the firm to find the right resource. In most cases, it meant associates called others from their year-of-call or partners called partners – rarely would an associate call a partner or vice versa. Coupled with an examination of the science of complex adaptive networks and early research and publications about knowledge networks, the network framing of this problem took root in my mind.

A number of organizations have implemented Expertise Networking solutions to provide access to (and between) experts in their organizations. We have collected a number of case studies in our research. We would be very interested in hearing of other case studies to add to our collection. Here are just a few exemplars:

• IBM uses their Professional Marketplace and Beehive systems to facilitate expertise location and networking. We discussed IBM, BP and Hill and Knowlton in a previous post here on Slaw.
• BAE is using Autonomy’s Collaboration and Expertise Networking tools to link 130,000 people – … the company targeted the intellectual assets represented by its engineers, scientists and other professionals. "Access to information is good," says Richard West, head of organization and e-learning at BAE, "but access to people can be phenomenal, and that takes more than users relying on search technology alone."
• Price Waterhouse Coopers uses their Connection Machine to allow “partners and staff to solve problems by connecting people to people. It allows information seekers to enter their question in free text, finds knowledgeable colleagues, forwards the question to them, obtains the answer and sends it back to the seeker. In the course of this interaction, the application unobtrusively learns and updates user profiles and thereby increases its routing accuracy”.
• While most firms are working to block social networking tools as a form of expertise management, others have harnessed them. GE has successfully implemented SupportCentral – or as this post puts it GE Nails the Internal Social Network – SupportCentral network boasts 400,000 users in more than 6,000 locations around the world. It supports more than 20 languages, garners more than 25 million hits a day … and hosts more than 50,000 communities with 100,000 experts who manage information and answer questions.
• Probably the best example from a law firm is the work done by Oz Benamram at Morrison & Foerster with the Answer Base system. Explicitly, these search tools are used to help finding experts using their large collection of documents (including something as mundane as a fax cover sheet). This helps to integrate new hires and laterals. Kudos to OZ and Recommind for leading the way in this arena. However, we should note, this is not a one horse race. Other firms are making similar strides using Recommind or competitive products such as Autonomy.
• Allen & Overy has also gone public with a case study of the firm’s use of social software. Kudos to A & O for harnessing the potential of this new media.

Having looked at this problem as part of a law firm KM strategy, and more recently in research with the Kaieteur Institute for Knowledge Management, we have proposed that Expertise Networking Systems of Frameworks should include systems that:

• help locate experts in the organization (expert locator);
• network internal experts (expert network);
• provide a directory to experts (expert directory);
• enable one to search for internal or external expertise (expertise search system);
• allow us to discover existing capabilities (expertise discovery);
• allow users to ask questions and to receive answers from experts within your organization (question and answer exchange);
• facilitate collaboration between experts and non‐experts (expert collaboration);
• host a community of internal experts (expert community);
• allow experts to share their knowledge (expert knowledge sharing);
• support virtual marketplaces – allowing experts to swap and trade what they know in response to the demand for knowledge and their ability to supply expertise (expert marketplace);
• facilitate the profiling of experts capabilities (expertise profiling);
• allow the visual mapping of expertise connections (expertise mapping – e.g. using social network analysis, SNA, techniques) – one can either use SNA to map this – or, by providing internal social networking platforms, allow this to be derived organically by monitoring the social connections made across the organization;
• act as a pointer to expert know‐how (who knows what); and,
• track skills and capabilities and therefore can support future workforce planning. (“workforce value chain” and “talent management”).

Most systems on the market do parts of this – but none that we know of covers this spectrum in its entirety. Indeed, this is largely an organizational or cultural challenge – not a technical one. And therein lies the challenge: we need to find the right mix of tools to support the goals in each organization. We need to look at expertise networking as another tool in the KM arsenal; a tool that takes us beyond simply collecting precedents, research memos and other documents into databases which have mixed success in their usage. Networks have existed for years; but social / knowledge media tools have allowed us to extend the range and reach of individuals and organizations.

From time to time fellow Slawyers wax poetically about the paperless office (or the not-so-paperless-office). Seems to me most of us view it as the unattainable holy grail. However, while it is hard for most large firms to envision making the break away from all of the paper we generate, I think it is something we all owe in an increasingly environmentally conscious world.

Remember the promises of the new technology: three or four day work weeks; robotic servants cleaning our houses and serving us daily; and then again, the Paperless Office. The new technologies — the personal computers, personal digital assistants, scanners on every desktop, e-books — all promised to eliminate the need for paper in our lives.

A look back through the literature and you can find all kinds of predictions of the paperless office. Sidney Schaer summarizes some of the classic quotations¹:

• Futurist Alvin Toffler wrote in 1970 that "making paper copies of anything is a primitive use of machines and violates their very spirit."
• And in 1975, the head of Xerox Corp.'s Research Center in Palo Alto, Calif., predicted that the use of printed paper would decline dramatically as offices turned to electronic files accessed at the touch of a button. "I don't know how much hard copy I'll want in this world," George E. Pake said.
• In 1975 Business Week celebrated the arrival of the paperless office with great fanfare ad hoopla.

But … there are those that predict that the paperless toilet will precede the paperless office.

I must admit I was afraid to raise this topic. After all, one colleague at the Faculty of Information said in a side (or was that 'snide') remark — "When are we going to give that up?" Then I saw this piece on Business Week this week: The New Push to Get Rid of Paper – Three decades after "paperless office" entered the business lexicon, the financial and environmental need to reduce paper is greater than ever. This article confirmed my renewed feelings that we have to do something about paper usage before we pull down the last tree like the inhabitants of Easter Island.

I could mention the statistics that –

• Paper usage is doubling (Stats Canada indicates "that paper consumption has doubled over 20 years even as Canadians adopt new technologies. Per capita consumption of paper for printing and writing from the years 1983 to 2003 rose 93.6 per cent to 91.4 kilograms — about 20,000 pages per person").
• With the introduction of the IBM PC in 1981, the usage of paper (as tracked by US producers) doubled from 16.1 million tons to almost 30 million tons by 1995 (source: American Forest Product and Paper Association) (Schaer)
• Lexmark reports that on average, employees print 33 Internet pages every day. For a company with 1000 employees that is 33,000 pages per day or 7,260,000 pages per year. And printing is costing organizations 1%-3% of their revenue.
• www.xplor.org reports paper use continues to grow at a rate of six to eight percent annually. And email is increasing printing volumes by 40%.

Or I could talk about the impact of digital technology — including the personal printer — that has made all of us personal publishing houses. Or the fact that if the emerging economies of India and China consume paper at the rate we do in North America we are doomed to repeat the errors of history.

I remember a discussion with a lawyer who told me his secretary printed every email and the attached documents three times — one for the file, one as a working copy and one 'just in case'.

My own conversion came unexpectedly and over time. However two seminal events stick in my mind. First, I was in Dublin and had an old 386 laptop on which I had to compose and edit a major proposal for a client. Having no printer, I had no choice, and had to adjust the way I worked and edited the document. By the way, we won that engagement. Second, I was in a workshop where there were 12 participants — 11 of whom had laptops. The 12^th was a new hire and this was his first day on the team. As each participant presented their views using a LCD projector, it became evident that this was a paperless session and that I had to adjust and reciprocate as facilitator. Gone were the transparencies and pens and the flip charts. The entire session was conducted for three days paperlessly and as a result all of the documentation was available immediately for all participants.

So I decided instead to revisit a list of suggestions I published in a paper for the Law Society of British Columbia on things we could do to make a difference.

What is required? Technology.

Let's consider a number of technology considerations:

1. Consider your network infrastructure. Make sure you have the bandwidth in place to deal with electronic media (beyond documents to video and audio) — even at home.
2. Get disk space — I recently bought two terabyte external drives for about $300 each.
3. Get good scanners — perhaps one with a sheet feeder that will read multiple page documents on one pass.
4. Buy large monitors (19" plus) or monitors that can display a page at a time. Some flat screen monitors rotate to provide this capability.
5. On the software side, set yourself up to easily produce PDF's.
6. Organize yourself — you may also want to have a database of document management system in place to organize these documents and provide indices for them.
7. Make sure there are adequate controls and security governing access and use of your digital documents.
8. Consider how to electronically replicate the trust that is now invested in paper records, through the use of such tools as PKI and digital signatures.

[Some tips here are from "Going PaperlessThe Art of Legal Technology" (Herrmann & Biek, 2001)²]

What is required? Mindset.

Going paperless requires a change of mindset. You have to consider the work flow and work processes around the specific document and organize your electronic equivalents accordingly. We have not been trained to work with electronic documents — but the next generation has. They will change the marketplace.

Our ability to review and work with documents online requires a change in mindset and behaviour.

Tips for doing with less paper personally and in your law firm

Change begins with you, if you are serious about going paperless. If you are looking for ways, allow me to suggest the following:

1. Consider making your prime machine a laptop.
2. When someone gives you paper documents, ask if they are available in electronic form. Ask them to send you the soft copy versions.
3. Use email as your prime form of correspondence. Most people will send you soft copy routinely in this medium.
4. Give up your paper calendar in favour of an electronic one.
5. Convert your incoming documents to electronic form (those you want to keep or file away).
6. Take your laptop or PDA with you to meetings — record your notes electronically.
7. Convert outgoing documents to electronic form and use email to deliver them.
8. Use Portable Document Format (PDF) files as a way of preserving the integrity of files when distributing them.
9. Implement computer based fax technology so that incoming files can be received in electronic form and handled accordingly. Outgoing faxes can be sent from the desktop using similar technology. Not only can you eliminate the handling of paper, but you can also reduce long distance costs dramatically by moving this traffic to email rather than fax.
10. Consider creating a central repository for documents — using DM or collaboration tools.
11. Instead of printing out web pages, save them to a file and organize these for easier retrieval. Tip: use the MHT (Internet Explorer) format to combine the page and all of its images into one archive.
12. Consider voice mail and other messaging traffic that results in paper: these can be digitized and stored / archived.
13. Look into to eBook readers for your PC, laptop, or PDA.
14. Read newspapers and magazines online and scan hard copy clippings to make them electronic.
15. Use your data projectors for meeting more often.
16. Consider using electronic whiteboards or old fashion whiteboards and your digital camera to record images of what is written.
17. Pay bills electronically.
18. Do your banking online.
19. Learn to use the technology better. This is usually the single largest barrier.
20. Work on the screen; train yourself how to work with documents in this medium.
21. Consider the use of outsourced help in scanning and indexing documents.

[Some of these tips were derived from A.K. Roberts web site (Roberts, 2001)³]

To be honest, paperless may not be achievable, but each of us can set a goal to use less paper every day. Take the jump now and start your journey to a paper-free world.

References:

Herrmann, R. K., & Biek, M. A. (2001). Going Paperless – the art of legal technology. InRe Magazine. [back].
Roberts, A. K. (2001). Quick Tips – for going paperless. from http://www.wholebrainmotivation.com/clutter/goals/paperless.htm [back]
Schaer, S. C. Writing Off Paper Files. originally reviewed from http://future.newsday.com/1/fbak0122.htm [back]

What do you get when you cross Davos, Business Week, IBM and Global Workforce? An interesting article with implications for KM practitioners and researchers alike that doesn't use the term 'knowledge management' once; but is teeming with KM ideas.

There was an interesting article in the January 17th issue of Business Week. It was buried in a Davos Special Report and more specifically in a series focused on Managing the Global Workforce. What caught my eye was an article on IBM ("International Isn't Just IBM's First Name"). In this article, without a singular explicit reference to Knowledge Management, there were several exemplars that would make the best KM professionals proud.

I would encourage you to read the entire article from end to end, but I thought I would summarize some of the key points that I took away from reading this excellent piece.

But, before giving you my summary, allow me to digress and give some (recent) historical context. I remember, almost to the day, when I first saw an IBM print advertisement that read "IBM Means Services" where the "s" at the end of services was scribbled in a handwritten fashion to emphasize the not so subtle change in their organization (from "IBM Means Service" to "IBM Means ServiceS"). At this point, as a Management Consultant who grew up in a world where there was a clear demarcation line between consultants and professional services and the world of hardware and software, I realized that my world had changed. IBM was now a potential competitor. Later, as my Firm broadened its range of services to include various Business Process Outsourcing offerings the notion of IBM as our competitor was again underscored.

Despite this, IBM has made a remarkable transition over the last fifty years from being a hardware manufacturer, to (in addition) being on of the largest software companies and now in its latest incarnation, to also being one of the largest global professional services organizations.

All Professional Service Firms (PSFs) can learn a lot from IBM. Whether you are in law, accounting, consulting, engineering or any form of PSF, we share a number of similar characteristics. With this in mind, there are a number of key points (quoted text in italics) that caught my eye:

"Their output is information" – for most PSFs, the main product is information – some might even argue this is a by-product of or precursor to 'knowledge'.

IBM "… is reorganizing around the principle that it will perform work for customers where the jobs can best be done—tapping the right talent at the right price". Isn't that the challenge most organizations and in particular PSFs face today? Indeed, I remember David Maister making the point that well organized PSFs made sure that work was done by the most cost-effective resource.

With respect to human capital, Chief Executive Samuel J. Palmisano says: "The big issues for us are: Where do you put them? How do you retain them? How do you develop them? How do you move work to them or them to work?" Is there a law firm of any size out there that does not have this challenge?

The article says: "Moffat and his colleagues also have used their manufacturing experience to keep track of IBM's far-flung employees. Just as every component used in an IBM computer is described in detail on inventory and planning documents, new databases contain profiles of employees that list their capabilities and their up-to-the-minute availability. Yet while a computer part doesn't change over time, people do. So the databases can be continuously updated by employees and their managers as employees gain skills and experience." I find it interesting that they used the manufacturing metaphors as a basis for attacking this problem. In any case, the idea of having expertise databases is something that many organizations have been looking at in recent years. The big debate is around whether each person should self-identify expertise or whether this is something that should be deduced from other activities – such as writing articles, papers or producing work product. Why not both?

Having worked on the concept of e-knowledge markets since the late nineties with Bryan Davis at the Kaieteur Institute For Knowledge Management as a key building block for KM, I find the concept of a marketplace as articulated illuminating: "Before, project managers assembled teams largely made up of people they had worked with. But as IBM expanded around the globe, managers found it harder to pull teams together. Now project managers post detailed requests in one of the databases called Professional Marketplace that lists more than 170,000 employees along with their skills, pay rate, and availability. Other managers monitor the database and serve as matchmakers between jobs and people. The databases have shaved 20% from the average time it takes to assemble a team and have saved IBM $500 million overall." One of our basic hypotheses is that the market metaphor is better than the sharing metaphor in a corporate setting – people trade knowledge more so than just sharing it.

They talk about the challenges of dealing with a distributed workforce via collaboration tools such as email and video-conferencing: "Strangers don't readily share knowledge. 'A big problem is trust,' says Dirk Wittkopp, director of IBM's Boeblingen lab. 'It works better if you can go out to dinner with somebody and have a beer. But we can't put people on planes to visit each other all the time.' …" Hmmm.. sharing knowledge and trust – a central challenge for KM practitioners.

Onto the use of social networking tools: "So Big Blue is trying to bridge the gap with software that borrows heavily from social networking. A new program called Beehive is essentially a corporate version of Facebook. IBM employees create profiles and post photos, list their interests, and comment about company events or happenings in their private lives." I draw your attention to other organizations such as British Petroleum and Hill and Knowlton who have used 'personal pages' as a key for linking people together and engaging them in relationship building well before the advent of MySpace and Facebook.

Then there is "search" … the holy grail for KM practitioners: "Another program, called Small Blue, is a search engine for finding experts within the company. The software scans employees' blogs, e-mail, instant messages, and reports, then draws conclusions about each participant's skills and expertise." … "Last month, IBM introduced a version of Small Blue called IBM Atlas for sale to customers." I have not looked at that product yet but am curious to.

The bottom line? Three thoughts:

1. We often get caught up having to talk about KM explicitly – but, one of my key hypotheses is that we will have done our job best as KM practitioners when this is fully in the context of the business and business strategy. Rather than think about KM and knowledge in a separate way like is done today; good business strategy embodies ways to leverage and optimize the return on an organizations key knowledge assets – including human capital. We will know we have arrived when we stop talking about KM strategy separate from business strategy. We don't have to call it KM to make it work.
2. We can learn from other professionals – the cross pollination of ideas is critical the development of KM for practitioners. Even an organization as large as IBM has lessons for most of our smaller professional service organizations.
3. IBM is cool again. Having worked at IBM as a newly minted undergrad, I have watched the transition of that organization as it opened up but ceded ground in the PC marketplace but then regained its ground in the nineties. It is their approach to managing people, their knowledge and expertise that gives them staying power. Similar management and knowledge practices will pay dividends for other organizations as well.

When talking about free / open source software, I am often surprised at the number of people today who still say to me – “if it is free it cannot be of any value”. Or those who ask – “what exactly is open source software?”. If you pardon the shameless use of the phrase, “long live free software” (or “vive le logiciel libre!”) ought to be the battle cry of the free software movement. Indeed, although not put that way by most proponents, that is the general sentiment.

What is free software? The Free Software Foundation maintains a definition of 'free software'. At the heart of this definition they assert:

Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it refers to four kinds of freedom, for the users of the software:

• The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
• The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
• The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this. …

Open Source, on the other hand is related but not synonymous. While there are several definitions offered on the web, the Open Source Initiative describes open source as: “… a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in.” And it offers a detailed definition of its own that largely focuses on distribution terms for open source software.

There are several innovative open source software projects that provide options for commercial off the shelf (COTS) software products. These software systems often run on a variety of operating systems; some even run on Windows. So here is a list of my favourite projects (in no particular order):

• The Linux operating system itself; which powers hundreds of thousands of computers world-wide – from servers to desktop machines. If you are interested in running Linux on your desktop or laptop I would recommend you checkout the Ubuntu distribution for ease of use – you would be amazed on the range of machines you can run this operating system on. But before you try to install this on a laptop, I suggest you check out compatibility. My son recently got an old IBM 240 laptop that had been sitting unused for a few years running with a version of Ubuntu!
• Apache – most know Apache as the workhorse of web servers; but the Apache Software Foundation actually supports a number of open source projects that are at the heart of providing a range of tools for developers and computer users.
• Several open source database systems such as MySQL (recently acquired by Sun for $1 billion), Postgres and other OS databases.
• FreeMind – a Java-based mind mapping tool.
• e-learning platforms and Learning Management Systems such as Moodle and Sakai
• ePresence – an interactive webcasting, conferencing and collaboration platform from the Knowledge Media Design Institute at the University of Toronto.
• Firefox – the open source browser credited with pushing advancements such as tabbed browsing and add-ons into the browser market.
• OpenOffice – a serious alternative to other office suites – with the ability to read and write common office formats (be careful with Office 2007 file formats though) and to write PDF files at the click of a button.
• WordPress – oh yes, lets not forget the blogging platform that allows us to produce Slaw. You should note, as well, that WordPress can act as a content management system, allowing you to maintain several pages on your own website.
• Acrophobia – which allows you to set up a server in your organization that will give everyone the ability to create PDF files. You print files to acrophobia and they are returned to you through email in a few seconds. Acrophobia is a product of open source enthusiasts in the legal community. Acrophobia is a project of the ILTA Open Source Software Peer Group.
• PhpBB – a widely used tool for creating discussion forums.
• Wikis – where do we start? There is MediaWiki (the platform on which Wikipedia is built), Twiki and several other open source wiki tools.
• Portal platforms such as: Drupal, Joomla, Plone

The open source movement is not alone in this quest. Several major corporations have joined and have provided support for the movement in one form or another – including: IBM, Novell, and Sun Microsystems. There are also a number of companies born out of the OS movement itself – such as Red Hat.

If you want to explore further, you can find a more complete list of projects at open source living. If you are looking for alternative to commercial software to run on your Linux desktop, you should visit the Linux Alternative Project. And, to find a variety of projects – try searching Freshmeat or SourceForge. Finally, if you want to get involved with other folks in the legal community with a willingness to explore Open Source – try the ILTA Open Source Software Peer Group.

If you haven't looked seriously at open source, give it a try. Happy hunting and exploring.

I have been fortunate in the last two years to have been asked to speak about social networks in law (and other professional) firms at conferences and workshops. I thought I would take this opportunity to summarize some of the key points I make about social networks.

First, social networks and social media (or knowledge media) are not the same thing. People often called tools such as LinkedIn and FaceBook social networks. These are tools for making our social networks explicit. And indeed, we can use these tools / platforms to keep in touch with parts of our social network – and I say parts deliberately – since there are many people we know that do not ‘hang with us’ on these services. These are only representations of the networks to which we belong and participate. I hate to nitpick on words, but isn’t that what happens often in the practice of law?

There are three components to the framework that we need to keep in mind: social networks, social / knowledge media and knowledge organization frameworks.

Social networks are about people. Here is a definition I use often: “A social network is a description of the social structure between actors, mostly individuals or organizations. It indicates the ways in which they are connected through various social familiarities ranging from casual acquaintance to close familiar bonds” ((http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~i385q/archive/sharma_social_networks.ppt)).

Social / knowledge media comes in many forms and includes things such as Wikis, Blogs, Forums, discussion threads, personal web sites / web pages, team rooms, e-rooms, deal rooms, listservs, Instant Messaging and eMail. These media support, enable and enhance social networks – but they are not social networks any more than telescopes are astronomers.

In addition, there are emerging knowledge organization frameworks such as social tagging and folksonomies that have come into their own in this digital world.

As well, the term ‘social networking’ has come to mean the act of maintaining one’s social network using social media tools (like LinkedIn and Facebook).

In the past application systems didn’t have the Internet as a base to provide vectors of growth. We grew systems in corporate and academic environments. Today, many of the opportunities we have to implement technologies and media are first experimented with on the Internet. Think about portals (Yahoo and Netscape pioneered this), search, email and many of the things we take for granted inside and outside organizations. If you assume, as I do, that most technologies associated with portals and intranets move from the outside in; then we need look to the general Internet to see what is happening with social media and take cues from these developments and frameworks. The use of social media and the rise of social sites such as YouTube, LinkedIn and Facebook offer possibilities for inside the enterprise as well.

In addition to understanding social media, we need to go back to first principles and develop a better understanding of the social networks that exist in our own organizations and between our firms and clients. To do this, we need to map these various social networks.

What can you do? How can you leverage emerging knowledge about social networking? Here are some suggestions …

1. Use social sites for screening applicants
2. Use social sites for alumni (Hill and Knowlton and Siemens did this instead of creating their own internal alumni databases)
3. Use social sites for recruitment (Ernst & Young does this to stay in touch with thousands of young recruits)
4. Keep an eye on your brand on social media – deep web search (several Firms have been hit by this – there is also an opportunity for law firms here … to help protect clients)
5. Look for internal opportunities to use social media (… start small) – inside (intranets) and with clients (extranets)
6. Consider (seriously) social tagging of internal resources
7. Map your social networks / understand them (Hill and Knowlton, various accounting and consulting firms have done this with surprising results)
8. Consider networking as a framework for: Expertise location; Knowledge location; Learning; Mentoring; Etc.
9. Use social network analysis as a tool for accelerating integration post merger / acquisition
10. Use social network analysis to look for opportunities outside of the organization – some firms are mining patent filings and research publications to map opportunities for partnerships and acquisitions.

One of the things that surprised me when I started working with law firms is that most firms and most tech people ask one question repeatedly that seems to stifle innovation and the development of new concepts and ideas. When presented with something new, most ask: "which other law firm is doing this?' While this makes some sense and provides a way of weeding out wacky ideas with no traction, it also limits innovation and creativity. What about ideas emanating from other professional service firms? Other service firms? From industry in general?

Take for example the semantic web:

• "… a project that intends to create a universal medium for information exchange by putting documents with computer-processable meaning (semantics) on the World Wide Web"
• "… an evolving extension of the World Wide Web in which web content can be expressed not only in natural language, but also in a form that can be understood, interpreted and used by software agents, thus permitting them to find, share and integrate information more easily"

The original vision for this is credited to Sir Tim Berners-Lee as an extension to his original invention (the world wide web). You can find an outline of the concept penned by Tim himself here. Much has been done to establish this framework which is aimed at making web content more accessible and usable — especially by machines.

Originally, I asked a number of software vendors to elaborate on their plans for the semantic web. Once I got pass the blank stares and the half-baked answers and came to the realization that most vendors have done little to nothing in this area, I went looking for more in-depth thinking. Surely something as important as this warranted some serious consideration by the best minds in the business. I was surprised to find some excellent resources are available to those who want to be on the leading edge of this thinking.

After all, this is more than software vendors using XML as a basis for word processing documents. What about using the semantic web constructs to represent and structure documents — from contracts to KM artifacts such as precedents, research memos and opinions?

There are a number of resources available for those interested in tracking and understanding the possibilities in this area. These include:

• www.legalxml.org – although this group seems to be inactive, it has produced a number of schemas and document frameworks. Much of this work has been deemed "completed" and includes:
  • electronic court filing documents – "using XML to create and transmit legal documents among attorneys, courts, litigants, and others";
  • eContracts – "enabling the efficient creation, maintenance, management, exchange, and publication of contract documents and terms";
  • eNotarization – "technical requirements to govern self-proving electronic legal information";
  • integrated justice frameworks and documents – to facilitate "the exchange of data among justice system branches and agencies for criminal and civil cases";
  • lawful intercept documents - 'production of a structured, end-to-end lawful interception process framework consisting of XML standards and authentication mechanisms, including identifiable related XML standards and XML translations of ASN.1 modules";
  • legislative documents, citations, and messaging – "standardizing markup for legislative documents and simple citation for non-legislative documents"
  • online dispute resolution – "using XML to allow public access to justice through private- and government-sponsored dispute resolution systems"
• leXML – an initiative "established to serve the growing interest in automated exchange of legal data".
• Legal XML Conferences – several of which have taken place over the last five to ten years. Proceedings from these make a good read.
• Legal RDF – a not for profit initiative set up to move the concept of legal semantic web along. Note: this web site will take you to other resources and is well worth the visit.

If your head isn't hurting yet with too much of these technical details, I would also like to introduce you to a book reference – Law and The Semantic Web (Benjamins et al. eds; Springer, Berlin, N.Y.: 2005). In this book, the editors assemble a number of primary research papers dealing with legal ontologies, methodologies, legal information retrieval, and applications. Prompted in part by the EU Lisbon Summit in March 200 where EU heads of state made a public commitment to "become the most competitive knowledge-based society in the world by 2010." Several projects were funded as part of the EU's "Semantic-Based Knowledge and Content Systems" Strategic Objective. The book provides leading edge thinking on the application of semantic web frameworks to the legal domain.

So why then does this not have the traction one would expect for such an important initiative? First, no major software vendor has embraced this in an aggressive way. Some of the document automation vendors have done so taking baby steps into the world of XML. But in my view, the efforts to use XML formats for word processing documents is not enough. Second, Nathan Simpson, a colleague and collaborator, makes the point that we are waiting for artificial intelligence to automate the tagging and classification of these documents — given the volume of documents most firms and individuals are dealing with, manual tagging of content is a losing battle.

Nevertheless, I do think we should be working on ways to move this along. It is only by our collective efforts will we be able to make a difference and lay the groundwork for these frameworks to enable better solutions for the legal industry.

David Weinberger, author of Small Pieces Loosely Joined (2002) ((Weinberger, D. (2002). Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory of the Web. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing.)) and one of the four contributors to the Cluetrain Manifesto (Levine, Locke, Searls, & Weinberger, 2000) ((Levine, R., Locke, C., Searls, D., & Weinberger, D. (2000). The Cluetrain Manifesto : The End of Business As Usual. Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus Books.)), published a new book this year: Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder (2007). ((New York: Times Books.)) The central argument for the book is that a new order in organizing 'things' that he calls 'the third order' is emerging and that we need to rethink the frameworks we put in place inside and between our organizations.

David elaborates … In the first order we organized things — putting similar things together. He uses several exemplars and analogies, one of which is emptying the dishwasher — when we do this, we put similar utensils (e.g. plates and bowls) together. Likewise, the original libraries stored books alphabetically and therefore patrons relied on a knowledgeable librarian (read knowledge specialist) to find appropriate material on their request. But then along came Melvil Dewey and, with the creation of the Dewey Decimal system, libraries moved to the second order. Now we could have card catalogs and organize books by subject as well as by author. The stacks could be opened up to patrons and we could find things without relying on a librarian who needed to have intimate knowledge of the entire collection. But books, in the second order, are reduced to 3×5 cards in a catalog and we have a couple (or a few; but not infinite) ways of organizing them — and therein lies the limitations of second order frameworks.

In the digital age, David claims, everything is miscellaneous. Welcome to the third order. He supports his thesis using a number of exemplars, most of them with strong web-based business models. Along came Amazon leveraging the vast capabilities of computers and techniques of collaborative filtering ('people who bought this book also bought…') to allow us to traverse collections of books. Think about it: we are no longer told how to organize books, the community contributes to our understanding of the relationship between various books, and the organization is not static but dynamic and grows over time. With every search the collection is rearranged to match our point of reference/view.

I have spoken with a couple of colleagues at the University of Toronto Faculty of Information Studies who have built their academic careers in the area of knowledge organization and information/knowledge credibility. Having approached this book skeptically at first, they became converts to the concepts espoused.

So how do things work in the third order? People organize things the way they personally and individually think about them. They put them into folders or classify them as 'alike.' They can put the same things (e.g. documents) into several places. They can tag things. They can search on their own tags — as well as other people's tags. Tools such as del.icio.us, YouTube and Flickr do this today without imposing ways of organizing things on the user/participant/community.

Publishers feel that their business models are threatened by the idea of Google books or any service that allows people electronic access to the full text of their publications. But, I sure like the thought of being able to go through the twelve books I have read this year on expertise subjects and to be able to find things electronically — instead I am reduced to manual marginalia and my poor memory of what and where certain material I have read is. I like the idea that in the third order, everything in the book (full text) is in the card catalog, so to speak.

So, I ask those of us who are involved with knowledge management (inside and outside of the practice of law): what would happen if we acquiesced to the third order and instead of fighting it, embraced it? Why not let people in your organization 'tag' their own materials (documents, pictures, websites, books, articles, publications, etc.)? Should we be forcing the world view of knowledge organization on our people (various classification schemes, taxonomies and knowledge organization frameworks) versus letting them organize materials on their own and as they see fit (folksonomies)? Why does it matter how things are organized in a digital/third-order world where organization is a dynamic snapshot at any point in time?

At first glance, many of the things that David proposes seem like heresy; but dig deep, and you will find there is much of substance in the way he sees things. This is an excellent book. If you haven't read this book yet, I highly recommend it. It will challenge your thinking about what is possible as we move KM forward.

About eight years ago, I toured the country with a number of seminars conducted by the Delphi Group on corporate portals. Portals were quickly becoming an option for corporations (including law firms) and the market was raging with a number of portal vendors. Most of these are not around today as consolidation and evolution of the concept saw mergers in the industry, and many early entrants didn't make it through the first few laps. But I was impressed then, and still am today, with the basic concept Delphi had developed and with their framework for thinking about and building portals.

Delphi defined corporate portals as … "a single point of access for the pooling, interaction and distribution of organizational knowledge." I always liked this definition, as it placed emphasis on ‘knowledge’ as the key goal.

Delphi proposed a model / framework for corporate portals built largely on developments with the public portals of the day (think AOL, Yahoo, and Netscape). The seven basic components of the framework / model included:

1. a Taxonomy Engine:- to provide organization for knowledge artefacts and pointers for source materials. Indeed, early efforts were pointing to the possibility of sophisticated automated taxonomy engines to complement manual efforts.
2. a Metadata Engine:- using either manual or inferred tag or markup data (think SGML/XML). Alternatively, they envisioned DBMS links to unstructured data.
3. a Search Engine:- with full text search, linguistics, heuristics and semantics. And with links to the Taxonomy engine.
4. an Integration engine:- they envisioned a tool (engine) to link the metadata and search engines.
5. a Publishing engine:- that would help organize information from various sources and present it in various sources (web pages, as PDF documents, etc.)
6. a Presentation engine:- dealing with cognitive presentation and allowing for interaction and learning from user experience.
7. a Learning engine:- that would allow for system self-adjustments to fit apparent work needs of users and to provide a feedback loop between user interaction and system content and processes.

In addition, they also talked about desirable components and features such as process support.

Looking back, I have some observations and some questions. I think a lot of these concepts still hold today; but I do not think many firms have realized this full vision. How many have work flow as an integral part of their engines today? Tags have moved beyond the domain of SGML and XML to the world of folksonomies — but how many firms have leveraged this in their portals? Have we really figured out the taxonomy issues (or, as I prefer, the knowledge organization frameworks)? Should integrations engines be more like the components we see in other industries — linking applications together (see healthcare and Health Level 7 or HL7).

There are a number of components that have emerged over the years that were not envisioned at the time. Take for example the impact of RSS on the web today. Content management had not yet reared its head as a key application — but it is a significantly important component today. The concept of community, although well entrenched in the early web and the market at the time, did not figure prominently in the architecture; whereas, today, driven by our understanding and the success of Web 2.0 applications, this is a crucial component for any good portal.

Search engines have come a long way in these last few years. And although adoption has started to take hold with law firms, I doubt the full vision has been realized, as I said earlier. So I would be curious to know which firms are closest to this ideal portal today and what your thoughts are on how this model could be refreshed given today's environment and array of tools.

Earlier in the year I wrote about my EV-DO PC card – which I still use as a way to stay in touch with the office and the world when traveling across Canada. I have not used it extensively in the US given current roaming rates — but I have used it in a pinch when I could not find a good WI-FI connection or anything else.

More recently, though, we had the opportunity to check out an EV-DO router companion product to the card. Picture this, you put your EV DO PC card into the router and create an instant wireless network (WI-FI) for you and a few colleagues in the courtroom or conference room or wherever you please. Of special note, you can even plug this into a cigarette lighter power adapter and hold your own LAN party at the beach or rolling down the highway in your motor home.

In our testing, we found speeds to be more than acceptable for a few people to share this connection. In any case, it sure beats not having one in some situations. These routers can be found at most of the Bell Mobility stores or through your corporate Bell rep. Here is one good summary I found online.

One more leash has been removed for those of us that cannot get enough of the Net.

Picture this: you go online to see if a specific domain name is available; you use what is supposed to be a reputable site on the web; when you come back later someone has grabbed the domain name you were searching for (by the way it was shown as available when you searched); and, is holding it for re-sale.

Seems far fetched? Well eWeek has a story on their site this week:

Opinion: Whois Hijacking My Domain Research?

Leave it to the domain-squatting industry to come up with a way
to jump claims.

Slide Show: Hijack: Who's Advertising on My Researched Site?

Why should you care? This is another attempt to use the web to and computers in a surreptitious way. Just when you thought web intermediaries were trustworthy… sigh…

Here are two recent articles about the ongoing debate about net neutrality.

First, from CIO Magazine, Ben Worthen warns "The democracy of the Web may soon be a relic of the past, a change that may have costly implications for doing business on the Net."

Then, from CNN Technology, "Coming soon: The Web toll – New laws may transform cyberspace and the way you surf it ."

Why is everyone so relatively silent on this issue?

Despite the fact that Judge John Spooner, an administrative law judge, ruled that a New York City employee cannot be fired for surfing the Web at work in April, the employee has been fired anyway, reports Techdirt and a number of other news sites.

So, slackers beware. Despite the best protestations, it seems that goofing off – whether it be with your iPod, the phone, email or the Internet won't go unpunished if most companies have their way.

Given that this week's theme is 'Copyright', I went back to a recent article I had read in CIO Insight, in January, by Larry Downes, Associate Dean of the UC-Berkeley School of Information Management and Systems and the author of Unleashing the Killer App and The Strategy Machine.

In the article titled "Why Johnny Can't Stop Sharing Files", Larry postulates that: "Copyright is effectively dead, despite the entertainment industry having won the Grokster case—or maybe even, in part, because it did. The consequences of ignoring the that change are dire."

He makes several key points, albeit from a US perspective:

Any law that is ignored by nearly every young adult in the country is no law at all.

History amply supports this view. The U.S. has seen many revolutions in basic legal doctrines, some accompanied by violence (the Revolutionary and Civil Wars), and others largely nonviolent (the New Deal and the Civil Rights movement). But each had the same characteristics as the intellectual-property revolt going on right now: an economically powerful social class with the law solidly on its side; increased enforcement accompanied by increased resistance from an identifiable group claiming the moral high ground; and, ultimately, a complete and often dramatic reversal.

He asks: "So why can't Johnny stop file sharing, even when he knows it is illegal?" And proceeds to answer the question himself:

The short answer is that the copyright system designed in the 18th century simply doesn't work in the era of open standards, high-speed and low-cost data communications, and ever-cheaper and more powerful devices to store, transmit and play digital content. It's intellectual-property law versus Moore's Law. The winner is clear. Only the timing is in doubt. …

… Fueling the backlash against the entertainment industry is an emerging ideology among young consumers of collaboration, free culture, open source and bartering value for value in an economy of information. …

… Instead of making copyright stronger, we could have made it weaker; instead of building in draconian enforcement tools that backfire, we could have engaged young consumers in a real negotiation about what was economically reasonable behavior; instead of charging more for physical products that are increasingly unnecessary, the content industries could have embraced a digital channel sooner, and set realistic prices, even if it meant accelerating the decline of CDs and other media.

So I ask – is Larry right in his views? Is this truly the start of a revolution? … and the only issue is timing?

I will let minds more learned than I weigh in on the subject.

I am not sure how long this link will remain … but check out the new (beta; of course) Google Romance. Make sure to take the tour.

Have fun :=).

One of my IT colleagues, who freely admits that he does not carry a Blackberry because of its addictive nature — even in the evenings when with family, brought to my attention a Newsweek article that recaps a presentation by Linda Stone, a former Apple and Microsoft executive, on the social implications of a syndrome she calls continuous partial attention. At a technology conference who's theme was The Attention Economy, where speakers were reportedly competing with laptops and Blackberries for their audience's attention, this speaker apparently struck a nerve.

The article says:

Stone first noticed the syndrome a decade ago when she was creating a product for Microsoft that let people interact in a "virtual world." She found that her test users wanted to fade in and out while conducting other activities. This turns out to be the way most of us work—and live—today. With an open communications channel the e-mail keeps flowing, the instant messages keep interrupting and the Web feeds keep coming. CPA stems from our desire, Stone says, to be "a live node on the network."

Which raises the question in my mind: Is this by choice? Are we doing this because we believe that we need to be connected? Or because there are expectations that we are connected and that we will respond every time we are 'pinged' by another email.

In any case, her research and findings give us food for thought.

I came across an article in the Financial Times after AT&T announced their intended acquisition of BellSouth that questioned the impact of this acquisition on 'net neutrality'. [See the Wikipedia entries on Network Neutrality and Net Neutrality].

I became interested in the subject and did my usual routing around on the Internet to see what the buzz was. To my surprise, the buzz is alive and well in the US and Canada.

In the US, the camps have lined up on one side or the other. The telcos, large ISPs and equipment vendors claiming there is no need for legislation while at the same time making broad statements about the value of the networks and the massive investment they have that is not being recognized fairly. Check out this article at InfoWorld which quotes one of the co-founders of the Progress and Freedom Foundation (PFF) as follows:

"There's nothing neutral about net neutrality," said Jeffrey Eisenach, chairman of the consulting firm CapAnalysis Group LLC and co-founder of PFF. "Net neutrality is, in fact, the theft of property rights from [broadband] infrastructure providers. It's simple regulatory theft — the transfer of ownership from one group of people to another group of people."

On the other side of the argument are companies like Google and Yahoo. There is a good summary in the Linux Journal by the venerable Doc Searls who argues in favour of protecting net neutrality.

The fight for Net Neutrality is for the place we call the Net. The fight against Net Neutrality is for a neutered Net biased toward carrying the next form of Cable TV. But what about the fact that most of us never have experienced Neutrality in the first place?

On the Canadian front, I came across a series of posts by Rob Hyndman and, through Rob, Michael Geist who comments on the threat in Canada.

What’s at stake? Innovations like Voice over IP (VoIP), new 'not yet thought of' Internet services and unfettered access to the content of our choice; not that of the ISP you use.

It seems to me there are lots of issues here that we should be debating before it is to late.

Well, seems like someone did not tell staffers at the CIA that Wikipedia has become more vigilant in monitoring 'who changes what' on the online encyclopedia. A sidebar story "Look Who's Using Wiki To Rewrite History" from Capital Insider (Business Week, March 13, 2006, p. 49, By Richard S. Dunham) reports as follows:

"… What does the CIA have against Bill Clinton? In the latest episode of virtual vandalism by federal employees, CIA staffers have been caught altering entries in Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone with an Internet connection. Someone using an agency computer changed Wiki's Clinton entry to note that the ex-President was "dumber" than his GOP predecessors. Spooks aren't the only ones playing dirty tricks. Wiki reports that computer users at the Justice Dept., Marine Corps, and Navy have politicized entries in recent weeks.

Earlier this year, Wikipedia blocked Capitol Hill access to the site after lawmaker entries were subjected to political spin and fabrications. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales calls the shenan-igans "routine." …"

What will they think of next?

Blogs have been abuzz for the last few weeks with one of the worse kept secrets in the technology business — the new Microsoft Origami mini-note computer. Launched at CeBIT Technology Conference in Germany, March 9th, this sub notebook computer creates a newly named category of computers — Ultra-Mobile Personal Computers (UMPCs). [See the Microsoft site for official details] By the way, didn't anyone tell them this doesn't conform to the need for a Three Letter Acronym or TLA?

Anyway, heres the skinny on this new device. eWeek reports that:

"The new devices are expected to weigh in at less than 2 pounds, with 7-inch screens offering a variety of stylus, touch and keyboard input choices. Microsoft and its partners are expecting the first generation of Origami systems to offer 2.5 hours of battery life; feature 30GB to 60GB hard drives; and be based on Intel Celeron M, Intel Penium M or VIA C7-M processors."

eWeek also says that:

Microsoft is betting that these devices … "will eventually become indispensable and ubiquitous as mobile phones are today," according to officials with the Redmond software maker.

I haven't put my hands on this device yet, but these specifications don't make me want to rush out and get one of them — and I am usually an early adopter — well at least I am when I feel like the device has some utility. For example, I had been watching the development of PDAs for years, and when I saw the Palm II i knew that we had a winner on our hands and rushed out to get one. Sorry Sharpe and Psion, you had elements of brilliance – but not the full package.

Battery life of 2.5 hrs pales in comparison to most user expectations. Personally, when I first heard about this, I was looking forward to a device with 10 – 12 hours of operating time; sufficient to make it through a long day without recharging. 60GB drives are passé. How about 120 GB? I like the idea that this device is reported to have a full operating system (Windows XP). At a price point of $599 to $999 (US) it feels like this device has over shot the mark.

Red Herring reports:

Some devices will have built-in GPS (global positioning system), a fingerprint reader, a webcam, SD (secure digital) card readers, compact flash, and digital TV tuners.

Users will have the option of connecting via Ethernet, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth. Microsoft did not specify whether it will be ready to connect via a cellular network, saying instead that UMPC users “will be able to connect via wide-area networking.”

In any case, do not despair. Microsoft is a big smart company. This may not be the device to give to every law student, associate or partner; but in time they will get it right. Remember the Apple Newton? Grid Computers?

This is another product in the evolution to a truly portable device. One that will: make me trade in my laptop computer; and, become my computing and network device of choice. Have hope — I still do!

I wrote about my adventures with the Bell EV-DO Wireless card in an earlier post. Having used this card for a couple of months, I have to tell you I am in no rush to give this up. This card has been a lifesaver in the car and on the road – including on campus.

I have found the speeds at which you access the Internet using this card to be more than acceptable. I even use it around the office when not at my desk and separated from a LAN port.

For the mobile / road warrior the ability to be always on at high speeds changes the way you do business. I know some of you will not give up your PDA / eMail devices. But for me, the ability to have my laptop and the Internet, whether in any of our five offices or elsewhere on the road, makes a huge difference in my ability to cope with day to day demands and get work done.

If you have not tried these new cards yet, give them a whirl! You may find you like them too!

With all of the discussion earlier about II and Lawyers; I was half expecting to hear someone use the phrase … “can’t we all get along?” I deliberated on whether to enter this debate; but, after having gathered my thoughts here goes…

First, to think that this is a problem of IT and lawyers is to look at this through too narrow a lens. Indeed, there is discussion throughout management and IT literature that is looking at the IT-Business problem. What follows here is one person’s view of the problem and some suggestions for dealing with it.

What really is the problem? Is there a re-framing required? Is the problem that IT does not understand the business? Or perhaps we hire the wrong people in senior IT management positions? Or maybe our IT efforts are not aligned with our business efforts and strategies?

If you allow me to postulate, I will offer several points for consideration:

1. Treat IT as partners in the management of the business – not servants. Recognize each other’s expertise. Insist your IT people develop an understanding of the business. And open the “C-level” door to them.
2. Insist IT manage like a true business unit.
3. Talk “to” not “down” at each other.
4. Deal with governance in a formal fashion – See: (Weill & Ross, 2004) (Broadbent & Kitzis, 2005) (IT Governance Institute., 2005)
5. Hire with “I” and “T” in mind not just “T” — too many of the IT Managers I see (inside and outside of the legal profession) don’t think beyond the infrastructure layer at the base of this pyramid; their sole focus on technology leaves a huge gap between them and the business.
6. Jerome Bruner, a professor of psychology from New York University, makes a distinction between the concepts of ‘learning about' and ‘learning to be'; or a distinction between ‘know that’ and ‘know how’. We expect our lawyers to ‘know how’ or to learn the practice of law. We should expect our IT professionals to 'know that' or ‘know about’ the business of law in its many forms; from academic law to corporate (in house) practice to the provision of legal services.
7. Realize, as lawyers, that reading a Computer Magazine does not make you a technical expert — more often a dabbler and in this case this is more ‘knowing about’ than ‘knowing how’.
8. Do not accept sloppy management practices from IT folks. Insist on not only technical proficiency and professionalism, but also on managerial excellence. Given the choice, hire a good manager over a technical expert to lead your team. Hire the technical experts for the right role (e.g. network management, security, data center operations) but do not expect them to talk the language of the business. A good CIO or IT Manager should bridge that gap for you. Business skills are needed more than ever, the pressure to cut costs is unrelenting, and for IT leaders, the relationships with business peers could be improved.
9. Focus on alignment – See IBM Systems Journal, Volume 32, Number 1, 1993 – or go here for the complete index.
10. Look for leadership skills not just management. These are not synonymous.

References:

Broadbent, M., & Kitzis, E. (2005). The new CIO leader: Setting the agenda and delivering results. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

IT Governance Institute. (2005). Governance of the extended enterprise: Bridging business and IT strategies. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Weill, P., & Ross, J. W. (2004). IT governance: How top performers manage IT decision rights for superior results. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

I was getting caught up on some 'offline' reading; wading through a stack of magazines when I came across a cover story in Information Week (Jan 9, 2006). The headline reads:

EMBRACE YOUR INNER GEEK. With consumer tech driving innovation, staying gadget-savvy is a business imperative, not just a indulgence. (You can find the full text of this article here).

In this article, the authors make the observation (from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas) that the lines between consumer and business tech are vanishing. Think about how most people react when they see an IT manager sitting in his/her office playing with gadgets; or 'toys' as they are affectionately referred to. Most people would question the value of this effort or treat it as a waste of time.

But given the importance of handheld devices today to everyday work it is hard to make the distinction between work and play any more. Even camera phones have become a way to capture scribblings on a whiteboard eliminating the need for expensive devices. iPods can be used to listen to informational podcasts or educational material. Convergence has blurred the lines between many of the pocket devices we are used to carrying around (PIM, eMail, phone, still or video camera, GPS, music player, video phone, and now – even pocket TV).

A recent post (Top 10 technology trends for 2006) places 'cell phones that do everything' in the numer two spot.

So, we need to take these gadgets seriously. We need to plan to integrate them into our solution architectures – whether in educational or work settings. They have become indispensable extensions or prostheses for many of us. McLuhan would have had fun examining the impact of these devices.

While SONY got our attention most recently, because of their Digital Rights Management approaches and the resulting backlash, let us look at them in a more positive light. This time, its e-book the sequel. Sony demonstrated their latest attempt at the e-book at the recent International CES trade show for the electronic gadget industry in Las Vegas.

Rumors are floating all over the web. After scouring through several web sites, I have put together this probable list of features: This new device is reportedly to be priced in the range of an iPod – $300-500 USD. It will use E Ink (from E Ink Corp, Cambridge Mass) which uses black dots on a white background to create an experience similar to reading black type on paper. It builds on the Sony Librie e-book; which was released in Japan, but failed to gain wide market acceptance. It is expected that this technology will allow users to read approximately 15 books before having to recharge the device. This device will not deal with proprietary or restrictive formats; problems that appear to have stymied acceptance of the Librie. It is expected to read multiple document formats including PDFs. It should be about 9 ounces and the size of a thick magazine. It will be readable in bright light situations; including sunlight. It is expected to hold about 80 ‘averaged sized’ books.

The business model appears to learn from SONY’s market losses to Apple in the music market; after having dominated this market with the Walkman for a number of years. Deals are reported to be in place with various publishers to provide content.

For any of you who thinks we should give up the fight and stop trying — I remind you of the many devices that preceded the Palm before its roaring success — including the Apple Newton, Sharpe Wizard, PSION, etc. In many cases, we iterate forward until we create a device which finds traction.

While all of the buzz is about consumer use of this device, imagine the resources a lawyer could carry on one of these devices and its possible use for reference purposes.

Want to learn more? try this Business Week article as a start.

Since 9.11, democracy and openness have been at odds with security. Now Google earth has caught the attention of governments such as in India where concern has been raised about the detailed satellite pictures available featuring sites from the Taj Mahal to some of the world’s most secret military installations.

Want to know more: Here is a story originating from the Christian Science Monitor “Google's Open Skies Raise Cries” courtesy of CBS News; also an article from The Indian Sunday Express: “Technology: Search and Destroy — Google has stunning entries for its photos of the world’s most secret military installations”; and, a reference back to the tongue-in-cheek competition launched by the Register (in the UK) which challenged users to find black helicopters at sensitive sites using Google Earth “Google Earth: the black helicopters have landed”.

So, what is this all about? Good fun? Open access to information? Or, a serious threat to security?

Your call…

… bring it on!

I have been a user of the Sierra Wireless AirCard® 510 on Bell Mobility for the last year and a half — having switched over from a similar Fido card. This 1X card, which works on the Bell cellular network has bailed me out many times where I could not find a (802.11x) wireless network connection or plug unto the nearest Ethernet port. It has allowed me to stay in touch with the office from my laptop.

I must confess, I have resisted the temptation to go with a pocket device for email for two reasons. When people know you are that connected they expect an instant response. Second, my preference is to use my laptop to read email and attachments as I work on a mobile basis a lot of the time — whether roaming around the office, sitting in the middle of a conference room or meeting, or in a hotel room somewhere,

Now Bell has changed the game. Last week, I was asked to trial a new service from Bell Mobility So I installed and started to use the new Kyocera Passport KPC650 1xEV-DO PC Card (a mouthful eh?). This card allows me to connect at average speeds of 300 to 700 kbps and peak speeds of 2.4 Mbps — so far so good. I have been using this card in a number of places – all be it around Toronto – to connect to the web and to VPN back to the office. The speed boost is worth it. I feel unleashed. While not the speed I get on my home wireless network or in the office, the lag is acceptable and even pages that are full of graphics or loaded with scripts perform at acceptable speeds.

I am reminded of having read an article some time back where Bill Joy (of Sun Microsystems fame) mused that 1.0 to 1.5 Mbps seemed to be an optical speed for connecting – as we really don't notice much difference when we step up to 10 or 100 Mbps. This would put this new EV-DO PC card near to this range.

I will continue this 30 day trial, using the card wherever I can to see if the performance is consistent. But already, I am hooked. Being connected and 'always on' allows me to be able to multi-task, stay in touch with the team, and be alerted in the case of an emergency. While I have treated the old Aircard as part of an escalating set of tools and at the bottom of the chain (my connection of last resort) I might be tempted to make this my main means of connecting outside of the office and home – opting of course for the 'all you can surf' unlimited data package. Stay tuned.

The debate is on. Should search engines be regulated?

Yale Law School hosted a conference yesterday on the subject (Regulating Search: A Symposium on Search Engines, Law, and Public Policy). Several of the papers presented can be found at the bottom of the Symposium's web page — just follow the link to the Position Papers on the right side.

Bring out the trumpets and the drums!

While we are all out there rushing around dealing with our regular day to day rush, Microsoft Windows is celebrating its twentieth birthday. Can you imagine that. I can recall having staff playing with early versions (1.0 and 2.0) before the product took off with version 3.

Eweek devoted much of a recent issue to reflections on the last twenty years and prognostications for the future. The real questions are: have we really progressed? does the MS Windows standard encourage or stifle innovation?

There is an old joke that goes something like this: How many Microsoft engineers does it take to screw in a light bulb? None. They just define darkness as an industry standard. You can find this joke in many forms on the web.

There are two news items this week of note on the Microsoft / standards front.

First, Microsoft appears to have decided to seek an endorsement from the International Organization of Standardization (ISO) for its Office XML Reference Schema (the new file format for it's Office productivity suite). This seems to be in response to efforts by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to use the OASIS-stewarded OpenDocument Format (ODF) as its standard. Why does this matter? Digital records management: many organizations are seeking ways to preserve documents over the longer term — and at the base of this are document standards. You can find excellent discussions of this move and its implications at ZDnet and Microsoft Watch.

Second, Microsoft has proposed extensions for RSS and OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language – an XML format for outlines that allows exchange of outline-structured information between applications running on different operating systems and environments). What are the implications for this? Think of being able to share items such as calendar entries across the web, between applications on different machines and potentially different software. Think back to Lotus Notes — at the heart of which was replication. The ability to replicate and synchronize information across the web will open a range of new applications and uses. Ray Ozzie will make his mark on Microsoft — as he did with Lotus. He is one of the industry’s luminaries, pioneers and leaders. This technology is worth tracking. Want to know more? Try this article on ZDnet.

During all of this debate about Google Print, Amazon has been awfully quiet. But in reading the print version of Information Week (Nov 7, 2005) I came across a short article “Pay By The Page” outlining Amazon’s plans to expand its “Search Inside the Book” technology to let customers buy part of a book or read it online – for a fee.

This got my curiosity. In roaming around the web I came across references to two potential new services from Amazon, “Amazon Pages” and “Amazon Update” on a recent (Nov 3, 2005) CNET story:

Amazon's new "Amazon Pages" program will let people purchase online access to anywhere from a few pages of a book to an entire work. The e-commerce company also announced a program called "Amazon Upgrade" that will let customers pay extra to be able to access books electronically that they've had shipped to them in printed form.

"Buy a cookbook and you will not only have it on your shelf, but also be able to access it anywhere via the Web," Amazon said in a statement.

Finally, and with some creativity, the 'book meets the web' race is on in full force. We, the readers, will all benefit.

With all of the preoccupation we have today with organizing the millions of files and documents we collect in our firms and organizations and on the web — and rightfully so, in my humble opinion — I often refer colleagues to a paper: THE SECOND COMING — A MANIFESTO By David Gelernter. In this paper, published a few years ago, David challenges many of the norms and mental models on which our current computing platforms are based.

Whether you agree with him or not on all or any of his 58 points, it is worth the read. David challenges much of the basic thinking around which our current computing environment is based

Some quotes:

From # 8:

Today's operating systems and browsers are obsolete because people no longer want to be connected to computers — near ones OR remote ones. (They probably never did). They want to be connected to information.”

For those interested in file organization and retrieval – check out items 26-33 on page 4 of the manifesto.

My favourite, #30:

If you have three pet dogs, give them names. If you have 10,000 head of cattle, don't bother. Nowadays the idea of giving a name to every file on your computer is ridiculous.

While this Manifesto may be viewed by some as dated, many of the problems he points out still exist in our current computing infrastructure (hardware, software and networks). When will we see real innovation rather than so much more of the same?

Where to from here? First, Google becomes a verb — as in: 'I googled him/her/it'. Indeed, being ‘googled’ has its own meaning in today’s common language. Then like many great brands (such as Kleenex™) that become synonymous with the product they represent (e.g tissues) ‘Google’ has become synonymous with ‘search’.

Even the Merian-Webster dictionary and Wikipedia have definitions for the verb ‘Google’. Now we have a new use for the word. Google has been used as a name for a kid in Sweden born September 12th (Source: Googleblog). Oliver Google Kai was named by his search engine consultant father, Walid Elias Kai, and mother, Carol.

Check out Oliver Google’s website and you will find pictures of little O.G. and links to some of the over 6,500 web references to this story. What’s next for Google? It's anybody's guess.

The Globe and Mail carried a story on the front page (Wed Nov 3, 2005) that illustrates the power of the Internet. A 15 year old boy who was conceived with the help of a sperm donation set out to find his birth father. He submited a swab of saliva from the inside of his cheek to the web based FamilyTreeDNA.com paying $298 USD to register on the site. Within nine months, and with his permission, he is contacted by two men with similar DNA profiles … both with similar sounding names (but different spellings). Using this possible family name and other information his mother had (the sperm donor's place and date of birth) he obtained a list of people born that date in that place from another service Omnitrace.com.

On the list of names provided from Omnitrace, the teen finds a matching name. Voila!

While I could not locate the electronic copy for this article on the Globe and Mail web site, there are a number of articles on the web telling this same story … with slight variations in the text. A quick search on Google News (search terms used: saliva birth father DNA) will net you most of these articles.

This story raises a number of questions:

- What does the Net mean for anonymity? Is there any such thing anymore?
- Do we have the right to turn the clock back 15 years and change the rules? (after all, at the time of the donation, the father was most likely assured full anonymity)
- What should sperm donation services do – now that this case is out in the open?

I am sure there are lots of other questions raised by this case … but I will leave those questions and answers to some of you who are eminently more qualified to deal with these than I.

One other point: this story illustrates that there are tools out there that go beyond Google. We need to remember that there is information out there on the web (The Deep Web) that won't be found with a Google search. Too many of us have fallen into the trap of using Google as the 'only tool in the shed' or 'the only club in the bag'. The lessons from this 15 year old … chose the right tool(s) for your search … and have patience … how many of us would wait nine months for the answer to a query?