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New International Legal KM Group
[via Joy London’s Excited Utterances and Tom Baldwin’s Knowledgeline]
A group of KM professionals recently gathered by conference call to discuss the need and interest of forming a national/international group focused specifically on legal KM.
We agreed that it was logical to form such a group but wanted to solicit feedback and gauge interest from a larger segment of KM professionals before taking the next steps at organization.
Please take a few moments to complete this survey and provide your opinion.
I did my part, and I know there are other Canadian KM-types in ‘the crowd‘ here at Slaw…
This is great news. I have given my input!
Even though I’m not a KM person by any stretch of the imagination, I filled out the survey in the hope that they’ll have a “junior member” category that allows interested folks to listen and learn. I mean, the chance to get stuck into taxonomy was just too good for me to pass up.
And I posted it on the Toronto KM Extranet, after I duly did my voting duty
My request was to make it more open, to create an association that anyone interested could join. Thus far, those of us in smaller organizations (or, not in the big organizations) haven’t been at the table for KM discussions. If this is a management process/system/theory that is meant to be sustainable, it needs to be open to everyone. While the bigger players have had the money to spend on staffing and tools in this area, the vendors and consultants will eventually need to expand their markets, i.e. sell to the rest of us. It is in everyone’s interest to get buy-in to KM across the board if it is meant to get past the management fad stage. Oh, but I’m not bitter.
I wasn’t included in the conference call, and am just relaying the info., but I agree with Connie. If we don’t get a ‘KM for all’ approach, regional groups will become more important for us ‘mid-size’ KM folks. From the outside looking in, it’s tough to gage where the direction of this initiative lies.
I’m not sure that there was any attempt to exclude anyone.
The Toronto initiative grew out of the Toronto Opinions and Legal Research groups, and the North America wide discussions out of the old Legal Technology Roundtables that David Johnson, Ron Friedmann and I used to run every six months.
The issues overlap for smaller firms, but as I’ve continually said in my speeches and writings, KM is only about Technology (or expensive software) at best 33%. It’s also about culture and process, where smaller firms may have a distinct advantage (if their practices are focussed enough.
KM should be a broad church. Please come to the party.
Sorry Simon, I must have posted too quickly. I’m not feeling excluded, just voicing support for that ‘broad church’ approach. Party on! :-)
Great! It did seem exclusionary to those of us not involved, but then again some of us have not been ready to quite join in yet. I look forward to the developments that come out of this initiative.