Two weeks ago over on my personal blog I talked about taking part in My ooVoo Day, an event taking place in the new video chat platform ooVoo in which participants could sign up and talk to their favourite new media specialists. I took part in a talk with Joseph Jaffe of Crayon and Jaffe Juice fame.

Last week I participated in a workshop via ooVoo with Laura Fitton of Pistachio Consulting in Boston in which she taught us how to improve our presentations. I was doubtful how much I could get out of a one-hour session in . . . [more]

While researching articles discussing virtual worlds (including both Internet-based games and social networking spaces) I came across an upcoming conference on virtual law. The Virtual Law 2008 Conference is being held April 3 – 4, 2008 in New York City in conjunction with Virtual Worlds 2008 which is running concurrently.

You would think by now these things don’t surprise me, but I have to admit being a bit “gob-smacked” when I came across this conference. Are there really enough lawyers practising in this area to build a whole conference to address it?

Digging a bit further, I learn that the . . . [more]

My temporary return to teaching has got me using PowerPoint again, now de rigeur in today’s law school classroom, and it’s reminded me of my like-hate relationship with that tool. I’m certain that if anyone with serious presentation chops looked at our academic slides they’d be horrified, because we probably make every mistake in the book. But doing it right two or three times a week for hours at a stretch isn’t easy; it’s the rare bird who can combine personal passion with restrained verbiage on the big screen and get the timing right as well.

I’m sure our readers . . . [more]

Tuesday night I gave a presentation to Toronto Wiki Tuesdays about the use of wikis in law firms. On Monday, to get some additional ideas, I posted a message to Slaw asking for any new examples of wiki use in law firms since I wanted to present more than just wikis I had a hand in myself. The next day a very interesting discussion ensued on Slaw about whether wiki use is suitable for firms. This was a fantastic discussion, starting to really get at the heart of whether a firm should be using wikis and what really works. So . . . [more]

2008 Canadian Association of Law Libraries Conference

The Academic SIG Chairs are very pleased to report that all three proposals designed by the SIG for the 2008 Conference have been approved!

We had prepared two proposals for sessions for the 2008 Annual Conference, and one proposal for a preconference workshop.

The first session is:

“Military Law in Canada, What it Is and How to Find It.” We are pleased to announce that Brigadier General Ken Watkin, Canada’s Judge Advocate General, and Andrea Belanger, Library Manager, Office of the Judge Advocate General, will be presenting this session.

The second is: . . . [more]

One of the richest sources of podcasts is the iTunes Store and particularly its iTunes U, where universities can make their audio and video materials available generally. ((The user guide is available in PDF format here.)) Yale is here, MIT, Stanford and a couple of dozen more — and from Canada there’s Concordia and Queen’s, with at least York to follow, I believe. Until recently this was great for a history lesson or that shot of engineering you found yourself craving after a hard day in court. But now New York Law School is on the board. There are more . . . [more]

I have been talking wikis with Doug Cornelius, KM and law blogger, senior attorney at Goodwin Procter and also part of their knowledge management team. He has been asked to put together a panel about wikis inside the law firm for the ILTA conference in August. He is looking for examples as well as panelists.

Tomorrow night I will be talking to my regular group, Toronto Wiki Tuesdays, about the same topic–the use of wikis (and other social networking tools) by lawyers. I, too, would love to hear examples. Or better yet, if you are in Toronto . . . [more]

As some of you know, I have another life in which I occasionally crank out more words (spill ink and post pixels, if you will) than people who are formally academic lawyers. One aspect involves writing about what “cause” means in Canadian tort law. (OK, so I’ve weird hobbies, but then it beats allowing people to shoot hard rubber objects at your body, on the understanding that, more often than not, you’ll try to make the object hit you rather than getting out of the way.) 

Anyway, the point is that I knew, anecdotally and from coincidental serendipity when looking . . . [more]

If anyone not at LegalTech 2008 currently taking place in New York City is interested, Boston-based lawyer Doug Cornelius is blogging some of the sessions over in his KM Space blog.

For more LegalTech NYC 2008 blog posts, have a look at Legal Blog Watch. . . . [more]

The announcement that Louis Mirando has been appointed as Osgoode’s new Chief Law Librarian was made today by Dean Patrick Monahan:

I am very pleased to announce the appointment of Mr. Louis Mirando as
Osgoode’s Chief Law Librarian, effective March 1.

Mr. Mirando, who has a Master of Library Science degree from the University
of Toronto and has also done post-graduate studies at the University of
Cologne in Germany and at U of T, has provided outstanding leadership as
Director, Library Services at Torys LLP in Toronto for the past 15 years.
Prior to that, he held a variety of

The Canadian Bar Association Young Professionals International Internship Program is now taking applications for the 2008-2009 placements. The CBA administrates this program, which is funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) as part of the Government of Canada’s Youth Employment Strategy (YES).

Through this program, young lawyers are placed in eight-month internships (they are overseas for between six and seven of the eight months) to work with human rights legal organizations on issues such as women’s rights, labour rights, constitutional rights, children’s rights and indigenous people’s rights, in Latin America and the Caribbean, Southern and Central Africa and

India has a National Knowledge Commission. From its main page:

The National Knowledge Commission is a high-level advisory body to the Prime Minister of India, with the objective of transforming India into a knowledge society. It covers sectors ranging from education to e-governance in the five focus areas of the knowledge paradigm: ‘Access’ easy access to knowledge / ‘Concepts’ all levels and forms of education / ‘Creation’ effective creation of knowledge / ‘Applications’ of knowledge systems / ‘Services’ like e-governance

The Commission recently submitted a report [PDF] to the government on education, critical of the current situation in many . . . [more]