Planet Enterprise 2.0

Acquia has finally taken the wraps off its commercially supported Drupal distribution, and it looks like the wait was worth it. Drupal was already a great web content management publishing system, but Acquia's spin on it should make it even better:

The release is essentially a hardened distribution of

...

We’ve blogged before about visualization tools like ManyEyes and Swivel (here, here, and here), but I thought I’d reiterate the point of how powerful and readily available these visualizations are. Just a quick search on ManyEyes revealed several visualizations already created for Hillary Clinton’s speak from last night’s Democratic Convention. From the images below, you can quickly get the gist of the speech’s content.

In case you have installed .Net Framework 3.5 SP1 on a machine which hosts Windows SharePoint Services v2.0 website running on .Net Framework 2.0, you will notice the following problems. Windows SharePoint Services v3 is not affected by the update.

Symptoms

If .NET Framework 3.5 SP 1 is installed on Windows SharePoint Services v2.0 the symptoms are:

Each web part will display the following error:

Web Part Error: A Web Part or Web Form Control on this Web Part Page cannot be displayed or imported because it is not registered on this site as safe.

Also, the following NT Events are reported:

NT Event Viewer Application Log displays multiple error warnings:

Event ID: 1000

Error initializing Safe control - Assembly: Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=11.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c TypeName: * Namespace: Microsoft.SharePoint.SoapServer Error: Unable to load one or more of the requested types. Retrieve the LoaderExceptions property for more information.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

Workaround:

Workaround:  Uninstall In Add/Remove Programs remove Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 SP 1 and Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 and uninstall Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0.  Then reinstall .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 1 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=79bc3b77-e02c-4ad3-aacf-a7633f706ba5&DisplayLang=en.

At the time of writing Microsoft is investigating this issue but there is no timeframe for a resolution. If you need further assistance with this please contact Microsoft support. http://support.microsoft.com

I recorded a 25 minute conversation about my enterprise collaboration consulting work and blogging with David Spark a couple of weeks ago for his ‘Be The Voice‘ thought leadership series of podcasts, which is primarily focused on how to drive business growth. David summarized our conversation pretty well on his site: I put forth some [...]

Continuing my live-blogging from International Legal Technology Association's Annual Conference. . .  As Web2.0 tools mature, there is an increased number of adoptions by Fortune 500 companies. We explore and learn if Web 2.0 solutions already being adapted by Fortune 500 companies would be accepted by the lawyers in your firm.

Speaker: Bruce MacEwen of AdamSmithEsq.com

Bruce is cautious optimist about the adoption of the these tools. He sees the most important change from Web 1.,0 when you surfed, to Web 1.5, when you searched, and to Web 2.0 when you share.

He thinks they have a real place as a management tools in professional services firm. They have so many advantages over email [See Luis Suarez's approach on Elsua.net]. Of course there are rules of the road.  He pointed to IBM's Social Computing Guidelines. He recognizes that HR and PR will be concerned about the loss of control and approval.

An audience member focused on the comment function.  Bruce has seen it. But he thinks it is a defensive position. On his own site, Bruce gets 10 personal emails for every comment. I pointed out that legal blogs are not that interesting and do not get that many comments.

Bruce went through DOs and DON'Ts for blogging. (You can see them in the session materials.) Bruce views blogs as a way to prove expertise. You can say you are an expert. But you need to prove it. He also sees blogs as a great tool for knowledge management.

Bruce also sees a strength for a blog to be in project management. The reverse chronological nature of blog lends itself nicely to project management. You are typically interested in the latest piece of information. A blog displays the most recent post at the top.

Bruce moved on to wikis. A wiki is just a blog with lots of authors.  Wikipedia does not work in theory, it only works in practice. Vandalism fears are unfounded. Are your people going to vandalize your reception area? No, so why would they vandalize a firm wiki.

He cited the case of Dresdner where the introduction of wikis reduced email traffic by 75%.

He cited another case study (You can see them in the session materials.) The company rolled out six internal group blogs with 150 contributors. It worked because it is very intuitive. They are much like the way people think. People do not think in structured information like databases. They think unstructured like wikis and blogs.  You also have the update features, the categorization and easy searches.

Bruce moved on to mashups. He focused first on companies use of Google Maps.He showed an example of locating key clients on a Google Map. So if you are out of the office with some free time, the attorney could quickly see if there are any key clients nearby.

He calls Web 2.0 not "Hi-Tech," but "Appropriate Tech." The tools are easy to use tools that allow you to easily share information.

Bruce is more cautious than optimistic on social networks. He thinks they have intriguing opportunities. He thinks MySpace is appalling.  He sees LinkedIn as still being scattered.

He thinks if anything is going to work in the legal field it is Legal OnRamp. He has a concerns that it is getting too big. He cited the natural connection limit of 150 people. It is hard to know more than 150 people. He also did not like the presence feature on  Legal OnRamp. He found it creepy.  

Bruce is still striving to find success stories. He sees much more proven success inside law firms than the deployment outside firms. The McKinsey report on Web 2.0 showed much success in the corporate world.

The power of the tools is to form and strengthen networks.  But it does require the business side to engage with IT on development and for IT to look over the horizon. 

To end, he played this video, Information R/evolution by Michael Wesch:


A great presentation and insight from Bruce.


Download the session materials.

My ILTA Schedule

Yesterday I made a few comments in Twitter that prompted a fair amount of questions and requests for more information. The quips I made were about the differences between Web 2.0 (yes, an ambiguous term) and Enterprise 2.0 (equally ambiguous... vanderwal

Dennis Howlett writes a thought-provoking piece on proprietary maintenance revenue, challenging the value that software vendors provide or, rather, the generic way in which it is provided. Howlett proposes a way to customize maintenance fees to the actual value provided by a vendor:

In software terms, we already know that [differentiation for customers] happens through software implementation, configurations and customizations that are a core part of delivering to customer needs. There is no reason why the same principles cannot be applied to the maintenance element of the business relationship. If you stand back and put aside the notions of the last 30+ years, it is blindingly obvious.

It is obvious for example that in the early stages, customers will consume a considerable amount of resource as they learn and become familiar with the product. They should therefore pay an economic price that reflects the services they consume. However, the software vendors need do three things in order to soften the impact and reduce the long term burden....

I'll leave it to you to read Howlett's post to discover the three things, but even in the short blurb above Howlett unwittingly calls out a fundamental difficulty in open-source software revenue models, one that Savio Rodrigues has been banging on for awhile, and one that NBC iVillage CTO Jon Williams has also called out:

Open-source vendors start making money from their customer base precisely at the point that the customer base is least likely to renew.

...

The combination of Ning and WidgetLaboratory (WL) was a story that had wikinomics written all over it. The former is a platform that enables anyone to create their own social networks focused on anything they want, and they actively encouraged individuals and companies to innovate on top of the platform and make it even better. WL did just that, and in a big way - they sold a number of widgets (for around $30 / month) tied to the Ning platform, supporting somewhere in the range of 2,000 networks and 1,000,000 individuals. WL was the most popular widget creator on the platform.

If I was writing this post a week ago, it probably would have been a feel good story about wikinomics, but the wheels have recently fallen off the proverbial bus. This is a development equally worthy of exploring in relation to the challenges that come with embracing wikinomics principles - and particularly those that emerge when you only embrace a few of them. In particular, as more stories keep popping up like this, it could be a dramatic blow to more open, collaborative innovation processes.

TechCrunch picked up the story on August 22nd, when Ning suddenly removed all of the WL widgets, without warning to anyone, from their network. This decision which clearly angered the company, as well as the thousands of customers who had spent time and money with WL in order to optimize their offerings. Based on the emails that WL has published on the web, this is the gist of Ning’s complaint:

Over the past few months, WidgetLaboratory’s applications have caused multiple and significant technical degradations to the Ning Platform. In point of fact, your code has broken numerous times and has negatively affected a large number of Networks in addition to the Ning Platform.

This sounds fair enough - having a single company break the platform repeatedly would seem to be a problem. However, WL vehemently disagrees with this assessment. If you read through the emails they point the finger for whatever platform problems exist squarely at Ning (particularly highlighting when Ning implemented Dojo changes that broke many applications without bothering to inform any of their partner developers in advance). They also indicate the shutdown may be more about anti-competitive behavior (a.k.a. they’re making too much money and Ning wants it, and/or Ning is worried they’ll lose customers and revenue going forward). From their POV, this was a win-win-win relationship, and they don’t understand why Ning would do this unless there were ulterior motives.

What’s the truth? it’s hard to say without knowing EVERYTHING that’s gone on, but it’s even harder to say Ning has went about anything in the right way. If you work through the email train, there is an ongoing (if occasionally heated) dialog through to August 7th between Spencer Forman at WL and CEO Gina Bianchini of Ning, at which point she indicates the communication will be handed off to Jay for technical issues, Bob Goorah (general counsel) for the terms of service, and Jason Rosenthal for business conversations (who was starting on the 15th). The next email in the chain is this:

Dear Spencer,
I am writing to inform you that your network (widgetlaboratory.ning.com) and third party applications have been removed for violations of our Terms of Service. Please direct all correspondence regarding this matter to my attention. Thank you.
Bob Ghoorah
General Counsel
Ning, Inc.

So much for business and technical I guess - only the lawyer now, and there appears to be no interest in finding an amicable solution. WL, as noted, has posted the email correspondence on the web. Ning’s initial public response, in contrast, was this:

This morning we removed WidgetLaboratory, a third party application developer, from the Ning Platform for violating Ning’s Terms of Service. WidgetLaboratory provided independently developed applications that could be added to a social network on the Ning Platform by a Network Creator. While we try to be as transparent as possible, it’s our long standing policy not to comment on specific cases where we remove networks or third party developers from the Ning Platform so we will not be providing any additional details publicly.

You have to love that - we try to be as transparent as possible… but we’re not going to tell you anything. How transparent. Lawyer Bob continued to respond to several emails from Spencer, and helpfully reminded him of the terms of service:

Ning has the right (at its sole discretion) to delete or deactivate your account, block your email or IP address, or otherwise terminate your access to or use of the Ning Platform or any Network, or remove and discard any Code or Content within any Network, without notice and for any reason.

While legally this is very clear, one has to imagine that setting a precedent of unilaterally shutting down the most successful widget provider on the platform might not be good for encouraging other developers, or encouraging customers to pay for premium services that could/ will quickly be axed. If you read through the responses on various blog posts (including this one on the Ning developer platform), you see this come up repeatedly - and you notice that most seem to be on WL’s side.

Gina later posted a more thorough response which has some more positive responses - though it’s interesting to note many users seemed to be asking for Ning to offer them the applications that WL used to offer them, which is a very slippery slope indeed. It’s even more slippery when Gina notes that:

Our focus at this point is in assisting Network Creators in finding alternatives to features that they may have been using from WidgetLaboratory. If we could fill these holes today, we would. We will start this effort shortly.

There’s no way around it - this looks really bad. It’s bad to have a model where 3rd party players are encouraged to get involved, grow a business with valuable offerings they develop and prove, and then get shut down while the “parent” company and customers clamor over replacements for them. Not sure how that can be sugarcoated.

There’s also another wrinkle in this - if you check out the August 7th email, you’ll note that one of Ning’s other complaints is that WL sometimes asks for user names and passwords, which is also against the terms of service. WL points out that they do this as a service for paying customers, who WANT to provide it to them, so they can go in there and… diagnose and trouble shoot problems with their licensed and purchased products. That seems perfectly sensible, and again to everyone’s benefit - but apparently Ning does not agree. Even while complaining that WL code regularly breaks down and hurts the network. Curious.

So overall there are a lot of disconnects here, and as more information comes out it might clear up - but I doubt it. I think it’s fair to say at this point that if you want to learn how to deal with such “open” development platforms and partnerships, do pretty much the opposite of what Ning did. Even if they had to shut down WL, they could have went about it in a far better way. Secondly, saying that you try to be transparent, and then sharing nothing, is dumb. Finally, if it’s the innovation of 3rd party developers that is helping your company so much, you really have to think about what the long-term implications are when you unilaterally axe your top performer and then very shortly after that talk about replacing their offerings being your top priority.

Continuing my live-blogging from International Legal Technology Association's Annual Conference. . . .

Let's see, what qualifies someone for membership on a firm's technology committee? Desire for an Apple iPhone? Having assembled an Altair computer in 1975? Having a son-in-law in the computer business? Technology committees are notorious for their ineffectiveness. We'll do our best to find out the proper way to govern technology investment and strategy inside law firms; the goals of governance and who should set them; the attributes of a good technology committee; and other governance structures that work (and ones that never work) in this lively and entertaining panel discussion.

Speakers:

• Michael Mills - Davis Polk & Wardwell
• John Tredennick - Law Practice Today
• Chris Bull - Osborne Clarke

I missed most of the session, but slipped in for the final few minutes.

Government structure is important and you need to think about the relationship with the technology committee. It is important to give the committee tasks and to keep them busy. View the committee as working for you. For example, if you are thinking about moving to Office 2007, ask the technology committee to ask their clients what they are doing.

You also need to address the difference between responsibility and authority.

Download the session materials.


My ILTA Schedule

Blogger: Bill Pray Microsoft recently made changes to its licensing program for Microsoft Server Products in Virtual Environments. My colleagues, Chris Wolf and Richard Jones, commented on the changes in licensing from the data center perspective. However, as part of... Bill Pray

Continuing my live blogging from International Legal Technology Association's Annual Conference, I sat in the session from Interwoven and MicroStrategies on using their Matter Centric approach to their document management system.

MicroStrategies and Todd from Lownestein Sandler presented their view on how Lownestein Sandler use Matter Centricity.

Specialized practice groups operate differently. Managing partners and other heavy hitters who operate on their own. Administrative departments also have a different way of dealing with documents. They do not work on matters.


You need to dealt with complaints that matter workspaces are organized by matter numbers. Attorney do not remember attorney numbers. They remember client and matter names. Lownestein had half of the firm wanted it organized by client name and the other half wanted client number.

They used shortcuts to see matters in a different way. Lowenstein organized matter workspaces named Client#, Matter#, Client name and matter name (in that order). They used a shortcut with a new name Client name, matter name, client#, matter#. They use a tool from Microstrategies that automatically creates the shortcuts.

The firm had a client with hundreds of matters with several opening per day. They really needed a way to organize the matter workspaces. It also caused a huge screen real estate problem. The solution was to build out a tree structure of the matter workspaces for that client using shortcuts for a fictional user account. The tool automatically adds newly opened workspaces into the client's shortcut tree.

One user wanted to just fill out the document profile and not have to find the matter workspace and folder. They created a script that finds the documents and moves them into document folders. It also required a setting on the computer to keep the classic view and not the matter workspace view when saving documents and finding documents.

Then next problem is cross-disciplinary matters, where you multiple practices involved. For example, when you have tax, labor or another group working on a securities matter. They created an email address that will create a new folder, with the name of the folder in the subject line. You use the "file and send" function and file the email in the matter workspace. This allows the user to create a new folder without the elevated rights that would allow them to edit the workspace.


My ILTA Schedule

Dave Rosenberg thought that this press release was a spoof on my affection for Red Hat. Yes, it's true that I'm a fan of Red Hat's - I think it does a lot of good for open source - but this goes too far.... :-)

I really ...

If you needed any further testament to the colossal failure that is Microsoft Windows Vista, just read this Wall Street Journal article detailing PC manufacturers attempts to design around Vista's shortcomings, shortcomings that no amount of marketing are going to fix.

...[S]ome PC makers are trying to improve ...

[cross-posted at Fast Forward blog]

Recently, I sat through a presentation about a Sharepoint-based intranet project to improve processes within the HR group of a medium-sized organization. The process in question was one of collecting annual performance reviews throughout the organization. Using Sharepoint, the HR group and their consultants replaced Word documents, spreadsheets, and email with Infopath forms and programmatic workflows. The client was happy and the consultants had a nice demo they could show to their prospects. Nonetheless, I found myself dissatisfied.

For all the new technology deployed, this effort struck me as an example of what my old friend and mentor Benn Konsynski calls "speeding up the mess." This HR process is an instance of the micro-processes that comprise knowledge work activities in organizations.

Other examples might include:

• Customizing an existing sales presentation for a meeting with a new prospect
• Designing the agenda and preparing materials for an internal brainstorming meeting
• Putting together the briefing materials for a quarterly business review meeting
• Analyzing and making sense out of a competitor’s recent pricing announcement

These micro-processes are characterized by:

• A small number of steps
• Ad hoc design created by the knowledge workers responsible for the process
• Loose definitions of the beginning and end of the process
• Loose notions of control, sign-offs, and approvals
• Technology-enabled, if at all, by email and office suite tools.

None of these processes were ever explicitly designed; they’ve evolved over time. The cumulative pain and productivity drag imposed by these processes is accepted as a fact of organizational life. While various technologies are offered up as ways out of the swamp, we need an overall improvement strategy to provide the necessary direction.

The appropriate strategy is readily available. It is the same strategy originally deployed by Frederick Taylor in improving the productivity of manual labor in factory settings. The late Peter Drucker summarizes this strategy nicely:

Taylor’s principles sound deceptively simple. The first step in making the  manual worker more productive is to look at the task and to analyze its constituent motions. The next step is to record each motion, the physical effort it takes, and the time it takes. Then motions that are not needed can be eliminated; and whenever we have looked at manual work, we have found that a great many of the traditionally most- hallowed procedures turn out to be waste and do not add anything. Then, each of the motions that remain as essential to obtaining the  finished product is set up so as to be done the simplest way, the easiest way, the way that puts the least physical and  mental strain on the operator, and the  way that requires the least time. Next, these motions are put together again into a "job" that is in a logical sequence. Finally, the tools needed to do the motions are redesigned. Whenever we have looked at any job-no matter for how many thousands of years it has been performed-we have found that the traditional tools are wrong for the task.
[Peter Drucker. "Knowledge worker  productivity: The biggest challenge."  California Management Review. V41, #2.  Winter 1999. pp. 79-94.]

While the strategy of “go, look, think, improve” is sound, there are some challenges in translating it successfully to knowledge work. First, the outputs of knowledge work are fluid and ill-defined. We have no widgets of constant quality to anchor process improvements against. I’ve argued elsewhere that one of the distinguishing factors of knowledge work deliverables is achieving the necessary uniqueness in the end result (Crafting Uniqueness in Knowledge Work). Applied uncritically, Taylor’s approach can lead us to emphasize superficial uniformities over essential uniqueness. Before we can even hope to improve a knowledge work process, we need to define deliverables in a way that allows us to judge them to be of sufficient quality.

Second, many of the steps in knowledge work processes are invisible. For physical tasks, what we could observe was more than sufficient to identify places for improvement. Not so with knowledge work. Is the person banging away answering email more or less productive than the one reading the latest journal article? Is the all-day project status meeting more or less productive than a well-maintained project wiki and issue tracking system? How would you go about comparing project management approaches to decide? The challenge is to find ways to make the invisible more visible, to distinguish essential activities from peripheral, and to develop robust insights into mental work processes. For that later challenge, I’m planning on revisiting books like John Medina’ Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School and Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions.

Third, we need to understand how to market knowledge work improvement to knowledge workers. In the world of Frederick Taylor we could treat workers as experimental subjects to be manipulated. Not so with the knowledge workers who drive today’s economy. These are individuals with the discretion and autonomy to ignore our advice on principle or on a whim. They can’t be compelled; they must be persuaded, sold, and possibly seduced into modifying their behaviors. At the very least, we’re going to need to carefully rethink the skills and perspectives we want to have in our deployment efforts.

Recently, I sat through a presentation about a Sharepoint-based intranet project to improve processes within the HR group of a medium-sized organization. The process in question was one of collecting annual performance reviews throughout the organization. Using Sharepoint, the HR group and their consultants replaced Word documents, spreadsheets, and email with Infopath forms and programmatic workflows. The client was happy and the consultants had a nice demo they could show to their prospects. Nonetheless, I found myself dissatisfied.

For all the new technology deployed, this effort struck me as an example of what my old friend and mentor Benn Konsynski calls "speeding up the mess." This HR process is an instance of the micro-processes that comprise knowledge work activities in organizations.

Other examples might include:

• Customizing an existing sales presentation for a meeting with a new prospect
• Designing the agenda and preparing materials for an internal brainstorming meeting
• Putting together the briefing materials for a quarterly business review meeting
• Analyzing and making sense out of a competitor’s recent pricing announcement

These micro-processes are characterized by:

• A small number of steps
• Ad hoc design created by the knowledge workers responsible for the process
• Loose definitions of the beginning and end of the process
• Loose notions of control, sign-offs, and approvals
• Technology-enabled, if at all, by email and office suite tools.

None of these processes were ever explicitly designed; they’ve evolved over time. The cumulative pain and productivity drag imposed by these processes is accepted as a fact of organizational life. While various technologies are offered up as ways out of the swamp, we need an overall improvement strategy to provide the necessary direction.

The appropriate strategy is readily available. It is the same strategy originally deployed by Frederick Taylor in improving the productivity of manual labor in factory settings. The late Peter Drucker summarizes this strategy nicely:

Taylor’s principles sound deceptively simple. The first step in making the  manual worker more productive is to look at the task and to analyze its constituent motions. The next step is to record each motion, the physical effort it takes, and the time it takes. Then motions that are not needed can be eliminated; and whenever we have looked at manual work, we have found that a great many of the traditionally most- hallowed procedures turn out to be waste and do not add anything. Then, each of the motions that remain as essential to obtaining the  finished product is set up so as to be done the simplest way, the easiest way, the way that puts the least physical and  mental strain on the operator, and the  way that requires the least time. Next, these motions are put together again into a "job" that is in a logical sequence. Finally, the tools needed to do the motions are redesigned. Whenever we have looked at any job-no matter for how many thousands of years it has been performed-we have found that the traditional tools are wrong for the task.
[Peter Drucker. "Knowledge worker  productivity: The biggest challenge."  California Management Review. V41, #2.  Winter 1999. pp. 79-94.]

While the strategy of “go, look, think, improve” is sound, there are some challenges in translating it successfully to knowledge work. First, the outputs of knowledge work are fluid and ill-defined. We have no widgets of constant quality to anchor process improvements against. I’ve argued elsewhere that one of the distinguishing factors of knowledge work deliverables is achieving the necessary uniqueness in the end result (Crafting Uniqueness in Knowledge Work). Applied uncritically, Taylor’s approach can lead us to emphasize superficial uniformities over essential uniqueness. Before we can even hope to improve a knowledge work process, we need to define deliverables in a way that allows us to judge them to be of sufficient quality.

Second, many of the steps in knowledge work processes are invisible. For physical tasks, what we could observe was more than sufficient to identify places for improvement. Not so with knowledge work. Is the person banging away answering email more or less productive than the one reading the latest journal article? Is the all-day project status meeting more or less productive than a well-maintained project wiki and issue tracking system? How would you go about comparing project management approaches to decide? The challenge is to find ways to make the invisible more visible, to distinguish essential activities from peripheral, and to develop robust insights into mental work processes. For that later challenge, I’m planning on revisiting books like John Medina’ Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School and Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions.

Third, we need to understand how to market knowledge work improvement to knowledge workers. In the world of Frederick Taylor we could treat workers as experimental subjects to be manipulated. Not so with the knowledge workers who drive today’s economy. These are individuals with the discretion and autonomy to ignore our advice on principle or on a whim. They can’t be compelled; they must be persuaded, sold, and possibly seduced into modifying their behaviors. At the very least, we’re going to need to carefully rethink the skills and perspectives we want to have in our deployment efforts.

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I don't think there's much of a mainstream future for the Wiz, a new open-source gaming unit from GamePark Holdings, but that may be the point:

...[T]he question of whether or not the device can truly challenge the Nintendo DS and the PlayStation Portable is liable to

...

More live blogging from the ILTA Conference. . .
Collaboration technologies help promote information sharing, efficiency, cost reduction and can provide competitive advantages. How does the legal environment deal with the information overload and the security of confidential information escaping the realm of the organization? What aspects of legal information need to be considered to help determine how collaboration tools should be utilized in the legal world (and when they should not)? What policies must be in place to protect the shared information?.

Speakers:

• Tom Mighell - Fios
• Dennis Kennedy - MasterCard Worldwide

My Notes:

The internet changes everything.  Collaboration is no longer optional. What are you doing?

Mapping the Current Collaboration Landscape:

• News and Communication
• Working Together
• Social Networking and Web 2.0
• Key: How Are We Moving Beyond Email as a Platform? [See Luis Suarez - Elsua.net]
  

Collaboration is about working together. Lawyers need to share documents inside the firm.

A fair amount of the session was on the basics of collaboration tools and social networking tools. (Tom claimed that LinkedIn is more robust than Facebook as a social networking tool. I do not agree. LinkedIn may be more widely used by lawyers, but is has much less functionality.)

They moved on to active versus passive collaboration tools and enhanced workflow. Tom thinks we are moving toward more project management.

Loss of Control, Security and Ethics are the three big legal issues with collaboration tools.  Attorneys are taught to control the document drafting. Wikis and Google Docs take a away drafting control. (Personally, I do not think anyone should be thinking about collaboratively drafting documents with adverse parties.)

Tom shared some horror stories about cloud computing. I countered that firms have just as much downtime and network problems. (If not more!) You do need to focus and have policy for dealing with document retention and discovery issues.

Collaboration tools do pose security issues. Dennis ran through a few issues.

Tom turned to ethical issues and the lack of opinions and law on the ethical implications of collaboration tools and web 2.0. There was an ABA many years ruling that email can be confidential client communication.  The other rulings are on document metadata. At least one state has ruled that lawyers need to be aware that documents have metadata and that the accidental release of information in document metadata will have ethical implications.

They moved on to striking the balance between risks and benefits. Dennis opined that if telephones came out today, most firms would ban them. (People would waste their time on the phone, they would talk to friends and family. . . )

IT departments need to allow innovation. The ways we work and communication have evolved and will continue to evolve.

You do need to define and implement appropriate policies. Doing nothing is a bad option. You need to channel appropriate behaviors. Attorneys will find work-arounds to avoid the technology policies. Attorneys want to get their work done. 

Looking into the future, Tom sees two things impacting these tools. One is the high price of gas.  Maybe there will be more video conferencing and collaboration because it is too expensive to travel. The second is using the internet as a platform.  Dennis thinks clients may start driving the use of these collaboration tools.

Download the session materials.


My ILTA Schedule

SocialU is a new lifestreamingish social application, that goes to enormous lengths to create a cheesy social environment centered on fungible social gestures, like giving a contact an electronic package of french fries. To 'buy' the fries, users can apply their initial stake of $500,000 social dollars or earn more cash by doing various social things: adding friends, making comments, etc.

socialu - it's all about you v0.0.3287, originally uploaded by Stowe Boyd.

I am all for giving friends gifts, but the ersatz quality of SocialU is depressing. I can't see myself participating in a meta-community -- the system allow you to open tabs on Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook, Bebo, and just about any other social app out there, in various tabs -- that is principally focused on translating social gestures into virtual currency, and then distributing that cash by buying virtual bling, property or other e-goods, and possibly gifting other contacts.

Forgive me for being subject to social physics, but I would like my socialization to be about something, like tachnology, or saving the world, or collecting toy trains. But this 'hall of mirrors', self-reflecting social hypodermic needle doesn't add anything that we need.

Perhaps the sort of obsessiveness associated with Tamagotchi pets plays here -- another fad I never thought added up to much.

And it is not the materialism per se that irks me. I am all for sites like ThisNext, where people share recommmendations about stuff -- furniture, gizmos, jewelry -- because I buy in on the idea that all e-commerce will be social in the near future. But this is phony, like giving food pellets to pigeons in a Skinner box for going through the motions of social interaction. I am all for social karma (or "swarmth") building up in the innards of social tools, but directly tying actions to specific economic inducements, instead of an algorithmic authority or reputation is a terrible way to go.

Have you always wanted to be the antagonist in Pink Floyd's "Have a Cigar"? Now's your chance.

A new U.K. venture, Bandstocks, is making mini-moguls of the music masses, allowing people to invest in up-and-coming bands and share in the proceeds. Bandstocks joins a small but growing group of related companies . ...

O'Reilly Radar reports that Google has added Google Suggest to their homepage:

"When Google suggest first-launched Buster McLeod (AKA Erik Benson) checked the suggested term for each letter to create the Google Alphabet, 2004 edition."

"In honor of Google Suggest graduating from labs", Brady Forrest has provided the annotated Google Alphabet, 2008 edition. Notable for a Swede like me is that IKEA owns the letter "I". A former (american) business partner of mine provided the following analysis:

"The exact method Google uses to choose the default "Suggestion" is not publicly known. It's actually not based only on the quantity of searches. In any case, Google thinks it's more valuable to users to show IKEA first."

"Interestingly Walmart, one of only two traditional retailers whose website has more traffic than IKEA, didn't get the 'W' (because Google thinks Wikipedia is more relevant)."