My wife and I have been busy with the arrival of Baby Knowledgethoughts in early December which has pushed everything to the back-burner, including my online Twittering & Blogging. My absence on both platforms is likely to continue for some time.
In a bit of a switch, I’ve left purist KM and joined Avanade, a Technology Consulting company where I’ll be focused on SharePoint implementations. In actual fact, it’s not much of a change from what I’ve been doing since leaving Linklaters but my focus will be much more of a technical one.
I haven’t decided yet what that means for this blog. I suspect though that I will stop writing about KM purely in the interest of balancing the needs of my newly expanded family with my new role. Between the two, KM is simply going to have to take a back seat for a good long while.
Have no fear however, I am not leaving the field a disgruntled nonbeliever. My time away from pure techdom (where i started) has been extremely valuable and informative. In fact, Avanade execute KM amazingly well. Traditional KM folk would be truly jealous.
So for now, back to my regularly scheduled absence.
I’m off on holidays tomorrow, going through the pre-flight motions, packing clothers, choosing which books to take and gearing up for the digital withdrawl. Lacking an iPhone or other smartphone, I’ll only check my email every day or so. It will be blackberry-less and mostly Internet less. I might watch a bit of telly but TVs overseas are usually limited to BBC & CNN.
Its about as unplugged as I get.
Mostly I’ll read a lot. I have more books packed than I’m likely to read. I know I’m going to have a lot of ideas. It happens every vaccation on about day 4 or 5. Blog posts start to formulate, big ideas start to grow and with no access to a computer I can’t share my ideas with anyone but my poor wife (who no interest in Legal KM I assure you).
Thank goodness for pen and paper, but it sure limits the sharing of ideas. Today I came to understand that even blogs are limited by comparison, especially in that they require a measure of consideration, forethought and review. Today on Twitter was my busiest day yet, both from a consumption and contribution perspective. It’s very easy to share useful thoughts that would otherwise get lost in my Delicious account or as one of the many blog posts I promise to write to myself. It’s become apparent to me that Twitter is where a good deal of my contemporaries also share their thoughts. Whereas commenting on each other’s blogs feels detached and out-of-sync, Twitter adds an appropriate level of richness to the conversation. Not too much richness (like Instant Messenger) but just the right amount.
Some first impressions after my attempt to learn more about this popular platform.
My first is that I misunderstood how many people use it. It’s as much a networking tool as blogging one. Indeed, the way people use it seems to vary a lot. Within hours of “following” a small group of people who’s blogs & writings interest me I had received a number of reciprocal followers. I wonder if there is a measure of Twitter-ettiquete?
When I first joined Facebook, my sister chastised me for poor Facebook behavior “Oh Neil, you never write on your OWN wall”. More surprisingly I seemed to have several followers who wouldn’t know me from a bar of soap. I’m guessing this behaviour is like the “friend collectors” on Facebook looking to build a network as vast as possible. In my view network quality comes from having real relationships not from having a collection of meaningless names.
Still on the networking angle, some people seem to post more about what they are doing as a human being, focusing on where they are and what they’re doing while others are more interested on passing along the most useful links they find. Both are good ways to build relationships, where the people on the receiving end will have a personal preference either way.
While I have choosen mainly to post links to interesting information (also the type of tweets I read the most), I can see it being useful when somebody says “travelling to Vancouver. Where to eat?”, and I could respond.
There are some who post a little too much for my liking, but then I am 100% empowered to do something about it (i.e. stop following), so I don’t mind this so much. The reason I don’t like this is that it drowns out those people I’m following who post sporadically. There’s something to be said for the quiet person in the room who only says something when it is really valuable.
My favourite feature about Twitter is that I can post straight from Netvibes just by choosing to share an article I’m reading. That’s very slick.
My Twitter mindset is very much along the lines of this post from the Rands in Repose blog. Twitter is a very personal experience, both as a consumer and producer of tweets. Don’t like what somebody posts? No problem, remove them. Don’t like what people say about your posts? Change what you say.
Even the decision not to use it is perfectly fine, but I’m not sure I’m there yet.
Unlike many of my compatriots, I’ve yet to become a fan of microblogging. Neither Twitter, not it’s corporate alternative Yammer have struck a chord. I suspect it’s because I’ve run into information overload. I simply have too many places to read / write / post / contribute.
Part of the problem is that with Twitter, I followed Techcrunch, a tech-blog that posts tens of times per day, drowning the few people I followed. That’s stopped now.
Another problem is that it’s not always clear where the tiny urls are sending me. I like to know before I click.
Part of it is that I’m not really interested if people are going to lunch, at the computer, looking at their camera. It’s the “High D” in me.
This evening I’ve reviewed the people I’m following on Twitter, not with a view to “getting” it, but rather to give it a fair chance. I remain sceptical. I don’t think it’s a format that will resonate with me. Hope I’m wrong, I LOVE finding new tools that make me more effective.
Last week I presented on “Extracting and capturing knowledge found in social software tools” at the Knowledge Capture and Retention in Law Firms conference. Below are the slides I used.
You can download a copy of the slides on SlideShare.net or access the slides of the other speakers from Ark’s website.
Synopsis
My presentation covered four areas
how firms are using web2.0
how to extract structured data from web2.0 tools
quality control
indexing, archiving and distributing the information
Law firms are using web.20 tools, but the specific types and purposes vary. Blogs, wikis, rss, tagging and social networking tools are all in use.
I referenced a number of examples of how law firms are using social software. If you care to read the original case studies you can access the links below:
Dewey & Leboeuf are using wikis, blogs, RSS & social bookmarking – link
The Rosen Law Firm are using wikis for hosting reports, profile pages, communications – link
Goodwin Proctor are using wikis to manage projects, and client & legal knowledge – link
Dykema are using RSS for communication and information distribution – link
Magic circle firms are targeting team wikis, practice wikis and “Pedias” – linklinklink
With respect to extracting knowledge from web2.0 tools, the most important thing to remember is “garbage in – garbage out”. You need the participation of many, while recognising lawyers are unlikely to contribute willingly and that form-filling and wiki-markup is too difficult. I propose that in order to extract knowledge, systems need to be simple and that you need to avail yourself of:
Tagging / categories
Favourites
Social ratings
Usage stats
Enrichment
Data analysis
Social platforms
In terms of quality control, you need to monitor content, use “track changes” functionality, and watch usage. You also need to visibly differentiate high-quality content (PSL or Partner approved), and make sure that the names of contributors are highly visible.
When it comes to indexing and archiving, the focus for any firm should be high-value / low volume content. Firm’s will never have sufficient resource to index everything, and, much as it may pain them to do so, firm’s will have to prioritise. In order to do so, usage stats are quite helpful in determining what content people find useful. Just as importantly, firms need a process to retire knowledge to avoid poluting their search engines and intranets with irrelevant content.
Finally, I talked about distribution, leveraging a full range channels, including:
email
phone
rss
newsletters
meetings
In putting the presentation together I accessed a number of websites, some relevent, some not. For my convenience I used Delicious to keep track of them. You might have a look if you’re interested in learning more.
Back in September, Gartner issued a press release which claimed “not having a well-defined purpose to succeed” as a major cause of failure among social software projects and the managers needed to “choose a core purpose for the community and arrange implementation to achieve that purpose”.
It’s useful insight which I agree with. With any project involving software it is easy to fall into the trap of believing that “magic will happen” and users will start using the system. It’s a mistake I must humbly admit to having made several times in the past.
Among their findings, Gartner feels the best social software goals have the following characteristics:
Magnetic > The purpose should draw people directly to participate, immediately appealing to the “What’s in it for me?” characteristic.
Aligned > Purpose should align with business value, that is the “What’s in it for the business?” value, be it direct or indirect.
Low Risk > Organizations are advised to resist the temptation to opt for high-risk communities, which seem to offer the greatest potential for business value. They are better revisited once social applications have gained momentum.
Properly scoped > Gartner advises organizations to start with a minimal scope and focus on growing a community’s scale as fast as possible. Once the community has scaled up, users will guide on how to expand the scope.
Facilitates Evolution > Purposes must be selected that both the organization and community can build on. A “purpose road map” will allow for growing the scope of communities or establishing other applications and communities with the goal of progressing toward a highly collaborative enterprise.
Measurable > The success of a good purpose can be measured. Especially early on, when organizations are skeptical of social applications, Gartner advises choosing a purpose where business and community value can be clearly measured.
Community-Driven > The value must come from the community. The best communities contribute far more to themselves than do the enterprises that support them. If the purpose requires the enterprise to contribute most of the content, and the community participants are mere readers, the enterprise has simply used the new technologies as another channel to push communications.
In terms of hard numbers, Gartner finds the following in situations where firms have installed social tools and left communities to adopt them on their own:
About 70 percent of the community typically fails to coalesce. Furthermore, of the 30 percent of the communities that do emerge, many revolve around interactions that planners didn’t envision, that don’t provide business value and that may even be counterproductive.
Richard also goes on to say that his internal blog has only two posts.
Now, Mr. Dennisson isn’t advocating using external tools to the exclusion of others, but is struggling to find the balance. If you build an internal facebook, will people use it or will they continue to use the real thing? For the record, I would put money on the latter.
For law firms, the balance shifts strikingly towards the “internal” as several factors weigh in:
client confidentiality
law firms’ conservative view of technology
IT departments’ mistrust of web2.0 tools
One way to tackle the issue is to consider what you’re trying to achieve before looking at a specific tool. I believe a scenario-driven approach will make the answer more clear. Rather than asking “do I need a blog” or “do I need an internal Facebook”, look at how you want people to work.
At that stage tools can be assessed and risks can be analysed in context.
A good rule of thumb is that if you are asking yourself whether to adopt tool X and you haven’t thought about what you want people to do, you should take a step back.
Ron Friedman has an insightful little post on Managing the Brand Called You. In it, talks about the “Mom yardstick”. If his mother can be found on google, why can’t you?
He also talks about society having reached the tipping point where the lack of a web presence “suggests a lack of involvement”.
Ron’s bang on. In addition to managing your network (something many professionals are poor at) you’ll now have to manage your online brand, and not just by being on Facebook or MySpace.
One piece of guidance that might be helpful is to consider what your Risk/Compliance department might you about email:
“Imagine any email you write ends up in the hands of the press”
Now, when considering your personal brand that advice might turn into:
“Imagine anything you write on the Internet ends up in the hands of a client or recruiter”
It’s time to be a little more strategic about how we use our web browsers.
In getting to grips with Sharepoint for law firms, writing the footer and a couple other things we have in the pipeline, we’ve run across a number of tricky Sharepoint problems, both at an interface and code level. These lessons are worth sharing, but not with KM folk.
So, I’m using neilrichards.net/blog as a repository for some of the lessons we’ve learned. It’s as much for me to keep my knowledge somewhere as to share with others, and there’s no reason to keep it hidden.