Tuesday, August 06, 2002

Thoughts on Radio and KM - The LitiGator writes: "We noted recently that modifying Radio (or any logging tool) from its native one-way communication to true dialogue or multi-user communication would require some arcane knowledge of the tools and some work -- finagling with referrer logs and the news aggregator....Today Ernie the Attorney talks about the use of Radio as an information sharing tool, which is another way of talking about using it for two-way or multi-user communication.  (If one is just interested in one-to-many or broadcast communication, all one needs is the home page.)  But he chooses to focus on the page rankings, which does no more than tell us how many people are reading which pages.  The fact that the number one page is safersex.org probably tells us a lot."  I'm going to post this response on my KM category page.  I'm sure that the LitiGator guys won't see it there.  It's like a Zen riddle.  My answer to their post is a "non-answer."  It may be arrogance, but my view is that if you subscribe to this feed then you are likely to have enough understanding of Radio to validly criticize what I'm saying.  I'm sure it deserves criticism, but not based on the ranking a particular site.  Sheesh!  These newbies! 5:19:36 PM

Saturday, August 03, 2002

Blogs in business -  Blogroots devotes a whole chapter to Using Blogs in Business. via McGee's Musings. 3:22:07 PM

Simple-minded knowledge management - it ain't easy to get and order knowledge.  Motivation is the key. Just ask KM pioneer Tomás de Torquemada, the first to combine the rack, thumbscrews, foot roasting and suffocation to get subjects to talk. You'd better have formal authority, claim KM regulars. They are wrong.   Weblogs are critical to knowledge management success because people own their own knowledge. It's also why they'll  fight an uphill battle in most organizations; they don't fit in with anyone's power agenda. Simple and elegant doesn't help someone advance their organizational agenda. It also makes it more difficult to justify lots of technology consulting help. Implementing k-logs can benefit from outside help. But the help needs to focus on nurturing the development of new work practices and voice. It must be oriented toward organizational behavior not technology features. The entry costs are minimal. Where k-logs are likely to face the greatest risk is in the transition from new toy to routine practice. There will be a hump that individual k-loggers and organizations will need to get over. That is what will take energy and attention from whoever chooses to champion the idea in the organization.  [parsed from postings by a klog apart & McGee's Musings] The most successful virus spreads with a simple but pervasive set of conditions.  Hegel said something like "the history of man is the history of God becoming aware of his own existence."  I think the political history of mankind is the history of power becoming decentralized as information becomes more difficult to control.  3:15:29 PM

Wednesday, July 31, 2002

Radio Wishlist - Far be it from me to wish for anything more from Radio.  Okay, I admit I'm overindulged and spoiled.  Nevertheless, here is what I wish for.  I would like it if Radio came with a default "category" called "Radio Questions."  And as we all know, this implies a separate XML feed for that channel.  Then the folks at Userland (and the phalanx of developers who lurk in Radio Userland) could subscribe to that channel for some of the more intrepid users (i.e. Rick) and respond on a publicly available channel.  Thus you would have an XML channel with the latest hot tips and fixes for current Radio problems.  So, it would be sort of like an online demonstration of what a corporation could use Radio for: i.e. a robust, and inexpensive KM solution.  It sounds cool, but (as the guy in the commercial says), is it implementable? 1:01:15 AM

Friday, June 07, 2002

Radio: A Personal KM Tool - So will TechnoLawyer acknowledge that? Rick writes: "As a follow-up to the last post about personal KM challenges, I thought I'd share this e-mail I wrote to the TechnoLawyer list several weeks ago. (It still hasn't been distributed to the list for some reason, so at least now it has a home.) Might help some out there who are reading these blogs but not using the software understand why some of us are so excited by the possibilities.  [tins ::: Rick Klau's weblog] Rick wonders why the TechnoLawyer discussion group has not posted his email.   My guess is that whoever controls the Technolawyer group is not likely to want to publish Rick's glowing endorsement of a knowledge management tool that would render the E-mail-based TechnoLawer discussion group meaningless.  I enjoy the discussions that appear in the TechnoLawyer (that's where I learned about Roboforms), but I increasingly dread getting the emails.  I'm hooked on the News Aggregator where I can read and re-route information quickly.  I can even post items to my blog purely to archive them for my own later consumption.  I wish everyone who gets the TechnoLawyer newsletter would get a Radio weblog.  That would eliminate the centralized distribution (and the editorial control), which I think would be a good thing, but I can see where the editors of the newsletter would not.   9:40:26 PM

Wednesday, June 05, 2002

Software Gumbo - Or why some stuff (Like KM software) might be hard to sell to law firms I'm a power computer user - I know that software is hard to make - And I know that it is even harder to make software that has to work with other software. Lawyers have to use multiple software - that's cool - sort of - but one day a KM guy shows up and says "you need some new software"- a sale is iffy -  it's hard to get lawyers to adapt to new stuff - there's moat around the Castle. Another moat around the Castle is the IT guys -  A/K/A the "unsung heros" - I mean that! -  they have to untangle the spaghetti that is inherent in making one piece of software talk to another.  Example - Word Processing program (i.e. Word Pefect) has to talk to Document Management Program (Imanage).  Upgrade of one (say Imanage is required to fix new problem that users experience (i.e. can't reliably find indexed document using search for words in document).  Upgrade takes place.  Now another problem crops up.  Lots of conversations with tech support. -  now we have to upgrade the word processing program to new version -  but when you do that you need to upgrade the operating system....and on and on - this is no fun for anyone - especially the IT guys who have to listen to lawyers complain, and they can't really explain the problem in terms the lawyers (who know they are smart) can understand. What does this mean to guys selling KM?  The lawyers don't understand it (why do I need this today?  I didn't need it yesterday).  The IT guys are wary of adding another program that not only interacts with existing systems, especially one whose whole function is to "interact".  So who is going to attend the meeting wearing the "We love KM software" T-Shirt?  Maybe it's just me - a lawyer interested in technology in a Louisiana firm with >40 lawyers and 3 offices.  Does that sound familiar to the guys at BigLaw?  Stay tuned.  I'm sure someone will transmit a response....   11:33:28 PM

Wednesday, May 22, 2002

Well Educated Lawyer seeks understanding of cryptography In a casual conversation with a very smart lawyer in my office he mentioned that he refused to use credit cards for transactions over the Internet.  I thought he was joking, but he wasn't.  He told me that he was very concerned that the information would be captured and put to ill-use by hackers.  I explained to him that a protocol called SSL had been developed and even explained how encryption works (I also offered to loan him Steven Levy's book "Crypto" which tells the story of how cryptography was developed for use by private individuals).  He remained skeptical.  This is a guy that has a high IQ, did exceptionally well in law school, and worked at a large New York lawfirm.  He is the sort of person who doesn't watch TV, but reads scholarly tomes for pleasure.  Yet, he has a sort of "boogie man" concept of the internet.   He may be an exception, but it is an interesting phenomenon nevertheless.  I guess he is the embodiement of Arthur C. Clark's statement that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."  1:46:17 PM

Tuesday, May 21, 2002

Using RSS feeds for pinpointed legal topics Rory writes: "Many lawyers are already using the category function of the RSS spec, which is built-in to Radio, to create specific topical legal feeds. (e.g. Rick has law, accounting, CRM etc.; Ernie has copyright, KM, etc.; and I provide public information about WV Supreme Court cases in recent, civil, criminal, and family categories, as well as feeds about legal information standards, access to court records, and court webcasting. via [Rory Perry's Radio Weblog] It takes two to tango.  Court can provide separate category feeds (case types, and also "official court information").  And lawyers can create categories for areas of practice or interest.  I'm creating a new category for "class actions" and I'm sure I'll create others.   It's easy to do, and fun for the whole family.... 1:40:27 PM

© Copyright 2002 Ernest Svenson.