LawyerKM

With most of my time devoted to knowledge management at a law firm, I often forget about my own needs. I’ve got a lot of digital stuff in various silos that could use the KM treatment. At home, on my iMac, it’s not a problem because I have Spotlight. I can find just about anything on my iMac pretty quickly. But I have a lot of stuff on the web – and it’s not all that easy to find. Off the top of my head, here are some of the web applications that I use frequently:

• Facebook, LinkedIn, Gmail (multiple accounts), iGoogle, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Maps, Google Reader, Upcoming.org, Meetup.com, Wordpress, Digg, Delicious, Twitter, Netvibes, Picasa, Mac Web Galleries.

In the Google applications alone, I have a lot of pretty important information. My Gmail contact information is more up-to-date than my Outlook contacts at work.

In some ways — on a smaller scale, of course — I have the same problems as a large enterprise: there’s a lot of information and no easy way to find it. If I am looking for contacts, for example, I can go to Gmail, LinkedIn, or Facebook. But, I have to go to each and search them individually. And with new web applications popping up all the time, it’s only going to get worse.

I need a search engine for the enterprise called “me.” One search box that will tap into all of my online silos. Clearly, Google should be the one to offer such a solution.

Google already has Google Custom Search, which allows you to build a search box that searches specific sites to the exclusion of others. Several KM folks have written about Custom Search. See here, here and here [Doug, I think there's a KM blog missing from your KM Sites Search list ].

So, Google, let’s take Custom Search one step further: maybe call it “Personalized Custom Search” or “iCustom Search” or “Self Search.” Give me the ability to search all of my web apps in a secure, password-protected way. One search that hits all of my web apps. So, when I do a search for my business contact, “Jim Smith,” the results include emails to and from Jim, pictures of Jim that I tagged in Picasa (and in Facebook), a Google Map that shows me where Jim’s office is (based on the information in my Gmail contacts), Jim’s LinkedIn and Facebook profiles, the activities that Jim will be attending from Upcoming.org and Meetup.com (because he is tagged as a friend), his Twitter posts and Delicious tags, etc., etc.

While you’re at it, please make an advanced search page that allows me to select or un-select certain web apps. Now, is that too much to ask?

By the way, I created the image with Gliffy. Check it out.

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management, Technology & Social Media for Lawyers and Law Firms

While researching for a blog post, I came across SearchMe.com (still in beta), which is a pretty cool twist on web search engines. It’s a visual search engine.

From the Searchme web site: “Searchme lets you see what you’re searching for. As you start typing, categories appear that relate to your query. Choose a category, and you’ll see pictures of web pages that answer your search. You can review these pages quickly to find just the information you’re looking for, before you click through.”

Check out this video to get the idea (if you are a Mac or iTunes user, you’ll notice that Searchme resembles Coverflow in iTunes and Finder):
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZSpjXEvy1I&hl=en]

This “coverflow” type of visualization would be fantastic in the enterprise. Speed is the key here. Imagine if you could “flip” through documents in a search result from your DMS the way you can flip through documents in a file. Coverflow is one of the best new features in the new Mac OS X Leopard and it really helps you find documents quickly. Interwoven and Open Text should look into this. 

Update: I hadn’t notice before, but Robert Ambrogi wrote about Searchme in his blog last week.  Check it out here.

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

KM World put on a nice webinar called Microsoft Enterprise Search: Extending SharePoint for Advanced Search Solutions.  It is archived for about 90 days, so check it out.  (Sorry no notes on this one).

Also, here is an interesting press release from CMS Watch called SharePoint Has Become the New Lotus Notes.  I would love to hear what everyone thinks about it. 

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

Robert Scoble wrote a nice piece in Fast Company about “how to get good PR for yourself in the blogosphere.” It’s called Meet the Press. He notes how Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Work Week, went from relative obscurity to a “media darling” in about a year’s time by — among other things — making real-life connections with bloggers.

A good tip from Scoble: use Upcoming.org to see where other bloggers have indicated they are going. Scoble is using Upcoming.org to “watch” the Enterprise Search Summit and Blogger Social ‘08 (and a lot of other stuff). If nothing else, you may find something interesting to do (I was “reminded” that the Five Boro Bike Tour is coming up in May and I learned that a band I like is apparently back together and will be playing in NYC in June). A friend [no blog reference] recently reminded me of another resource for this type of thing: MeetUp.com.

I like Scoble’s ideas and I like Ferriss’ book. I recommend that anyone interested in knowledge management, efficiency, productivity, or just making the most out of your waking hours [and your sleeping hours], give the book a read. (It’s not necessarily about working only 4 hours a week). Need some incentive? Check out Ferriss’ blog.

And if you’ve got a blogging strategy, Scoble would like to hear about it. He invites readers to email him about it at scoble@fastcompany.com and “he’ll post the best ideas at” Scobleizer.com. Looking forward to that.

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

See this article from the Enterprise Search Center:

Delivering on the Promise of Enterprise Search — 10 Issues to Consider (Free PDF) 

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

This is a PBWiki Webinar called “Getting the most out of PBwiki 2.0 for your business” on Wednesday, March 19, 2008.  Register.

From the invite: “Join us and explore how PBwiki 2.0 can help your business get more from your wiki. Explore examples of using folders and access controls, as well as how you can customize your wiki’s look in seconds, just based on your company logo.  Plus, ask the PBwiki team your questions.”

I’m looking forward to this because I am not crazy about PBWiki 1.0.

See other LawyerKM wiki posts.

See a page with all of my favorite blogs (many of which also discuss wikis).

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

Since everyone seems to be so interested in innovation at Google, here is a YouTube video that I found entitled (you guessed it) “Innovation at Google.” It’s a presentation by Google CIO Douglas Merrill.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GtgSkmDnbQ&hl=en]

Enjoy.

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

Google’s Universal Search for Law Firms & Interwoven  

Presentation on March 12, 2008, Vijay Koduri, Marketing Manager, Google Enterprise and Gautam Malkamekar of Persistent Systems. 

My notes from the presentation:

• Google Enterprise overview:
  • “mission organize the world’s information…”
  • enterprise information (i.e. info behind the firewall) is 40% world’s information.
• 600 Google employees dedicated to G Enterprise.
• 15,000 customers.
• Google Apps – the suite of apps (now also including Google Sites [see my gripe about Sites here]).
• 2000 new Apps customers every day!
• “Search is the starting point to the world’s information.”
• Knowledge workers (“KWs”) spend 25% of time looking for information.
• KWs search about 5 repositories looking for information.
• Expertise location is important 
• Impact on business is loss of productivity, not optimizing billable hours.
• What is Universal Search?
  • one search searches multiple repositories
  • the results are delivered without categorizing
  • the results are ranked by relevancy
  • an example of Universal search is Google’s Moma internal knowledge base
• Universal search allows client access via extranets (security is observed to only give access to allowed material).
• ROI: increase of billable hours – eliminate some time searching so that billers can spend some of that time doing billable activities (time is money).
• The Google Search Appliance (GSA) searches pretty much all repositories in the enterprise (file shares, intranets, databases, enterprise apps, content management).
• “OneBox” – Can make real time queries into various apps (ex. see a snapshot of a regional sales report in the search results – not just a link to the report).
•  Case Study: Akin Gump (not many details).
  • deployed GSA
  • used it to search intranet pages

Second part of webinar - Persistent Systems & Live demo 

The info here is spare because there were some technical problems)

How Universal Search is “extended” to interwoven

• Persistent Systems overview
• Connector Deployment – there is Persistent Systems connector between the Interwoven databases and the GSA (fed via XML)
• Quick – easy install, simple configuration. 

Live demo of Connector

• an apparently simple “walk through” set up – it took 5 minutes. 
• A Google browser is used, allowing to search just public content or public & secure content. 
• only content to which the user has access appears – demonstrated this feature by signing in as different users with different access credentials. 
• demonstrated Google OneBox – shows relevant real time information in the search results.
• They can also connect into other DMS products, like Hummingbird

Q&A:

• The GSA is a closed box and Google does not share the info with anyone outside of the enterprise
• GSA can search MS Exchange databases, too.
• It can search across multiple Worksite servers in different geographical locations.
• Security is checked
• The search must originate from the web page, but can be embedded in FileSite, with some custom work.
• Pricing: based on number of documents in organization.  Starting $30,000 (for two-year license, hardware, software, support) for 500,000 documents.  Can index up to 30 million documents with stacked GSAs.
• There is a small business version of product “Google Mini” 50,000 documents – $3,000.
• Application can search Word Perfect, as well as Word and many, many other file types.
• Information can be compartmentalized so that only certain people can see it.
• Works with single sign on mechanisms. 
• OneBox works by doing a real-time query. 
• Google does not keep your search statistics, but you can keep track of your own search statistics within the enterprise with Google Analytics. 
• They skipped my question: how many Am Law 100 firms have deployed GSA and how many have deployed the Persistent Systems connector?

Webinar is archived here.

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

This was a fantastic webinar from KMWorld and Google:

Innovation @ Google: A Day In The Life

On March 11, 2008, Naveen Viswanatha, Sales Engineer at Google Enterprise gave a really great presentation. 

My notes from the presentation: 

• Broad background of Google and Google Enterprise, touting customer base, etc.
• Internet Evolution – from information to distribution & communitaction to network & platform.
• Chronology of how Google evolved with the internet – timeline with their many online products.
• “Innovation is at the core of Google’s competiveness.” 
• 70-20-10 Rule – i.e. Google splits its business focus: 70% focus on core business (Search, Ads, Apps); 20% on things with strong potential (blogger, Picassa, News, Pack); 10% Wild and Crazy (offline adds, wifi, transit).   
• How Google hires people – the hiring process is “painfull.” (See Fast Company article: “Our hiring process is legendary”
• Google has a relatively flat management structure. 
• Internal tool called “Snippets” (a nag email: what did you work on last week? – what are you working on this week?) – so you can track your work.  AND it is a knowledge-base tool because everyone else can search all other snippets and get information on what they may be working on. 
• Google Ideas database – post and review ideas within Google – people can comment on and vet out the ideas.  The ideas might turn into an actual project.  [plus, it records the things that are Google's intellectual property] – it uses the “wisdom of the crowds” philosophy.
• Innovation is a collaborative process at Google -  ”Innovation = Discovery + Collaboration (+ Fun)” 
• First day at Google is “like drinking from a firehose”
• Any questions – go to “Moma” – Google’s internal knowledge base - search of their key knowledge areas. 
• Can look for experts within the company – Google expert search within Moma - lots of an individual’s information is searchable (including resumes, which they encourage people to keep up to date).   
• Search results within Moma – you can take notes in the search results (of the things that you are searching) – uses Google Docs [I used Google Docs to take notes for this blog post] – and you can publish the notes — it publishes it out to the people you want (they use gMail, chat, Goolge Calendar – can overlay colleague’s calendars on top of your own so that you can schedule meetings, etc.). 
• Regarding the notes – others can make changes to your notes (which you created in Google Docs) in real time – you can see the changes on your screen. 
• It’s all about the “…ability to find and leverage collective wisdom of the organization…” 
• How are experts are established?  Expert databases are hard to keep upto date.  So they leverage the things that people do already: resumes, blogs, wikis, Snippets, Moma, etc.
• Are these tools avaiable to the public?  Yes and no.  Search is the key enabler to tap into the repositories that are already in use at your organization (touting Google Search Appliance). 

The event is archived: here  

I really encourage people to check this out.  Especially those who are new to KM.  This presentation gave a glimpse into Google as a company and it shows off some great ways that any organization can approach KM. 

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

Reminder: Webinar “Google Search for Law Firms & Interwoven” tomorrow (March 12, 2008).   

See our write up here.

Register here. 

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms