LawyerKM

There are many reasons to love Twitter.  One reason is that we love to share, and we love to help others.  And we love to get credit for sharing and helping. After all, there are no “anonymous donors” on Twitter.

Finding that great article, YouTube video, or funny picture is exciting enough, but when you get credit for sharing it and starting the viral spread of such amazing stuff in the Twitterverse, well it just feels good.

It’s the Jukebox Hero Theory of Social Media: I didn’t write the song that I just selected on the jukebox, but I’m damn proud when it comes on and people are singing along and thinking “Oh! I love that song!”

Well Twitter People, that song was my selection.  Of all the other songs I could have played, I chose that one. It’s awesome. I found it.  And I shared it with you.  You’re welcome.

By the way, there is no such thing as the Jukebox Hero Theory of Social Media – I just made it up.  But as it turns out, there is some research behind the concept of how helping people makes you feel good.  According to Allan Luks and Peggy Payne it’s called the Helper’s High, “a feeling of exhilaration and a burst of energy similar to that experienced after intense exercise, followed by a period of calmness and serenity.”  They discuss it in their book, The Healing Power of Doing Good.

So, why else do you Tweet?

You can buy that really cool t-shirt on Zazzle.  It’s not mine and I have no financial interest in it.  I just think it’s cool.  Plus I wanted to get credit for letting you all know about it.  Because it makes me feel good.

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

Since I’ll be discussing External Knowledge Management: Using Internet Resources to Your Advantage at LegalTech next week (see my post about it), I thought I’d share a new Google tool that can help.

Google Reader is not new, but Google just announced a new feature that allows you to follow changes to any website — even those that do not offer RSS feeds.

It’s simple: find the website you’d like to track, copy the URL into the “Add a subscription” field in Google Reader, then click “create a feed.”  I did it for my firm’s website’s articles page:

According to Google: “Reader will periodically visit the page and publish any significant changes it finds as items in a custom feed created just for that page.”

Obviously, this is a great tool for keeping up with clients’ websites that don’t offer RSS feeds.  But even if a website has RSS feeds, you may want to set up the Google Reader tracker for parts of websites that the RSS feeds do not cover.  For example, if a company has a web page listing employees, it might not publish changes to that page with an RSS feed.  You can keep tabs on who joins or leaves the company by using this new Google Reader feature.

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

LegalTech New York and The Sixth Annual Law Firm Chief Information & Technology Officers Forum are right around the corner – coming up February 1 -3, 2010.  I’m looking forward to participating on a couple of panels:

First: External Knowledge Management: Using Internet Resources to Your Advantage, at LegalTech on Monday, February 1 at 4:15 p.m.   I am joining David Hobbie, Litigation Knowledge Management Attorney at Goodwin Procter LLP (and author of the Caselines blog), and Tom Baldwin, Chief Knowledge Officer at Reed Smith, LLP.   Rob Saccone, Vice President, General Manager, XMLAW at Thomson Reuters is moderating.

Here’s the outline:

• Explore free and paid-for services and content sources becoming available for firms to support their knowledge management, marketing and practice needs
• Using search sites and social networks for legal research, competitive intelligence and current awareness about clients and partners
• Find information that is out there about your firm
• Going beyond Google
• Best practices for understanding the messages the marketplace is sharing about you and your firm and how to manage the data

Next: Enterprise Search: How to Mitigate Risk and Drive Productivity, at the CIO – CTO Forum on Wednesday, February 3, at 11:00 a.m.  I am joining Ali Shahidi, Director of Knowledge Management at Bingham McCutchen LLP and Bill Puncer, Search Advantage Evangelist at LexisNexis.

Description from the program: Law firms are increasingly inundated with information.  Join us for a lively presentation on managing that information—making it searchable; actionable and enhancing its value within the enterprise, thus managing your risk exposure and driving productivity.  Discover how an enterprise search platform can power a range of flexible tools your firm can use to integrate, enrich and manage both internal and external information, reducing the risk of making costly mistakes and increasing productivity within the enterprise.

Also of interest is The Business of Law Symposium, Charting a Successful Course in Today’s Brave New World, sponsored by LexisNexis at LegalTech on Monday, February 1, from 1:00 p.m. to  5:00 p.m.  This promises to be very interesting, starting with a Keynote by Bruce MacEwen of Adam Smith, Esq. There are three other sessions: Knowledge Management; New Structures for the New World; and Future Strategies.  Other notable speakers include: Ali Shahidi (see above) and Oz Benamram, Chief Knowledge Officer at White & Case, and too many others to list.  The program is eligible for up to 4 CLE credits.

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