Looking through the Microsoft survey on “The Future of Government Work,” [download PDF] it would seem that there is a bipolar view of what communication tools workers “prefer” to use versus what they would “like to use.” Take a look at the answers provided on questions 9 and 10 when it comes to “new” media such as Social Media, Online Collaboration tools, and even video conferencing:

Q9: How do you prefer to communicate with colleagues?

  • Videoconferencing = 3%
  • Social Media = 3%
  • Intranet page (w/shared documents) = 2%
Q10: Which collaboration tools would you like to use?
  • Videoconferencing = 29%
  • Social Media = N/A
  • Collaborative Doc Editing = 32%
  • Intranet = 12%
Granted, there is the difference in verbiage of “communicate/collaborate” but I think we are looking at two sides of the same coin here. How is it that the answers to these two question be so far apart? My guess (and that’s all it is), is that what we are looking at in question 9 is “how do you communicate/collaborate now” versus question 10’s “how would you like to communicate/collaborate if you could.” It would seem that there is a desire to use more videoconferencing, non-email electronic communications (aka chat), and collaborative document editing resources. The survey also points out that these resources are needed components of any telecommuting policies and procedures that an office may implement.
Now I should mention that the survey was conducted by Microsoft, and their MS Office 365, Cloud-Based platform solution, so the questions may be worded in such a way as to feed the answers into the “solution” they are providing. One of the glaring facts of this is that Q9 includes a social media answer, where it is completely missing from the Q10 responses. It could be that workers don’t like social media resources… but, it’s more likely from the fact that there isn’t a social media product included in the Office 365 platform (yeah, call me a cynic.) 

There are many ways you can read these survey results, but there is a theme here that we’ve all been seeing anecdotally for the past few years. Given the right tools, the location of your people shouldn’t matter in order for them to be successful. Not only that, but many workers have the desire to use these resources in order to make their work lives better… probably making their home lives better at the same time. It is no longer a requirement for companies to require their workforce be physically in a company office, sitting in a company seat, using a company PC, and working with company software. The time has come to start looking at the way we work through a different lens. 

I’ve been testing out an interesting product this morning called Vocalyze. The gist of Vocalyze is to take web content and covert it into audio and play it as new articles are published. Vocalyze is pretty simple to use, and works on the desktop, iOS and Android platform. There are a number of options to read specific featured blogs or individual blogs that have embedded the Vocalyze widget into their WordPress platform blogs. You can also connect your Twitter or ReadItLater posts into Vocalyze and have it read those posts in real time.

What I wanted to see was if Vocalyze would actually take my RSS feed and monitor it for new content and read that to me as new blog post are pushed out. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a direct way to link my Google Reader to Vocalyze… but, I did discover a two-step work-around that does practically the same thing.

For a number of months now, I’ve automated my RSS feed into a Twitter stream using Google Reader and an automated Twitter feed product called dlvr.it. I created a Twitter account and named it @xlambertg and used dlvr.it to connect my Google Reader account’s RSS address. The initial process is pretty easy to set up:

  • Create a Public Folder in your Google Reader, and place any of the blogs you want to automatically feed in that folder. View the “Details and Statistics” in the dropdown list for that folder, and copy the Feed URL.
  • Go to dlvr.it and sign up for a free account. Then link that Feed URL to the Twitter account (I created an unmonitored Twitter account to do this so that it didn’t conflict with my regular account.
There are some additional bells and whistles that dlvr.it does, but I keep it pretty simple. Although the @xlambertg twitter account is unmonitored, it still has almost 200 followers as of this morning, so others seem to like my RSS feed list, too.
Now, back to Vocalyze. 
Vocalyze allows you to enter a specific Twitter account into your playlist, so I simply entered my @xlambertg account and it pulls up the latest feeds and starts reading them out to me. Very cool!
I’m still in the initial stages of testing this out, but so far I can tell you that I like the switching between male and female voices between each new blog post. In my opinion, the male voice is a little more realistic than the female, but both are pretty decent sounding automated voices. Right now I’m listening to “Web Law Predictions for 2012” from Steven Matthews at Slaw, and the Vocalyze reading of the post is pretty easy to listen to and understand. 
Go give Vocalyze a try and let me know if you have any additional tips and tricks for how you can use this product to automate blog posts into audio content.

The Google Zeitgeist 2011 has a list of the top ten search results by region. Luckily, my home city of Houston was included.

Or maybe not so luckily, actually.

Our search results are as follows:

  1. Houston Rodeo – an annual cowboy event
  2. Memorial Hermann – a hospital
  3. HCAD – the county appraisal district
  4. Houston Workforce Commission – unemployment office
  5. San Jacinto College – local junior college
  6. Klein ISD – school district in a northwest suburb
  7. Greensheet – classified ads
  8. Harris Country Jail – no clarification required
  9. Katy ISD – a school district in a western suburb
  10. HAR – an online site for Houston real estate
Johanna Wright, Google’s Director of Product Management, writes “Searches for school districts, universities and local libraries made the list in ten states . . .  .”

I will let the readers draw their own conclusions from Houston’s list.  May I just say that I grew up in Ohio? 

Maybe I should move to Minneapolis. The county library made it to number 3 on their list.

It’s Christmas time and joy abounds
A time for toys and gifts all around.
Toby wants the next generation iPhone,
Greg said he does too,
But Lisa’s thinking about Droid,
So what do you do?
We can’t split the baby
And turn an Apple into a Droid;
Plus we’re all too cheap to get both.
I know!
Problem solved.
Instead of buying them for us,
In the spirit of Christmas
We’ll give gifts to you:
Like in the Gift of the Magi,
We wrote this blog post for you!

Merry Christmas!

Image [cc] Tigershungry

There’s a saying that if you hear something once, it’s a fluke, twice is a trend, and if you hear it three times it’s a habit. I’ve now heard a similar tale being told by three different administrative groups in law firms when it comes to leveraging the skills of their librarians. It is usually presented to a group of peers like this:

“shhh… I’ve uncovered a secret resource… It’s called the Library.” 

The three different areas I’ve heard this from are Knowledge Management, Alternative Fees, and finally Matter Intake and Conflicts.

The Knowledge Management statement is probably not a surprise to any of us. KM and Library have had close relations for many years. In fact, I argue that the original KM developers were librarians. When it comes to KM analysis, librarian skill sets are well suited for this type of work. The Alternative Fee statement may be a little surprising to some of you (mostly because having an Alternative Fee group may be still in the development stages for many firms), but the argument is really the same — AFA’s need analytics, good library research staffers know how to analyze. Finally, the Conflicts/Matter Intake argument falls under the same analytical argument as the other two. For Conflicts, the ability to use someone with both an MLS and a JD works to soothe the nerves of Partners that want someone they feel comfortable with in analyzing conflicts data, as well as the administrative director that wants someone that they are comfortable with doing high-quality research and analysis.

You wouldn’t think that using library staff in these three areas would be such a big deal, but to listen to how KM, AFA and Conflict/Matter Intake leaders tell these stories, you would think that they somehow unearthed some magical potion that no one else knows about. It is told in ways that sound like they have tricked the library into being more than it is. The stories are told with great pride, sometimes in a hushed tone that implies that the library was tricked into doing something that is outside of its mandate.

So why do other department leaders believe they’ve found some secret ingredient to make their individual processes better? There are probably two good, and very different answers to this. First, the leadership in the library listened to them and came up with the suggestion of using the library to fill the need. That is the good one. The bad one is if the administrative leader had to covertly use the library for the process, and after a few successes, got approval from the COO or a Partner to continue using the library staff for this purpose.
How can you tell which of these is happening? Usually take a look at what happened to the library staffer. If they are still in the library, then most likely the library was proactive in working with the other departments to get the work flow organized and make sure that the library is ready and able to help with the business task. If on the other hand, you see that the staffer is suddenly in another department, then most likely the library leadership did not take a proactive stance, and as a result lost the staffer… and probably didn’t get the approval to replace that position once it was removed.

There is a trend for the administrative side of the law firm to be much more involved in promoting the business of law, and the work flow/efficiency/effectiveness of how law firms take on, process, and analyze the way we work. Librarians have an important role to play in these goals… especially in the area of analytics. Forward thinking librarian leaders are engaging with other administrative leaders to fill these demands, while others are sitting back waiting for someone to ask them for their help. Hopefully, your library leadership is in the “forward thinking” category. If not, watch as the trickle of library research staff leaks out of the library and into the other departments.

I saw this morning where Law.com was now available on the new Google Currents platform for Android and iOS devices. In checking out that news, I discovered that we could also add 3 Geeks and a Law Blog to the list of publishers available on Google Currents, so I jumped at the opportunity. Set up was very easy, and within about ten minutes (probably less) it was up and running.

Go check out the new Google Currents publication app and let us know what you think (search on the word “law” to find our Currents page.) I’ve tested it on my iPad, but haven’t seen what it looks like on an Android or iPhone platform yet (other than the template Google provides in its Producer page.) It looks pretty cool to me on the iPad, but I may be caught up in the afterglow of being able to put the blog out there so easily.

If you’re a blogger and want to get your blog out there on Google Currents, you can go to the “Producer” page and fill out all of the information. It is fast and easy (and free!), so there isn’t much of a reason to not test it out.

In Kevin Miles’ article, “Library on a Credenza” [PDF], he talks about the “Deskbooks” (some refer to them as “Desk Copies”) that attorneys have on their credenza to help them in their day-to-day practice. Whenever most librarians I know speak of Deskbooks, they usually cringe and think of the giant hole in their budget each time a new attorney comes in and asks for a complete set for their specific practice area. Miles, on the other hand, actually looks at the Deskbooks in a much more measured and practical way and wonders if there is a better way of delivering the information housed in the Deskbook.

Deskbooks can cost the firm hundreds of dollars a year in upkeep, so with that much of an investment per lawyer, shouldn’t we be asking ourselves (both librarians and lawyers) a few questions about our best practices when it comes to Deskbooks? Kevin emailed me this morning and wondered if we should be asking ourselves the following:

  • What is the value of a deskbook?
  • What is the best practices model for a deskbook?
  • Should a best practices model be taught in Library or Law School?
  • Should they be the starting point in a research project? 
  • Should deskbooks migrate over to eBooks?
  • How should an eDeskbook collection be managed?

Are you addressing these issues when it comes to Deskbooks, or are you simply processing them and routing them to the attorneys year after year? Are there other best practices questions we should ask? Most of us think of Deskbooks as a “necessary evil” in the practice of law, but does it really have to be evil? Perhaps thinking of Deskbooks in a new way may provide value in ways we hadn’t thought of before.

Take a look at Kevin Miles’ article, “Library on a Credenza” [PDF], and let us know if you are already acting on some of the best practices issues discussed here and in the article.

I’ve had a rash of positive customer service experiences over the past couple of months and feel compelled to share them with you. We talk a lot on this blog about making your decisions (whether about a library’s collection, a marketing project, or fee pricing) in a client facing manner. My three experiences did exactly that, and each had a different aspect of what it means to be client facing and to look at the situation the client is in and make the best suggestions for the client. It wasn’t just about giving clients good customer service – that should be the floor of your customer service operation, not the ceiling – but, rather going the extra step to:

  • be better than the customer expects you to be;
  • listen to what the customer is actually saying and counsel them in the right direction, and;
  • know when you are not the best solution, but can point the customer to someone that is, even if that someone is a competitor.
Here are my three (non-law related) experiences that have made me think more about what I need to do to provide the best experience for my clients.
Guitar Center and the Cheap Guitar
I picked up a cheap guitar online a few months ago (somewhere around $125.00 – see picture above) because I really like the telecaster look, and it had a really cool design of a Texas flag on it. I didn’t really expect much from it, but when it arrived, it was pretty much unplayable. I knew that I needed to take it to a guitar shop and have it set up properly, but I dreaded going in with an off-brand guitar to a shop that sold Fenders and Gibsons. I was pretty sure I was going to get the answer of “geez, where did you get this thing?” and “I don’t think this is going to be playable… but let me show you some real guitars that you should have bought in the first place.” I actually waited a week before going in because I was pretty sure that was going to be my experience. However, I was dead wrong.
When I went into my local Guitar Center off of Westheimer here in Houston, I got the exact opposite experience. Instead of ridicule and salesmanship, I got treated like I was bringing in something special. The floor staff all came by and asked where I got the guitar. One told another that they should find something like this to sell in the store, and one showed me a picture on her iPhone of a guitar she painted for another customer as a Texas flag. The set-up man was busy working on a much more expensive Gibson Gold Top, but when he finished with that guitar (costing five times or more) he went to work on mine for nearly an hour and came back all smiles and told me that I would have a great time playing this guitar. 
The men and women at Guitar Center gave me a much better experience than I anticipated, it was sincere, and I walked away very happy. Needless to say, I’ve gone back and bought a number of things (probably some my wife thinks I don’t need) from that store since. 
Sears, the X-Box and the Blu-Ray

When I went looking for a game console, I went to Sears to pick one up. I knew I wanted the X-Box 360 and went in, found the salesman with the key to the cabinet, pointed it out to him and within a few minutes was ready to check out. However, I had a some money left on my gift card, so I told him that I really liked a Blu-Ray player my brother-in-law had and wanted to see if they had one like it. After looking at a few of them, I mentioned that I really wanted on for all of the online television, music and Internet options, as I already had a blu-ray player, but it didn’t have all of the bells and whistles like my the one my brother-in-law had. That’s when the salesman chimed in, lost a sale, but gained a customer.
I had the player picked out and was going to close the deal when he told me that if what I wanted was the bells and whistles, then I didn’t need the blu-ray player at all. Everything I needed, and more, was already included in the X-Box console I had waiting for me at the register. He even mentioned that Microsoft was doing an upgrade this month to make it even better. So, instead of plunking down another $180 for something I didn’t need, I simply walked back and paid for the game console. It was nice that someone listened to what I actually needed and guided me in the right direction. That’s the sort of thing that, as a customer, I remember and will tell my friends about.
The Software Consultant and the Competition

After seeing some of the results of the Lexis Advance platform and the High Performance Computer Clustering (HPCC) combination, I started looking around at other types of Hadoop options out there and ran across Pentaho. Pentaho, pronounced “Pen-TAH-ho”, is an open-source business intelligence software, but the software is packaged by the company with many add-on features that make it easy to use, and they also offer valuable consulting as well. I had a number of things that I wanted to test out with Pentaho, and when I talked with Rob Sampson it became apparent that there were a few things on my list that weren’t really doable with Pentaho. Now, it has been my experience that when you run across software that does many of the things you want, but is lacking in one or two areas, I get an answer similar to “that is in the works and should be out in the third quarter of next year” sales-speak. However, that was not the answer I got this time. Instead, I got pointed to some other open-source software that actually competes in the same space as Pentaho. 
Rob wasn’t thrilled pointing me to the other software – I think his exact words were “it pains me to say this, but…” – but, he did. However, he didn’t stop there and wish me luck on my project. Instead, he knew that a couple of the things I needed to do first could be handled by the competitor, and once that part of the project was finished, then his product could come in and complete the work. He listened to what I wanted to do, and he helped me understand that there were pieces that would need to be handled in different ways, with different software, and one of those pieces could be handled better by a competitor. Therefore, instead of trying to convince me to wait until some piece of vapor-ware product came out at the end of next year, he actually put me in a better position to start the project, and come back and evaluate his software when I was further along. That’s the type of customer service that gets you a long-term win by understanding that when you help someone with their overall goals, they’ll be back, or at least will give you good reference to their colleagues when asked for software solution suggestions.
Be Better – Listen – Guide
My three experiences have really made me think of how I approach those I support. It made me think that I need to give my customers a better experience than they expect, I need to listen to their needs over my own, and guide them in the right direction, even if that direction means someone else would be better at helping them achieve their objectives. Thanks to the helpful people and Guitar Center, Sears and Pentaho for helping me in ways beyond my initial request.

I’m sure everyone’s heard of the discovery of the second earth, affectionately called Kepler 22b, located 600 light years away.

Everyone’s saying we will never see it in our life time.

Well, maybe not.

Any Steve Hawking fans out there? Remember his movie,  A Brief History of Time and how he explained time travel?

And how about the newest, latest research that confirms faster-than-the-speed-of-light sub-particles?

Lisa Randall delves into some of these topics in her new book Knocking on Heaven’s Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World. A Harvard physicist, she has written a number of books that tied together the topics of sub-particles, physics, nature and art.

A mathematician at heart, she has always delved into the natural aspects of math in the world and how we can predict the future by looking at current science and its place in nature.

Sounds sensible to me–it’s kind pretty much the way that I look at things. For me, art has always been a great predictor of science. Da Vinci knew we would fly. It just took us centuries before we had the technology developed to accomplish his vision. Hannah Barbra’s Jetsons knew we would have phones that let us see each other–a few 40 years later, we know have Skype. Orson Scott Card wrote about blogging in his book, Ender’s Game, which was written in 1985.

I don’t think it is too far fetched to think that some of you who are reading this might see the day when we get there.

I wonder if it will be me … ?

Many of you have probably played Boardroom Bingo, Buzz-word Bingo, or maybe even Consultant-Speak Bingo… I thought I’d get your Friday started right with a friendly game of Twitter Bingo.

Take a look at the Bingo card below, and whip out your handy-dandy bingo marker (a dark highlighter will work, too) and mark off each box throughout the day when you see a tweet that matches the information in the box.

Shout out “BINGO!!” in the comments when you get 5-across, down or diagonal. Once that runs, we can play “postage stamp” or “four-corners.” I’m pretty sure that by the end of the day (maybe even before Noon) we’ll have someone with a completely blacked-out card!!

[Click on the Image to Print]

CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO PRINT!