Nick Milton at Knoco Stories has a great post today on KM and the coffee machine metaphor. It’s a commonly used explanation of KM and it’s often used to justify Social Media adoption. The idea is that SM will facilitate the transfer of knowledge like the coffee machine does. People bump into each other serendipitously as they go to get coffee, they make nice, “How are you? Whatcha workin’ on? Oh really, I’m doing something along those lines, maybe we can collaborate.” Then they go off together arm in arm, having formed a new social bond that will propel their collective careers to new heights. He’s right. The analogy doesn’t work. Most interactions at the coffee machine are stilted, formal, and forced by proximity and politeness. There is very little knowledge being transferred. Although, as a long time IT guy and a bit of a coffee addict, my experience at the coffee machine is somewhat different. I have always tried to help people with their computer problems whether they’re work related or personal and I think I’ve developed a reputation for being helpful and friendly. Getting to the coffee machine can be like running the gauntlet. It is rare that I get in and out of the coffee room without having someone say, “Let me ask you a question.” I shamefully admit that I have on occasion abruptly turned and bypassed the coffee machine if there are more than two people in the room. Not because I don’t want to help, but because invariably I’ll be there for 20 minutes explaining the benefits of one operating system over another, or the difference between virus protection and a firewall. I’m usually happy to do it, I just don’t always have the time. Most of the interactions over coffee are short and polite because employees are generally isolated and focused. They’ve momentarily escaped from their veal cube to imbibe a mild stimulant. They don’t want to be bothered, and frankly, they simply don’t know many of their fellow co-workers well enough to sustain a longer conversation, let alone engage in actual knowledge transfer. However, in the event that two close co-workers find themselves at a coffee machine simultaneously, a lot of real knowledge transfer can take place. Similarly, if someone known to be knowledgeable on a particular issue or subject enters the room (like the IT guy), it can quickly become a feeding frenzy of knowledge. Most of the people I meet at the coffee machine won’t call me directly to ask their particular question because they feel it isn’t that important, or if it is about their personal computer, they fear it isn’t appropriate to ask during company time. I suspect that when they see me, coffee mug in hand, standing in line, those questions become acceptable because I’m on a break and they’re not keeping me from my “real work”. Leaving aside for a moment the question of my personal break time, I am known to be knowledgeable on the subject of technology, and the perception is that I am available in that situation to be asked just about anything technology related. It seems to me that two things that Social Networking can do well are establish reputations and make people accessible. So can we change the metaphor from “KM and Social Media are like the coffee machine” to “KM and Social Media are like the IT guy entering the coffee room with an empty mug”?

Over dinner with a colleague, the question of where should law firms invest their change dollars came up. The basic concept is you divide a firm’s lawyers into three groups: #1 gets it, and is already making changes to the way they price and practice. #2 is somewhere in the middle, perhaps willing to embrace some changes, but not really taking proactive steps. #3 is oblivious to the need or unwilling to make changes, since the old way has been working fine for so long.
So the question is where should a firm commit resources to improve its operations and bottom line? Which “third” of the firm will generate the highest return on investment in change? Here are some pros and cons for investing in each group:

#1 Pros: This group is already well on their way and will quickly adopt any changes that help them improve. In the classic style, this is investing your dollars on the highest performing part of your business.

#1 Cons: This group will keep adopting change no matter the investment. Spending money here may well have low returns, since the group is already well on its way to the New Normal.

#2 Pros: This group is generally amenable to change and likely just needs some encouragement and exposure to new thinking. Dollars invested here will likely return immediate value.

#2 Cons: The return on investment from this group may not be as large as #1, since this group may be willing and able to only go so far. So although quick returns may be seen, they may not be deep and sustainable.

#3 Pros: This group has the most ground to gain and any adoption of change will bring significant returns.

#3 Cons: With a history of inability and/or unwillingness to adopt change and improve performance, group #3 seems the least likely to embrace new ways of thinking and doing.

The outcome of our conversation: My colleague pointed to traditional management theory, which says focusing on the bottom third will drive the entire firm up the change ladder. Although I see some logic to this approach, I couldn’t agree with it. My experience is that the bottom third in a law firm are so entrenched in their thinking and methods that they not only avoid change, they fight it. My gut tells me to invest in the high performance group – #1. It sends a message to them that their efforts and approach are appreciated, and it lets the other two groups know what the future needs to be.
Every firm will need to look at its three groups and decide what works best for them. Whether it’s adopting AFAs, embracing Legal Project Management, or even just implementing process improvement, law firms should consider the “Thirds” question and focus their investments on their highest ROI return lawyers.

Hat tip to Steve Lastres for stressing the upcoming change in AALL’s move away from listservs for its Special Interest Sections (SIS), Caucuses and Leadership listservs, to an online eGroup Discussion List starting on August 1st. For those of us in ILTA, the eGroup platform won’t be a big deal, but for those unfamiliar with the eGroup platform, it may take some getting use to.

However, the most important thing to do right now is to make sure you update your eGroup settings are set up correctly. Currently, the default setting for the eGroups is “Digest,” which means you’ll receive one email a day for all activity on the discussion group. If you want “Real Time” (and you know you do!!) then you’ll need to go in and change the default setting to change it to “Real Time.” You can also set it to either “Digest” or even “No Email” if you want to keep all the communications out of your email (you just have to remember to go to the Community website for any new messages.) One other option to keep it out of your email is that you can have all of the conversations of these groups going to your RSS feed reader.

Here’s the steps you need to do to change your eGroup settings to Real Time:

1. Go to the AALL Community website – http://community.aallnet.org – and sign in

2. In the “Our Community” Section, click on the link to adjust your subscription settings

3. Find the eGroups you want to bet updates from, and select “Real Time” and save your settings

4. You may need to go to your email SPAM filter and add the following two addresses to the white list to make sure they aren’t pushed into your Postini or other SPAM filter files.
  • noreply@egroups.aallnet.org
  • noreply@notifications.aallnet.org

Eventually, all of the AALL listservs will go away and you’ll have to post your messages through the eGroup platform. I think most of the ILTA members will agree that it is a good way to post questions to a list, and a good platform to organize the information.

Remember this is only for those official AALL listservs. So, listservs like Law-Lib or PrivateLawLibraries will continue to be email based systems and won’t change. You’ll still get all those Ron Huttner, Leslie Germaine and ILL request emails in real time, directly to your inbox. 
Here is the email that AALL’s Chris Sawa sent out on the topic:

SUBJECT: SIS Discussion List UpgradeI hope you’ve had an opportunity to explore the new My Communities section of AALLNET. Every SIS community has an eGroup feature that will replace our current discussion list<http://share.aallnet.org/read/> function. On August 1, we will migrate all the main SIS discussion lists to the new eGroups. All of the old messages will remain archived<http://share.aallnet.org/read/>, but the ability to send messages will cease. We will send a follow-up email on July 29 and August 1 to remind everyone that the committee discussion lists will be turned off on August 1.Please note that all other SIS related lists (e.g. SIS committee list) will eventually be turned off too, and the administrators for those lists should create communities for those under the “Member Created Communities” section of My Communities. If those administrators need assistance, I can work with them after all of the main SIS discussion lists have been turned off.All of the main SIS communities are synced with the SIS rosters stored in our membership database, so all current AALL members that are up-to-date with their SIS membership dues can send messages via their SIS’s eGroup now.Please inform your SIS members of the change, and ask them to update their notification settings if they haven’t already.
 1.  To update your notification settings, go to My Communities<http://community.aallnet.org> and click on My Subscriptions under the Discussions tab. Then you may opt to receive notifications in real time, as a daily digest, PDA (real time, but in plain text format for mobile devices), opt to not receive any emails, or unsubscribe altogether. 2.  Please also make sure to whitelist or add to your safe senders the following email addresses:
 1.  noreply@egroups.aallnet.org 2.  noreply@notifications.aallnet.org
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.Christopher SiwaDirector of Information TechnologyAmerican Association of Law Libraries105 W. Adams Street, Suite 3300 | Chicago, IL 60603

In the past couple of weeks, the free online resource, join.me, has saved me during a couple of training episodes. The first time was working with a consultant and attempting to explain what a program looked like on my desktop and how it displayed information. It was difficult attempting to describe everything that was going on and having the consultant visualize it. The consultant pointed me to join.me as a simple way for me to share the desktop, and in less than two minutes (probably less than a minute), I was sharing my desktop with him and he could see the program for himself. The second time was when I was explaining how to perform a search to a secretary in another office. For some reason, we couldn’t seem to stay on the same page during the telephone training, so I remembered the join.me website and suggested we both use it. Again, within a couple of minutes we were sharing the desktop and were able to quickly go through the rest of the training. In my estimation, it saved me a good 30 minutes of time getting the secretary up to speed.

So, I’m sharing my stories with you in case you ever find yourself in need of quickly sharing a desktop with another (or group), and you don’t need to be a techie to be able to use it. There’s no permanent software to install, and there’s even a conference telephone number you can use if you want to do a conference call with multiple people.

Here’s some simple directions on how it is used. It’s actually so easy, that you can probably just go to join.me and figure it out on the fly.

Instructions:

1. You go to the http://join.me site, click “share” and a temp file is downloaded.

2. Click “run” on that file and it will give you a pop-up with your join.me #

3. Give the other participant(s) that link and they can then see your screen from their browser

4. You can even share control with the participants

5. It will even give you a conference phone number if you needed one (it’s not toll-free, but who pays for long-distance these days??)

6. Close it out when you’re done and the temp file is deleted.

Of course, as Toby commented to me when I showed it to him… it could very well be a huge headache for your IT group if they see this as a hole in the firm’s security. Many IT rules forbid you from downloading and installing software… with this, however, you’re really not installing anything (other than temporarily)… so you can play dumb if they catch you.

Go check out join.me and test this out for yourself. There are also mobile versions as well as Professional versions if your IT group wants to establish a permanent web address for your firm.  I think you’ll find it very easy to use and may save you time the next time you are training someone remotely.

(image [cc] Vicchi)

Whenever I am in a room that is discussing how to handle “information overload” there usually comes a point in the conversation when someone says “I just don’t know how people can monitor all that information – blogs, twitter, email, professional reading, etc. – and still handle all the demands of their day job.” Immediately after this statement, there is usually a pause in the conversation, then for some odd reason, everyone leans over the table and looks toward me to answer this issue. I usually smile and tell them that the answer is proprietary and they’d need to hire me as a consultant (Social Media Guru!) for me to disclose my secret process.

Well, the truth of the matter is that it has taken me a long time to figure out a way to balance the flood of information that comes in everyday and making sure that it doesn’t cause me to mess up at my day job, or miss sleeping at night. When you can find that balance, however, you find that there is a wealth of great information out there to peruse. So, we thought we’d see if you’d share some of your tips and tricks of handling all that information and still be able to do your day job… and you didn’t disappoint! There are some great perspectives and suggestions of what you can do to strike that balance.

Once you’ve read the suggestions and implemented few of the tips, scroll on down to see next week’s Elephant Post question about the demands of the 2011 legal market and feel free to chime in with your perspective.

Steven B. Levy
Author of Legal Project Management
Author and Consultant

First, isn’t that part of your job rather than an in-addition-to, at least if you’re in any sort of leadership or strategic role? You need to prioritize it directly, not just do it when you might have time.  Second, I find OneNote an invaluable tool for keeping track of the stuff I want to save — links, tidbits, excerpts, etc. It’s internal organization scheme is very helpful. (I hear Evernote will also do similar stuff, but I’ve been a happy OneNote user since it was in its first beta.)  Third, this question is tied to the subject of my forthcoming book on productivity in the professional workplace, helping us move from struggling through a tense present into being highly focused in the present tense. Stay tuned…

Mark Gould
KM

Combine a number of habits/techniques:

  1. Remember that you don’t have to read it all — be cool about the fact that you might miss something. If it is good, someone else will spot it for you.  
  2. Cultivate a network (around the world) of like-minded (and unlike-minded) people who can spot things you might miss.  
  3. Find time — on the train; while the kettle boils; waiting at the school gate — to dip into the stream. (And just dip — remember point 1.)  
  4. Use a variety of devices and services, including paper, so that there is always something to dip into when the opportunity arises.

Christopher Hill
Lawyer

Google Reader, streaming the blog to twitter.

Emily Rushing
Competitive Intelligence / Law Librarian

3 concepts help me stay sane, and stay on top of information.

  1. File. File emails, scan and file papers, file projects and notes. Put information where it belongs. It’s frequently not a question of how much you absorb or retain, but whether you can find it again when you need it.
  2. Delete! Along those same lines, cut the fat and delete information you don’t need. Clear out emails and files. Unsubscribe from feeds you don’t use. Remove content from your facebook feed or LinkedIn page that isn’t relevant. Have your own document retention policy . Cultivate, curate and, mostly importantly, weed your garden.  
  3. Discipline. Set tasks and a schedule, and keep them. If  you decide to spend an hour a day reading, then do it and do it every day. If you say you want to tweet or blog once a week, make sure that happens. Don’t throw your conference hand-outs in a pile. Get them scanned and onto your kindle or iPad and give yourself a week to review.  

Of course, this is all much easier if you really like information. Reminds me of a hokey quote from Life’s Little Instruction Book. Find a job you like and you add five days to every week. If you like what you’re doing, you will find the time. If you set reasonable goals (file, delete and keep to your program), then you too can achieve information nirvana!

John Gillies
KM lawyer

Pretty standard, I’m sure, but I use Google Reader as my RSS feedreader. I use categories for the various feeds, because some are professional and others are personal. That way, if pressed for time, I can just look at the professional ones. I also try to keep the number of feeds to a reasonable number. The trick, of course, is to prune away the ones that I don’t read regularly.  Similarly with Twitter, I limit myself to a relatively modest number of people I follow and even at that I don’t get over to TweetDeck during the day to read the tweets as regularly as I’d like. That’s why I find I’m reading them more on UberSocial on my BB on the subway home.

James Mullan
KM Systems Manager

  1. File everything as soon as you can. I always keep the emails to my inbox to an absolute minimum otherwise you’ll just keep re-reading the same emails over and over again.
  2. Turn over the email notification in Outlook – you’ll get more done if you’re not constantly checking what the really important (email) spam was that just arrived.
  3. If you’re really brave turn email off for an hour or two and set the time aside to finish something you’ve been working on for a while.
  4. Being disciplined is very important, for example I don’t usually carry around a notepad and if I do I always transfer tasks to Outlook tasks to avoid having multiple places where I might have written something.
  5. Finally never press the More button on a social media tool!

Sarah Glassmeyer
Academic Law Librarian (for one more month!)

I would be absolutely lost without my Google RSS feed reader, which is one of the few things that I have carefully organized by topic.  I have made that my main professional information stream (although it’s also the only way I can stay on top of the the new Netflix instant streaming options as well.)   I check it every morning as I drink my coffee. And other than that? I don’t worry about it.   I cut down my twitter follows to either people or things that are entertaining or that I interact with and peek in on that about every 1/2 hour or so.  Since I’m not really following that many people, takes me about 1 minute to do a quick scan of updates.   I think the real secret to sanity is to just accept that you’re not going to be able to follow everything that’s said and everyone that’s saying it, so pick and choose what you’re interested in and dedicate a certain time of day to keep up and then move on.

Amy Towell
COO at Docket Navigator

Because I spend several hours a day reading docket sheets during the course of our daily business, information overload is a real possibility.  And that’s before I’ve even glanced at my twitter feed!   To combat the tendency to become overwhelmed by all that text, I follow only tweeters that post content that is highly relevant to my field (patent litigation).  I allow a few exceptions for some comedic relief (Steve Martin and Bill Cosby).   I immediately unfollow people who tweet every couple of seconds every random thought they have.  I follow the best 120 or so patent litigation tweeters I can find.  More than that is hard to keep up with and I start feeling behind.    In reverse,  I follow the same rules.  I blog and tweet every day, but I keep it short and to the point.  I choose one interesting patent litigation court decision each day, and share just that one; one tidbit a reader/follower can take away and add to their daily collection.  It’s not overwhelming to anyone, and they know if they want more than that, they can just ask me.

Greg Lambert
Library/Records/SM Juggler

One of the best ways that I monitor Twitter traffic is by using Tweetdeck’s column features where I have a column for those I follow that I think are contributing the best information (must reads), a column for news, and a column for my law library peers. I also set up ad hoc columns for searches on topics that I’m interested in at the moment, or for following conference hashtags. I still have my “All” column going, and I glance at it from time to time to see if anything stands out in the crowd. You’d be amazed at how often something of relevance I pick up out of that river of information.

Next Elephant Post

How Has Demand For Your (or your Firm’s) Services Changed in 2011?

Projections for 2011 were that the legal market would be stagnant. Are you finding those predictions to be true? Are you seeing an increase, decrease, or flat demand for the services you provide for your firm? Are you seeing changes in what is being asked of you by people within your firm as well as changes in what clients are demanding of your firm?

Let us know if you think we are finally pulling out of the quagmire that the recession has put the legal industry or if we should be hunkering down for a long, hard slog… or, is there something else happening that we should  be ready for? Fill out the form below and give us your perspective. Check back in next Thursday to see what everyone has to share.

This morning members of the various PLL/SIS AALL groups on LinkedIn received the following notice from PLL/SIS Chair-Elect Steve Lastres. The group has announced a new collaboration among the PLL/SIS, the SLA Legal Division and the CALL Private Law Libraries groups that sounds very exciting.
This new initiative has launched a blog focusing on the value of law firm libraries, which sounds like a great complement to the SLA Future Ready conversation about the relevance of special libraries and librarians.
blog: On Firmer Ground
twitter: @OnFirmerGround

Dear Private Law Libraries Special Interest Section Member, The PLL Executive Board is proud to be part of an exciting new collaboration. Along with our colleagues in the Special Libraries Association Legal Division and the Private Law Libraries Special Interest Group of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries (l’Association Canadienne des Bibliothèques de Droit), we are delighted to unveil On Firmer Ground, a blog that seeks to promote the VALUE of Law Firm Librarians. You can find it at http://www.firmerground.com . More than just a blog, On Firmer Ground is designed to be a celebration of who law firm librarians are and what they do. We encourage you to share your thoughts on the featured postings and engage your fellow law firm librarians in meaningful discussion. This new blog is the first international collaboration of its kind and represents a chance for us to develop a common voice and strategies for success that transcend geographic boundaries. We hope to have even more global partners signed on soon! It is a great time to be part of this profession and, working together, we raise its profile. We invite all our law firm librarians to get involved, represent your profession and SIS, and make the most of this powerful new resource. This initiative directly fosters several of the goals in the new PLL Strategic Directions Plan 2011-2013 to have the voice and value of the law firm librarians heard and communicated throughout the greater legal community. On Firmer Ground is an important step in that direction. We invite the entire legal information industry to join the conversation. Check out On Firmer Ground today ( http://www.firmerground.com ). The first post is an excellent piece on Cost Prevention versus Cost Recovery. We look forward to your thoughts. Let the discussion begin! Is your library on firmer ground? PS: For you Twitter users, you can get the latest from On Firmer Ground’s feed by following @FirmerGround 

Best Wishes,
Steve Lastres
PLL Chair-Elect Posted By Steven Lastres

One of the trends that I’ve seen in the past 15 years or so of legal research is that the lawyer requesting the research has become more and more self-reliant. For legal research specialists, this is a mixed blessing at times. In many cases, it means that the lawyer has completed a major portion of the “grunt work” and is looking to either fine tune the results, or double-check the work to make sure nothing was missed in their research process. In other cases, however, it means that by the time the lawyer gets to the research specialist, the portion of work is so screwed up, that many times we must start the research all over… and, of course, the deadline for completing the research is now seriously constricted.

Think of it like the time you (or your Dad, or your spouse, brother, sister, etc.) tried to fix their own car, only to wind up bringing it (towing it) into the mechanic to fix what they had fixed. In order to save time and money, they tried to take on a project that ended up costing them more time and money than if they had taken it to the mechanic in the first place. Most of the time, the problem didn’t come from a lack of knowledge of what needed to be done, but rather the pitfalls came from a lack of experience in that particular subject area, or, more commonly, the lack of tools and resources needed to fix the problem correctly. Just as with your Dad or spouse, however, this usually doesn’t stop them from jumping right back in the next time the car’s breaks start squeaking and thinking that “this time” they’ll be able to get it right… usually with the same towing and mechanical expenses to follow.

In our personal lives, we try to fix these problems by buying them Christmas presents comprised of 250 piece socket sets, timing lights, and a Chilton 500+ page Repair Manual on how to fix a 1997 Ford Taurus. In other words, we know they are not going to give up on the belief that they can do it faster, cheaper and better, so we attempt to give them the tools they need do the job right. Legal research specialists can take this same approach as well. The major difference between the personal mechanic and the lawyer in this story is that there are a whole lot more tools available to the lawyer, but it is the research specialists that have to lay them out for the lawyer in a way that guides them to the right tool for the right research project.

Just like a wrench that is too big can strip a bolt… using the wrong research tool can cause a lawyer to go down the wrong path to the answer they seek. If the lawyer would talk with the researchers first, many times the right resources are laid out there for them. However, in a world where more and more “self-help” is conducted without consultation, then the researchers aren’t consultant until a couple of bolts have already been stripped. So what can we do to prevent this? The key seems to be anticipating the potential projects and devising our own version of the Chilton repair manual.

Although we can’t anticipate every potential research project, we generally know of a number of consistent issues that affect the firm’s lawyers, and we can start there. Whether it is a research guide, or a flow-chart of tools available for particular legal subject, the more tools we lay out there for the lawyers, the less likely they are going to use the wrong tool and create a bigger problem down the line. Many of the biggest problems start with small mistakes. If we can limit the mistakes up front, then we’re less likely to have to overhaul the whole project later down the line. Think of ways that you can put those instructions in front of the lawyer with that Do-It-Yourself attitude. You’re not going to stop them from taking on those projects… but you can reduce those towing and extra repair charges if you can get them started in the right directions and make sure they have access to the right tools needed for the job.

The other day, I was cruising around on the internet and I came across the EPA’s web site.

Lucky for me, I spotted the EPA’s app contest.
Yep, that’s right. The EPA is holding a contest to create an app. And, they are even willing to accept an IDEA for an app. So the contest isn’t just limited to programmers.
The winner will be honored by the EPA at a special ceremony in D.C. and the app will be publicized on the EPA web site.
The only requirement is that the app address one of the following seven principles:
  1. Take action on climate change
  2. Improving air quality
  3. Assuring the safety of chemicals
  4. Cleaning up our communities
  5. Protecting America’s waters
  6. Expanding the conversation on environmentalism
  7. Building strong State and Tribal partnership

The deadline for submission is September 16, 2011. More info is available at appsfortheenvironment.challenge.gov.

I’m entering. And why wouldn’t I? My favorite color is green!
(Photo [cc] Murilo Morais)

Whether you call them Social Media Consultants or Social Media Gurus, there are people out there that are more than ready to come in and work with you to set up a social media policy and explain the ropes of the social media world for lawyers and law firms. In my three years of serious social media exposure, some of these so-called (often self proclaimed) SM Gurus were uncovered as failed lawyers that were trying their hand at a different profession while trying to leverage a JD to get them in the door as both a Social Media and a Legal expert. It wouldn’t take long to find some of the arguments against hiring these experts (hint: go find a few defense attorneys on Twitter and search their tweets for “guru” to see what they think of these experts.)

I thought we’d get a good discussion here, but I’m thinking that perhaps it was either too easy, or perhaps too touchy a subject (perhaps you’ve been burned and didn’t want to admit it??) Or, maybe everyone just decided to take off early for the Fourth of July. We didn’t get a lot of perspectives, but that’s kind of the risk we take when we ask these Elephant Post question.

Luckily, we don’t let one down week discourage us around here! So, we’re going keep asking the questions to get your perspectives. Whenever I talk with people that read our blog, the Elephant Post is one of the primary things they say they like (although, we need to do a better job on branding the term “Elephant Post” because it seems to have taken on the street name of “elephant thingy” or “something elephant”.) So, read through this week’s perspectives, and then take a look at next week’s ELEPHANT POST question about how you are able to make sense of all that information that flies by you everyday… and are still able to do your day job.

Greg Lambert
Library/Records Guy
Yes

I’m reluctantly saying yes for the following reasons:

1. Law Firms move very slowly (if at all when it comes to new ideas)
2. Law Firms tend to not make a decisions unless:
    a. ever one of their peers have done so
    b. something goes terribly wrong and they are forced to make a decision
    c. someone comes in from the outside and says that if you don’t do this, your firm will be embarrassed or partners will leave for firms that are doing it

A lot of firms are “ignoring” the Social Media world (both blocking it from employees, and simply pretending the firm doesn’t have a social media footprint already… sometimes run by people not even related to the firm)

So, if a Social Media Consultant can come in and start the conversation. Then I say, bring ’em in! The sad thing is that it is very likely that firms already have employees that are just as good as these consultants are, but because they aren’t coming in from the outside, they get ignored. I guess it’s one of those classic situations where firms have more “dollars” than “sense”!

Toby Brown
AFA
Yes

Lisa and I served on our firm’s Social Media Committee.  After that experience, I highly recommend you use on outside consultant – even if you know more than they do.

It’s the old “You are not a prophet in your own land” story.  Whenever we suggested anything, it fell on deaf ears.  When some consultant’s blog would have a post saying the same thing, it was scripture.

Besides – when things go wrong (and they will since people have unrealistic expectations) it won’t be your fault.  It will be that crazy, outside, so-called social media guru.

Next Elephant Post

How Do You Make Sense of All That Information and Still Perform Your Day Job??

Whenever I am in a room that is discussing how to handle “information overload” there usually comes a point in the conversation when someone says “I just don’t know how people can monitor all that information – blogs, twitter, email, professional reading, etc. – and still handle all the demands of their day job.” Immediately after this statement, there is usually a pause in the conversation, then for some odd reason, everyone leans over the table and looks toward me to answer this issue. I usually smile and tell them that the answer is proprietary and they’d need to hire me as a consultant (Guru!) for me to disclose my secret process.

Well, the truth of the matter is that it has taken me a long time to figure out a way to balance the flood of information that comes in everyday and making sure that it doesn’t cause me to mess up at my day job, or miss sleeping at night. I thought this would be a good Elephant Post question for next week. Share with us a way that you manage that flow of information. Do you have a product… a process… a tip or trick… that helps you filter the information that comes in? Willing to share one or two of those with us?? I hope so! I know I would love to know how others handle this issue. So go ahead and contribute (you’ll feel better for doing sharing!!)

Twitter, Facebook & LinkedIn, Oh My!

View more presentations from Lisa Salazar.

Twitter, Facebook & LinkedIn, Oh My!
March 11-12, 2011

First, before I begin, I would like to thank Saskia Melhorn for asking me to speak here at the joint Houston Area Law Librarian/SouthWest Area Law Librarian Meeting. I spoke here two years ago about the Wild, wild web. And in that short time, we have seen quite a few folks tame and colonize it.

I also talked about the print media’s decline and the internet’s rise. And it has all held true—the web isn’t going away and its presence is felt and seen everywhere, every day.

In fact, today’s big headline hit my blackberry at 12:16 a.m. I happened to be up—which reminds me.

So, let’s begin.

Who in here feels like when they log into any of these 3 sites they are entering an alternative reality?

The land of Oz, if you will?

Who among you just wants to click your heels—or your mouse—and just go back home—that is, Internet Home?

Who feels a terror, akin to the Cowardly Lion, when they see all those Tweets fly by like winged monkeys?

There is no need to yearn for home or to fear the great and terrible Wizard of Oz.
Usually it is just some small person running things from behind a green curtain.
So let me be Glenda the Good Witch and guide you through this beautiful Land of Alternative Realities.

But, first, let’s take a look at the topography of Oz … or, in this case, the web.
Think of the internet as a body—a body of knowledge.

And as with any body, there are a number of systems including the muscular system, the skeletal system, the nervous system, the circulatory system, the endocrine system and the digestive system.

Well, it is the same with the internet.

As anyone who has ever had a baby knows, the first three systems to develop are the brain, the heart and the spinal cord.

There’s something romantic about that isn’t there?

wisdom, love and courage …

the brain, the heart, the backbone (or spinal cord) …

Anyways, let’s look at each of these in terms of the internet:

The brain: you can think of this as the computer.

The heart: spurs the flow and interaction between computers.

The spinal cord: the beginnings of the pipelines through which content begins to travel.

So let’s think back to the beginnings of the web.

The very first thing that the founders of the internet did was network siloed computers to create redundancy and protect data.

So the first thing was the computer, or the brain.

Next created the network; or the spinal cord.

Finally, they created a messaging system, or the circulatory system.

So we have just identified the first layer of the internet’s ecosystem:
Computers, networks and messaging systems.

Then comes the second layer: here comes the beginnings of the tech bubble in the ‘90s.

We got web sites, LANs and email.

Then chat programs like ICQ, AOL, Prodigy and Yahoo came along.

Then comes the third layer, which brings us up to the 2000s.

Here we see the birth of blogs and Twitter.

As well as whole, new independent platforms and networks like MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

In fact, I would consolidate LinkedIn and Facebook to be self-contained systems that are parasitic in nature because they will leach from web sites, Twitter and blogs.
And there is the whole omnipresence of Google that overshadows the entire hemisphere of the web.

And lastly, I read in today’s New York Times, that a number of new start-ups will be announced at this week’s SXSWi: group chat available on smartphones.

The new applications, most of which are free, include GroupMe, FastSociety, Beluga, Kik, TextPlus, PingChat, HurricaneParty and Yobongo.

Only GroupMe and PingChat are available for the Blackberry. GroupMe, Beluga, Kik, PingChat are available for the android, and the rest are only available on iPhones or iPads.

So now we can see the entire topography of the web.

Feeling uncomfortable? A little lost? Are you starting to click your heels so you can go home?

Well, let’s go back to that fallen house and get your ruby red slippers. Because the only way you’re getting home from here is to take that long yellow brick information highway with me.

So let’s talk about creating your own little Oz from your own computer.

How do we begin?

Just like Dorothy and the Scarecrow did, with the brain, of course!

And what did we say that was? Content: A web page!

We will call it YOWL: just like you, it will come into existence in the 21st century, kicking and screaming. It stands for Your Own Little World.

What! I can’t do that, you say. It costs too much. It takes too much work. You don’t know how.

No, sir. I am not taking that for an answer.

Let me tell you about 3 Geeks. I set up the blog in less than 10 minutes on blogger.com. It was free. It was simple. It gives you no excuse.

Just start writing. Right now, I run 3 personal blogs. Granted, one is withering. But at one time, I was running 5.

People ask me, “what do you write about?” I answer, “what do you read about?” Then that is what you blog about.

If it still scares you, read a few blogs to start getting ideas. For starters, may I recommend “Three Geeks and a Law Blog”?

Still don’t want to write a blog? Okay, then set up a LinkedIn page. That is no different from any other web page. It is your own personal web page. You can’t get much more personal than an online resume.

Unless it is a Facebook page.

And, then, of course, there is the ubiquitous Twitter.

Let’s talk about LinkedIn.

How many of you don’t have a LinkedIn page?

It is a professional networking site that allows you to connect with colleagues, peers, recruiters and vendors. Currently, the target market is individuals but they are making their company profiles more robust.

In fact, in January they added some new functionality.

On the company site, you can add products and services, practice leaders, service recommendations, and banner images.

The company home page supports video. You can add a “Follow us on LinkedIn” button to your web site, feeds blog posts and tweets to your overview page, clients can make recommendations without visiting linkedin. LinkedIn added new functionality to their groups to allow for trial periods and there is now a LinkedIn Share button that acts like the FB share button.

As for FB, y’all are used to seeing individual FB pages. But did you know that there are 2 other kinds of pages: organization pages and community pages?

Here’s a company Facebook page. Basically, all it is repurposed web content posted to a Facebook page. It’s nothing spectacular but they wanted to take ownership of the page.

How many of you are on FB and interacting with companies? A good local example is Dessert Gallery.

They’ve done a great job of creating a good, solid fan base.

Now just this past week, FB upgraded their business pages and it is causing quite a bit of a ruckus. Small business owners are complaining because those that have built up a large following have lost some functionality: fans can no longer recommend or share a company page to their friends. This just seems dumb to me since that’s 99% of the beauty of FB: sharing. But more than a few have suggested the reason for this change is to shift more revenue to FB ads. Which sounds completely realistic to me.

So let’s move on.

Facebook is generating community pages using Wikipedia content.

LinkedIn is doing the same thing, creating company pages based upon employee pages.
So if you don’t take control of these pages, they can be hijacked and used for ill-gotten gains.

And these pages are being created for your attorneys and your law firms, even if you aren’t taking ownership of them.

How many of you already have one? See? It wasn’t so hard was it? And they are all free. Well, sort of. We’ll get to that later.

Lastly, let’s set up that Twitter Account.

First, here’s my account. I’m using the new profile that they updated about 9 months ago. I had to reformat my background to accommodate the 3 Geeks photos. And you will see the status update field followed by my stream.

Some new functionality was added to Twitter with this profile upgrade: it is easier to see a snapshot of your followers; instead of opening a new page, their profile displays on the right side.

But I really don’t go to this page very often as I use a third party app to update my twitter account. More on that later.

The 3 most important things on this page are 1) your photo, 2) your handle and 3) the link back to your web page, be it your web site, your LI or your FB account.

And again, if your law firm hasn’t laid claim to their Twitter handle, it could very well be hijacked. Just like we had domain name wars, your firm could face the same problem on Twitter.

So if any of your law firms are afraid of engaging in social media and say that they need to think through their social media policy first; well, they better hurry. Because, whether they know it or not, every attorney who has a bar number in the state of Texas has a web page, with contact information and a map to their office.

And there is no need to create a social media policy any stronger than what is currently in existence to protect their web page as long they are only repurposing web content.

You do have to make sure that appropriate disclaimers are in place.

So there you have it. The first layer: the brain.

So who else did Dorothy encounter? That’s right.

The Cowardly Lion. And what was he looking for? Courage—or a spine. And what did we say that the spine was? The nervous system or the network, if you will.

Fortunately, what this past decade has done for the internet is eliminate the need to build that infrastructure. Technology has progressed to a point where it has removed the necessity of building out that network by relying on random site visits or by pushing people to web sites by e-mail campaigns.

Instead, these new sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn let us populate and grow our network by importing our contacts from our e-mail systems into their systems.

By doing that, these sites are establishing connections for us by letting our friends see our other friends and spotting potential new connections.

That’s why these social media networks are growing so quickly.

If you think of the web like an organism, these networks are developing like a cancer!

So, before, when you sent 1 email to 10 people, maybe, 1 person would forward it.

Now, if you send 1 tweet or 1 status update, it is automatically showing up on all of your imported contacts, followers, friends or connections walls or profiles.

And who knows how many they will send it to?

So why exactly does Twitter work so much better than e-mail? Because it is short. In a stroke of brilliance, sheer luck and necessity—they limited the message to 140 characters.

Twitter and Facebook revolutionized the message.

So you now we are getting to the “heart” of the matter. These interactions, tweets, messages, are the circulatory system.

Now we know everyone hates those chain e-mails. They are too long, with their glittery, animated carebears embedded into the often sappy poem about how you and all of the sender’s 50 closest friends are her bestest friends and wants you to affirm the friendship with a forward to all of your bestest friends and a reply to her.

Now, a 140-character tweet eliminates all of that embarrassment. If you just read a great article or watched a hilarious video, you can send in less than 30 seconds. When you get the tweet, you can read it in less than 15 seconds. Sending it on takes less than 5 seconds.

No more bloated e-mails.

The same with law firm news, events and publications. It is forcing our lawyers to write smarter not longer.

Blog comments, Tweets, texts and the status updates are creating a whole new milieu for messaging. Eliminating the need for emails, these exchanges are typically a line or 2 long. As mentioned with Tweets, which mimic texts, you are limited to a certain character length.

And, now, with the parasitic features available on LinkedIn and Facebook, these sites will pull your tweets into their environment so you only have to post on one environment and it will be replicated across all of your sites.

LinkedIn integrates with Twitter, Twitter can push out to Facebook, and 3rd party apps like HooteSuite and Tweetdeck allow you to handle multiple profiles all at one time.

Now that we have examined and dissected the body of the web, let’s see how we can master it to become our own little men behind the curtain.

I was going to say something clever here—like, he is me or she is he … well, you get my drift …

So let’s say that you have created your profile on LinkedIn. You look fabulous, you have a nice pic.

By the way, an aside on pictures: make them photos of yourself that are recognizable.
Dark photos, faraway photos, photos of two people or photos of your dog, baby or company logo are not acceptable. Social media is all about personal relationships.

No one can relate to you if they can’t see you.

And then make sure that you use the same photo on all of your sites. This is the beginning of personal branding. It doesn’t have to be a glamour shot. Just make it a relaxed, approachable snap shot of you.

Walk through examples: weird, too far. Beach? A faraway car?

So you have your own little world built and created. Now you want to get it circulating in the internet galaxy.

So let’s think about your launch strategy: how are you going to start your social media campaign?

Well, once again, it is comprised of 3 components: 1) what’s your goal, 2) who is your target audience, and 3) how are you going to get there?

Well, we are going to treat this like any other road trip. Where do we want to go? Dorothy wanted to go home. Who was her target audience? The Wizard of Oz. And how was she getting there? The Yellow Brick Road.

So let’s think about you: what do you want?

You want a wildly popular web site.

Who do you want visiting your site?

Your peers? Your staff? Your boss?

How are you going to get there?

social media a/k/a peer pressure a/k/a word-of-mouth.

You don’t have to answer these questions but it will help you. You can just start randomly tweeting and building out your network but you will have a better chance of hitting your target if you bear these three questions in mind: where are you going, who are you targeting and how are you getting there.

Lastly, we haven’t talked about the Yellow Brick Road or those super Ruby Red Slippers, have we?

Where do they fit into this story? Well, they are the means and the way of reaching our goal—they are the tools or your secret weapons.

And for us, it is TweetDeck, or HooteSuite or any of those free 3rd party apps that are out there, ready and waiting to help you make your way through the quagmire of social media.

These are both excellent online tools that help you manage the Twitter stream. Or should I say Twitter Tsunami?

TweetDeck allows you to segment and categorize your tweets into discreet columns so that it is easier to follow folks. I have columns set up for my fellow geeks, competitors and areas of interest. It makes it easier to catch up on news, too.

But the secret of the ruby red slippers? Well, that’s the media, baby.

Once you are going strong, making connections, reaching out to people, networking, blogging, making a name for yourself?

That’s when a star is born.

I’ve seen it so many times, it’s now inevitable.

We’ve all seen it: Justin Beiber got his big break on YouTube. Sephora gave a young, unwed mother in England who sold eyeshadow on ebay her own make-up line—and she doesn’t even have a beauty license. A young woman’s blog about her culinary hero, Julia Child, turned into a multi-million dollar movie.

Heck, your own little three geeks here, in 2 short years were named one of the top 12 blogs in the country.

And it does matter to your firm. They just don’t know it yet. Unless they claim their name, they will get hijacked. If they don’t participate, they will get left behind. And if they say that it can’t be proven that it will land them a client; well, how will they know it until they try?

They’ll be like Auntie Em and the folks back home. In black and white and all wind-blown.

I hope you now realize, like Dorothy, although she claimed there was no place like home, she racked up quite a few frequent flyer points for her frequent visits back to Oz.