I was fortunate to have been invited to teach a session in the Canadian Association of Law Library’s New Law Librarians Institute 2012 earlier this month. The focus of the one-week program is substantive law, but my session was of a more practical nature, entitled “Knowledge Management in the Legal Setting.”

I was asked to provide a paper related to the content of my discussion, and am pleased to share it here with everyone (click the image to download the PDF document):

Knowledge Management in the Legal Setting [pdf]

The slides below are based on that talk (I used a shorter deck with a simpler background in the actual webinar).

I hope you find this helpful. This really only just touched the tip of the iceberg! If you have questions, feel free to post them in the comments below or send me a shout via Twitter @conniecrosby or via email connie@crosbygroup.ca

If you are interested in wikis and happen to be in the Toronto area, we’d love to see you at Toronto Wiki Tuesdays, the monthly meetup group organized by my fellow knowledge management consultant Martin Cleaver. A lot of what I know about wikis I have learned in attending these meetings. In other cities, the group is called Wiki Wednesdays. Well worth checking out!

Cheers,
Connie

Connie Crosby Update: February 15, 2010 from Connie Crosby on Vimeo.

Some of my mentions in this episode:

• ChangeCamp meeting in Toronto on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 working on a civic engagement toolkit. While the session is full for participants, we are looking for volunteers to act as scribes as I mention in the video. If you have a laptop with good battery and would like to join me in liveblogging at a table via Scribblelive.com feel free to contact me and I will pass your name along. Scribes show up at 4 pm, and the show gets underway around 5:30 or 6:00 pm. I mention one of the people leading us in the evening, Mark Kuznicki, who inspires me to do more in leading and connecting people.
• PodCamp Toronto - will you be joining us? February 20 & 21, 2010 at Ryerson’s Rogers Communication Centre.  The Schedule is now live so that presenters may add their sessions in.
• Personal Brand Camp 2 - an event including Humber PR students learning about social media and how to build an online presence. I am giving Michael Cayley a hand with this. This event will be held in conjunction with Third Tuesday Toronto on February 23, 2010, a speaker series about social media for the PR industry, courtesy of Joseph Thornley. Our speaker for the evening will be Mitch Joel on (what else?) personal brand.
• Ontario Library Association’s OLA Superconference, February 24-27, 2010. Look for me at the Knowledge Ontario booth where I will be helping out periodically.
• Over on Slaw.ca I usually post every Monday. This week’s post:  Google Buzz Already Raising Privacy Concerns.

And did I mention my book? No? I’ve been proofreading the final proofs! We’re almost ready for the printer!

This message was cross-posted on my personal blog at http://conniecrosby.blogspot.com/2010/02/connie-crosby-update-february-15-2010.html.

Cheers!
Connie

Connie Crosby Update: My New Brainchild from Connie Crosby on Vimeo.

Links to a few things mentioned:

• Knowledge Workers Toronto
• My new book from Neal-Schuman: Effective Blogging for Libraries (Part of the new Tech Set series) scheduled to be released in March
• PodCamp Toronto 2010
• Ignite the Web! Audio & Video in the Law webinar with Connie Crosby presented courtesy of Nina Platt Consulting Inc.

Also posted on my personal blog conniecrosby.blogspot.com.

That being said, I am speaking Wednesday at the Acuity Forums conference Executing Social Media [pdf] and will be tackling the big question of social media and social networking inside the organization. I’m incorporating some of Steve’s thinking. I also came up with a list of ways staff may be using social media that should not be blocked.

Many staff have legitimate reasons for accessing these sites, such as:

• monitoring the Internet about your company and brands
• engaging in public relations on behalf of your company
• researching what your competitors are doing for Competitive Intelligence and Business Intelligence programs
• checking potential business partners
• legal due diligence
• background checks on new recruits
• learning from experts in their areas (for free!) from sites such as blogs and podcasts
• attending professional webinars
• organizing professional association committees and conferences
• connecting with business contacts through networking sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook
• registering for professional development events and training through sites such as Facebook, Upcoming.org and Meetup.com

What other reasons are there for giving staff access to social media/social networking sites?

Also speaking were Dan Michaluk of the law firm Hicks Morley and Sheldon Silverman, Counsel at AMD. Dan spoke to the question of managing employee use of social media applications, especially how to manage risk. He has shared his slides on his blog All About Information. Sheldon rounded out the discussion by providing an interesting case study of internal social media policy.

If you work in a major Canadian library and have an Interlibrary Loan Code from Collections Canada, you already have access!

The code should be 4 characters in length, and is case sensitive, so you will need to input it in all capitals.

If you do not already have access, contact info@cbraonline.com for your free trial password.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CBRA Live, Online, & Free for 30 Days

TORONTO, September 10, 2009…Dundurn Press is pleased to announce that the Canadian Book Review Annual (CBRA) will roll out live, online on Monday, September 14, 2009.

CBRAonline — the most comprehensive, authoritative database for quality reviews of Canadian-authored titles —is being launched to fill the need for an easily searchable electronic version of the venerable hardcover, Canadian Book Review Annual. Now these important reference annuals with 40,000 past reviews of Canadian-authored titles and over 150 new titles each month are easily accessible online. More than 300 reviewers — all experts in their fields — provide thorough evaluations of Canadian authored books in many different genres including children’s books as well as adult fiction and nonfiction.

For the first time, these reviews will be available to a broad group of users, from professors and scholars to high school students and library patrons.

About CBRA:

“Recommended for all Canadian libraries and American academic libraries with Canadian collections.”— Library Journal

“Of great value to the staff of Canadian school, public and academic libraries … as well as anyone interested in Canadian Studies.” — Booklist

As part of a special offer CBRAonline invites you to sign up for a 30 day free trial. Visit us at www.cbraonline.com and contact info@cbraonline.com for more information.

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For comment, please contact Beth Bruder at (416) 214-5544, ext. 232 or bbruder@dundurn.com

Jordan Furlong, editor of the Canadian Bar Association’s magazine, The National, has rounded up a group of writers who focus on innovative legal practices and tasked them with selecting the top websites by a Canadian law firm.

I am honoured to be one of the judges.

Sites will be judged in the following categories:

1. Big Firm (national/multi-jurisdictional)
2. Small Firm/Solo
3. British Columbia (national firms excluded from the provincial/regional categories)
4. Prairies
5. Ontario
6. Quebec
7. Atlantic Provinces
8. Blogs (not the best law blog, but the law firm websites that have the best blog(s) or use blogging the best)
9. Multi-Media (best use of podcasts, videos, etc.)
10. Student/Recruiting

If you would like your firm’s blog to be considered by Mitch, send it to mekowalski@rogers.com by tonight at 11:59 p.m ET (i.e. before midnight!).

Winners will be announced in the fall. May the best firm websites win!

I remember reading the Cluetrain Manifesto book back in 1999 and thinking how well it related to library service. I could picture librarians taking part in the conversations of the communities they are working with and serving. I could see it going a step further, and seeing librarians as part of those communities. I was delighted a number of years later to hear that Michael Stephens incorporated Cluetrain teachings into his course content.

As a law firm employee, I could also see how this relates to lawyers working with clients, taking part in their conversations as well. It is no surprise, then, that I have taking to social networking tools such as blogs and Twitter so well!

In particular, the discussion of how the affects of the Internet can be felt inside the organization quite captured my imagination. I have therefore selected to discuss thesis 46 for my tribute to Cluetrain. It reads:

“46. A healthy intranet organizes workers in many meanings of the word. Its effect is more radical than the agenda of any union.”

From the book:

The gulf the Web opens is, ironically, that of connection. Without anyone asking for it, the Web has given the people inside an organization easy access to one another in a rich variety of ways. They can send e-mail to one person, to a steady group, to a dynamic team, to the entire sales force, or “just” to the board of directors. They can post creative, informative pages that express their interests, correct the mistakes in the official technical documentation, or point to the industry analyst’s report the company doesn’t want anyone to read. They can write a ’zine that parodies the company line savagely and without let-up. They can play backgammon online or blow up their colleagues in a ruthless game of Quake in which the guy who never speaks at meetings routinely turns his manager into animated meat chunks. They can also find every piece of information about the company and its competitors, shop for a car, or learn how to play the blues like Buddy Guy.

The command-and-control power structures became subverted once the mailroom clerk became able to directly email the CEO (or a close facscimile). It put all employees on a more level playing field.  This shift was perhaps not immediately evident, but becomes even more so when you have an intranet–such as a wiki-based one–where everyone has access and can make a contribution.

Intranets, in effect, shifted the corporate culture. Lowly staff became more involved in the organization, or at least had more of a voice. With generational changes as well, the big booming voice of authority has become weaker over time, with employee empowerment being the rallying cry over the last ten years.

Not all organizations have intranets. Some are still working with files on shared drives, or on individual computers, while in contrast other (mostly large) organizations are on their third or even fourth generation of intranets or portals. Up until now creating an intranet has been an expensive endeavour. Pair that with many anecdotes of failed efforts, smaller organizations have shyed away from taking the plunge.

In the last 2-3 years, more economical ways of creating an intranet are being used. Some organizations are implementing a scaled-down version of MS SharePoint. Others are using wikis or wiki-based content management systems such as ThoughtFarmer. Others are implementing Open Source content management systems such as WordPress (yes, the blog software), Drupal and Joomla.

Coincidentally, what all of these new platforms have in common is the ability to allow for increased collaboration. Employees can connect, share, and work together in ways that could only be accomplished previously in person.

But to allow for this, executives and managers have to trust employees. If given enough trust, employees will start to put their thoughts forward from their experience on the “front lines” of the organization, and start to drive the direction of the organization. Trust in an employee helps to motivate the employee. The employee will be far more engaged and do far better work if he or she is allowed to explore new ideas, set goals, and work towards them without too much interference.

These are radical ideas raised by Cluetrain ten years ago, and have even more relevance today. Along with the shift in technologies, we are also seeing a shift in corporate and organizational culture.

This is Intranet Apocalypso.

To read additional tributes to Cluetrain, have a look at the tributes to the other 94 theses, linked from this page on the Cluetrain Plus 10 wiki.