Dennis Kennedy

22. Certain to WIn, by Chet Richards

21. Crashproof Your Kids, by Timothy Smith

20. The Physics of NASCAR, by Diandra Leslie-Pelecky

19. The Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle

February

18. Absolute Power, by David Baldacci

17. Stone Cold, by David Baldacci

16. The Art of Learning, by Josh Waitzkin

15. The Shell Game, by Steve Alten

14. Coltrane, by Ben Ratliff

13. The Sign of Four, by Arthur Conan Doyle

12. A Study in Scarlet, by Arthur Conan Doyle

January.

11. How to Pick a Peach, by Russ Parsons

10. Presentation Zen, by Garr Reynolds

9. The Nuclear Jihadist: The True Story of the Man Who Sold the World's Most Dangerous Secrets...And How We Could Have Stopped Him , by Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins

8. Kitchen Confidential, by Anthony Bourdain

7. No Reservations, Anthony Bourdain

6. The United States of Arugala, David Kamp

5. Ronnie, Ronnie Wood

4. Dance with the Dragon, David Hagberg

3. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle

2. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle

1. Last Harvest: How a Cornfield Became New Daleville: Real Estate Development in America from George Washington to the Builders of the Twenty-first Century, and Why We Live in Houses Anyway, by Witold Rybczynski

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Technorati tag: 52 books in 52 weeks

Posted by dmk at 04:23 PM | Comments (1)

December 30, 2007

Best of DennisKennedy.Blog: 2007 in Review

I was reading Brian Clark's post "The Best of Copyblogger in 2007 and realized how much I like this type of year-end post. It tells a lot about the subject matter a bog covers and provides a roadmap to the best posts.

I've thought about doing similar posts each year, but the idea has always seemed a little too daunting. I took a stab at it today and it was easier than I thought. I looked through the 135 posts (a smaller number than in any calendar year of this blog so far, in part due to working on a book project) and put together this post. Enjoy!

January

In January , I looked at resolutions – for your PCh and for my own legal technology (hmm, some might be on my list for 2008, too). January was also the time for my annual Martin Luther King Day reflection. I ended the month looking at the biggest unanswered question in electronic discovery: What will "documents" mean in a world where almost all information is held in gigantic databases?

February

February was most notable for my experiment in publishing my annual legal technology trends article as a series of posts and in a number of forms. The idea was to let people see how I wrote and edited the article to create different versions. Here's the start of the long version and the short version. There was also an intermediate (and probably the best) version published on LLRX.com. Other highlights included two posts on newsreaders (here and here), one on wikis for lawyers, and a note that non-lawyers might not be treating electronic discovery with the same emphasis that lawyers are putting on it.

March

In March, Tom Mighell and I announced our upcoming book, The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies. March also had posts on two of my favorite concepts of the year: Impromptu Consultation and the Post-Email Era and The Electronic Discovery Continuum - Accelerating Complexity. I also covered topics ranging from Track Changes to Firefox productivity extensions to document assembly, and made my 2007 legal trends article available as a PDF download.

April

April found me a bit overwhelmed with email overload, but also making some of my better posts of the year: Green Legal Technology: Is the Time Ripe?, Are Lawyers Doing Work That Should Be Done By Machines?, Do Excerpt Feeds and Poor Sound Quality Podcasts Have Something in Common?, Reports of Death of PowerPoint Greatly Exaggerated?, and Has Blogging Peaked?. I also noted the tenth anniversary of Dave Winer's Scripting News blog, probably the greatest influence on my launch of this blog.

May

May was a busy month, with the number posts dropping somewhat. I noted the anniversary of Eric Raymond's seminal essay, The Theater and the Bazaar (essential if you want to understand Open Source), posted my Handout Materials on Ethical Issues for Law Firm Websites, commented on "peak blogging," highlighted some great tips on presenting from Jon Udell, and suggested that lawyers who thought that simple auto accident cases would not involve electronic discovery might be sadly mistaken.

June

I started June with a post on my visit with Marty "The Trademark Blog" Schwimmer and some thoughts about the history and future of blogging by lawyers in a post called Birth of the Blawg. I ended the month mentioning a white paper I had written on dealing with metadata under the new amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. In between, I posted on Pollard's Laws of Communication, Collection and Collaboration, Talking About GPL and Creative Commons for Bloggers, and Seven Step Guide for Knowledge Management Initiatives in Corporate Legal Departments.

July

July featured one of my most rantish and popular posts - Presumptuous Computing - A Trend to Reverse. Yesterday, iTunes presumed that a stray mouse click meant that I wanted to uncheck ALL of my songs and podcasts and I spent a long time rechecking the items I wanted to put on my iPod, earning iTunes a special place among my least favorite programs. I also posted on two of my favorite topics of 2007 – Google Reader's Shared Items and storage. I ended the month focused on Babylon 5: The Lost Tales.

August

August meant a new Springsteen single – Radio Nowhere. We lost power again in St. Louis. I had a great time at the ILTA Conference. A new episode of The Kennedy-Mighell Report podcast focused on lawyers using Facebook and the Google Reader. I also posted on the idea of using technology counsel in electronic discovery, clean legal technology, and a roundtable article I participated in on the impact of the December 2006 amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure on electronic discovery.

September

In September, I took a nostalgic look back at Google on its 9th Birthday. The important post of the month was called The Brand is the Talent. I also posted about a roundtable article on lawyer podcasting. By September, it became apparent that working on the book was going to start cutting into my time for blogging, as I mentioned in the post Collaboration Tools, AmLaw Tech Survey 2007, and Expect a Reduced Number of Posts for a Little While.

October

October was a big e-discovery month. I started the month with Electronic Discovery Trends and Blogs: Thinking Aloud about Information Overload and Information Underload, which touches one of my favorite subjects, info underload. I followed that with 26 Electronic Discovery Trends for 2008, based on a presentation I gave, and then the short version, How About 3 EDD Trends Instead of 26? My new ABA Journal legal tech column debuted in October. I also commented on the RIAA's approach to customer relationship in The Benefits of Treating Regular Customers Like Criminals.

November

November had the smallest number of monthly posts in the history of this blog as most of my time went into finishing the final draft of the book. My infatuation with storage was on display in Windows Home Server and SharePoint and I noted Bob Ambrogi's useful article on electronic discovery blogs.

December

If it's December at DennisKennedy.Blog, then it must be time for the Blawggie Awards. This year was no exception. I must admit that I am a little disappointed that the Blawggies post did not inspire blawggers to post their own set of awards, but I had a lot of fun with the post and appreciate the kind emails and comments I've received. December also marked the untimely death of influential blogger Marc Orchant. I'll also note my post on the 2 trillion text messages sent in 2007 and the potential consequences of the move to email alternatives.

That was 2007 on DennisKennedy.Blog. Thanks for reading and commenting. If you are new to this blog, this post will give you a quick way to see some of the most representative (and best) posts.

Best wishes for 2008. If you haven't yet started your own blog, 2008 would be a great time to start.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Get your legal technology information by audio. Check out The Kennedy-Mighell Report Podcast.

Technorati tags: legal technology electronic discovery Law2.0 blawg dennis kennedy

Posted by dmk at 07:21 PM | Comments (0)

December 10, 2007

Marc Orchant

Like many others whose lives blogger Marc Orchant touched, I wanted to pass along my sympathy and condolences to Marc's family and friends. If you didn't know about Marc and his untimely death, I recommend Steve Rubel's remembrance of Marc here.

Like Steve, I remember Marc's blog as one I read earlier on in my blogging era. I never met Marc in person, but we exchanged some emails and both were part of an informal advisory group for Mindjet, where I appreciated his thoughtful insights.

When I heard the news of Marc's death, I did a search of my email to look at those emails again. What struck me most was an email from Marc in early 2003, I believe in response to something I posted on my blog, in which he recommended in a helpul and convincing way that I should try Lookout, the search plug-in for Outlook. That was one of the best software recommendations anyone ever made to me and I recommended Lookoout to many others over the years.

I formed a great opinion of Marc from that, and of the world of bloggers as well. I regret that I never got to meet Marc personally and was saddened to hear of his death.

Steve eloquently says in his post:

The story is all indicative of the blogging ethos. We help each other. Many of us are stars but we like to pass the ball and create opportunities for others. Points don't matter. Assists do. The blogosphere is a global village and, unfortunately, Marc's untimely death is a reminder that we should always remain that way - even when we often disagree.

Thanks for reminding us, Steve.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Get your legal technology information by audio. Check out The Kennedy-Mighell Report Podcast.

Technorati tags: marc orchant

Posted by dmk at 10:49 PM | Comments (0)

October 29, 2007

Whenever St. Louis Bloggers Get Together There is Fun

We made it to the very fun gathering of St. Louis bloggers mentioned in the prior post on Friday night. It's always great to meet local bloggers, and this was an especially cool group. Marijean (STLWorkingMom) Jaggers does a great job of summing things up in her post here. Her post also provides links to the blogs of bloggers there - I 've subscribed to the RSS feeds of all of them, giving my newsreader a decidedly (and welcome) local flavor the last few days. It's also nice to see the good vibes that the event produced as the different bloggers post their reactions.

Here's a collection of photos from the event - you'll see a nice shot of Matt Homann and me in the mix.

A big thanks to the organizers and attendees, especially Michelle Golden who alerted me to the event. We'll have to do some more of these, and maybe bring together the Friday night group with the blogger lunch group. I've long been intrigued by the dynamic of in-person meetings of bloggers and how often blogging makes good friends of people who would have never known each other otherwise.

You might try one of these gatherings with your local bloggers.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Read the blog posts and RSS feed items I find most interesting on Google Reader Shared Items or subscribe to its RSS feed. High volume, but lots of interesting items that will get you thinking.

Technorati tags: st louis bloggers blogger meetup saint louis

Posted by dmk at 09:20 PM | Comments (1)

October 25, 2007

St. Louis Blogger Meet-up

Michelle Golden is putting together a blogger get-together for St. Louis bloggers on Friday night, October 26. Details here. Hope to see you there.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 10:23 PM | Comments (0)

October 09, 2007

The Benefits of Treating Regular Customers Like Criminals

I can see no benefits to treating your regular customers like they are criminals, but I'm not in the music industry, where that seems to be a standard practice.

I bought some CDs from Amazon and they arrived today.

I tried to open them so I could play them.

Five full minutes, a pair of scissors, and a sharp knife later, I was ready to give up on getting the last one open before it finally relented and I could remove the shrinkwrap and get started on that sticky tape that keeps the jewel case closed and sticks persistently to your fingers when you try to throw it away. I honestly don't know how people with arthritis or disabilities get these things opened.

At the end of my ordeal, I was no longer excited about playing the music. I was too tired to put the CDs into a CD player, let alone rip songs into iTunes to put on my iPod.

However, that might be the purpose of the shrinkwrap obstacle course. In Good Morning Silicon Valley last week, Jennifer Pariser, the head of litigation for Sony BMG, was quoted as saying:

“When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song. [Making a copy of a purchased song is] a nice way of saying ’steals just one copy’.”

The music industry, like many others, is at a crossroads. Improving the experience for regular customers has to be part of the right path, doesn't it? Music is especially interesting because people who listen to a lot of music and like music, recommend it to their friends and others, resulting in more sales, larger concert attendance, et al. Word of mouth is a huge thing for bands.

Yet, rather tha making it even easier to listen to music and talk about it and recommend it, the music industry does things like raise questions whether copying music you already own is "stealing."

Since two of the CDs are from Sony's labels, I'll now have to determine whether ripping to iTunes is "stealing just one copy" or whether it's part of what I got when I bought the CD. I'm wondering if playing the CD in my car and at home will also be seen as a way of "stealing just one copy." Maybe I'll just play the CDs on Sony CD players, that should be a safe harbor, I would hope.

Sony also got a "thumbs down" on its approach to DRM on Movie DVDs in the post "Paying Customers Are the Enemy" on the Technology Liberation Front blog (hmm, notice a common theme). The money quote:

It's worth keeping in mind that only the legitimate customers have to jump through these kinds of hoops. If you're stupid enough to follow the rules and pay hard-earned cash for your movies, Hollywood rewards you by making you spend a relaxing evening learning how to update your movie player's firmware. People who break the law and get their movies via a P2P network don't have to worry about these sorts of headaches, as those files tend to come pre-cracked and in an open format playable on any device.

As many have said before, the entertainment industry needs to focus on ways to make it simpler and easier to comply with legal requirements than it is not to comply with them. Unfortunately, suggesting that making copies for your own use is "stealing" is not a step in that direction.

Update: Check out Ian' Rogers' presentation Convenience Wins, Hubris Loses and Content vs. Context, a Presentation for Some Music Industry Friends.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Read the blog posts and RSS feed items I find most interesting on Google Reader Shared Items or subscribe to its RSS feed. High volume, but lots of interesting items that will get you thinking.

Technorati tags: musings music+industry shrinkwrap

Posted by dmk at 10:58 PM

October 04, 2007

Free Burma Blog Day

free burma

Posted by dmk at 08:22 PM

September 11, 2007

09/11/2007

As I mentioned last year, I've been working on-site for a client and my highway exit (O'Fallon, Missouri) has a small 9/11 memorial with metal building structures from the World Trade Centers. It's called "Spirit of Freedom 9-11" and, to quote from the link above, "Thirteen tons of twisted steel from the September 11, 2001 destruction of the World Trade Center in New York dominate this compelling monument in the median at Winghaven Boulevard and Highway 40-61."

I drove by this morning, noting that the flags were at half-mast in the wind, and also noticing that the sky was very blue. It's the cloudless blue sky that I'll always associate with 9/11. And it made me a little uneasy as I noticed, as I walked from my car, that from my vantage point there wasn't a cloud in the sky. The helicopter that flew over about that time didn't help either. I was reminded of the 2003 post I wrote on 9/11.

This evening, I stopped for the traffic light and looked out my window and was face to face with the metal structural elements and the engraved stone monument at the exit.

There are many pieces of public sculpture these days that include rusting metal as a component. I can appreciate them intellectually, but they don't really do much for me. This rusting metal, so inexplicably place at a highway exit in Missouri, has great immediacy and power.

Many posts about 9/11 passed through my newsreader today. I'll single out this one from Marty Schwimmer, a revisit to his earlier classic post, in part because we talked about it and the fighter jet he mentioned when I visited him and his family this summer, and in part because I thought about Marty, that post and that conversation this morning.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Read the blog posts and RSS feed items I find most interesting on my new linkblog or subscribe to its RSS feed.

Technorati tag: 9/11

Posted by dmk at 10:34 PM | Comments (0)

August 29, 2007

Radio Nowhere

Ah, the only thing better than a new Springsteen album (called Magic) and tour announcement is the release of a song from the album. That, and how it activates my network of friends who are Springsteen fans.

This is Radio Nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?

I've been listening to and loving the new song, "Radio Nowhere," which makes me think of Joe Strummer in all the best ways every time I hear it. I also like it's positive out of negative motif. Like Beck's "Where It's At" (Two turntables and a microphone), Radio Nowhere also captures something essential that I find about blogging (and that ain't about using blogs as legal marketing tools).

I mentioned to a friend the Strummer/Clash comparison and wanted to share the response I got back:

The cadence of the verses are "Clampdown." With hints of "I Fought the Law"--both the Clash version and Bruce's more "authentic"-to-Fuller response version, which we heard in Champaign. The low sustained rumble of that, w/ the phrasing of Strummer.

It's so summational of his artistic position. Such a declaration. In that way, tonally, it reminds you of Badlands. A rage-against-futility howl.

It''s great to have friends who are great writers.

I'm also getting a chuckle out of all the different versions of the lyrics that you can find. This one seemed the closest to my best guess. Part of discovering a new song is figuring out the lyrics on your own, even though I always like the official lyric sheets.

I remember the old days when you'd try to hear a new single first on a radio station or by going to a record store on the release date. The Internet makes it so different now.

I read that a Spanish TV website was making the new single available for download at 6:00AM yesterday. I worked my way through the Spanish instructions (a bit of a trick since I only had a six week class in Spanish in the 8th grade) to get an mp3 download, only to find later today that there was a free iTunes download, presumably with instructions in English. The Guardian also has an mp3 download, presumably without DRM. The distribution channels are a-changing. With a warning about not safe for work language, Bob Lefsetz has a fascinating riff on this single and how the music business well could be changing.

Unfortunately, catching the early part of this tour does not look like a possibility. As the distribution channels change, I wonder if YouTube will provide the best seat in the house for concert tours?

I don't even pretend to be objective about Springsteen, so I won't offer anything like a review. I do suggest that you grab this song and give it a listen. If we still listened to radio, it'd be a hit. What does "hit" mean in an iPod world?

I'm also reminded, on this Katrina anniversary, to salute Ernie Svenson, another Springsteen fan, and the author of this moving post about the aftermath of Katrina two years later. See my earlier thoughts about the scariest time of my blogging career when we lost touch with Ernie after Katrina hit.

This is Radio Nowhere . . . .

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Read the blog posts and RSS feed items I find most interesting on my new linkblog or subscribe to its RSS feed.The volume can be a little high, but you get some information that you probably won't find anywhere else.

Technorati tags: springsteen radio nowhere musings

Posted by dmk at 09:14 PM | Comments (0)

August 27, 2007

St. Louis - City without Lights (Again)

Lately, St. Louis summers have been characterized by100 degree temperatures and power outages. Sometimes at the same time and for several-day stretches.

Unfortunately, I ran into both, sequentially, on my return to St. Louis from last week's ILTA conference.

Ironically, as it turned out, on my flight back into St. Louis, I was once again struck by the immense amount of light the baseball stadium now generates when games are in progress and, presumably, the amount of electricity used. The stadium lights wash out the other lights downtown and make it difficult to spot the Arch as you fly in. Has anyone else noticed this? From above, it looks like the lights could cook hot dogs in the stadium.

I walked out of the airport into what felt like an oven - at 9:00 at night. The 90 degree heat of Orlando seemed comfy by comparison.

Friday's storm knocked out electricity for thousands, now a regular occurrence. There were some huge trees down around our neighborhood and most of the area was dark, with the exception of a small island of electricity a block or so away, where, having grown accustomed to the outages, neighbors with electricity shared their power with neighbors across the street as long orange extension cords snaked across the street. For many, it was simply returning the favor from the last outage in which the roles were reversed.

In the past, outages seemed to last only an hour or two. In the last year or so, days, rather than hours, are the measure and the Ameren phone message system has dispensed with even attempting to give estimates for return of service.

On Saturday morning, I noticed the wire down at the back of our yard. Fortunately (I have nothing but praise for the people in the trucks who do the work of restoring power - a difficult and dangerous job - but really wonder what is going on at the planning and management levels of Ameren), our electricity was back on Saturday evening. A bit of a break in the temperature helped. Our neighbors across the street were not so lucky - they got back on the grid last night.

I made a couple of long bike rides this weekend. There were some big trees blown over that took down wires and poles and blocked two of my usual routes back to our house.

The unplanned break from electricity and the computer did give me a chance, during daylight hours, to read William Gibson's excellent new book, Spook Country (highly recommended). I hope to post some comments about that and file my delayed recap of the ILTA conference later this week.

My sympathies to all with electricity and experiencing weather difficulties (glad you're power is back, Fred). And a big thank you to the guys who got the power back. Once again.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Read the blog posts and RSS feed items I find most interesting on my new linkblog or subscribe to its RSS feed.

Technorati tags: outage electrical musings ameren

Posted by dmk at 07:21 AM | Comments (0)

July 31, 2007

Return to Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

Every now and then, I'll tell the story of how my early history with the Internet is intertwined with being a fan of the TV series Babylon 5.

Babylon 5 was pioneering and influential in many ways, not the least of which was telling a story that was planned to take and took 5 years and 110 episodes to tell. It was a rich and rewarding universe that many fans, including me, hated to leave.

J. Michael Straczynski, affectionately known as the Great Maker of Babylon 5, has revisited the Babylon 5 universe with a DVD of new stories released today called Babylon 5: The Lost Tales.

I watched the entire DVD this evening. I loved it, but there's no surprise there - I don't pretend to be objective. I suspect that long-time fans will appreciate and enjoy the DVD more than those who are new to the series because there are references to backstory that it helps to know. There are also very nice tributes to two of the main actors, Andreas Katsulas (who I had the pleasure to meet once) and Richard Biggs.

It's a joy to see a familiar and meaningful fictional universe return, with some of the main characters returning in new stories that both honor the history of the show and extend the story in new ways. You can go back again. Great stuff.

For new and old B5 fans, I must recommend the excellent Babylon Podcast.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Read the blog posts and RSS feed items I find most interesting on my new linkblog or subscribe to its RSS feed.

Technorati tags: babylon 5 lost+tales

Posted by dmk at 10:24 PM

July 15, 2007

July 16 Idea Market

If you are in St. Louis, I hope to get the chance to see you at Matt Homann's Idea Market on Monday night, July 16, at XPLANE's offices in the Art of Living Building (at 1141 S. 7th Street) from 6-9 pm.

It'll be a "Best Of" the Idea Market, with the favorite exercises, experiences and activities from the past year.

Details and reservation form here.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 09:51 PM | Comments (0)

May 25, 2007

Congratulations to The College School's Class of 2007

Much of my time the last two weeks has been spent with the activities and events around our daughter's eighth grade graduation (and the final year) at The College School. It's been a wonderful set of experiences, culminating in a moving and ceremony last night. I could not be prouder of our daughter and happier with our choice of schools for her. It's an amazing and impressive group of young people and I offer them my heartfelt and respectful congratulations.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 06:48 AM

May 22, 2007

Notable Anniversaries: The Cathedral and the Bazaar

Jack Vinson and Knowledge Jolt with Jack: 4 years (reminds me to thank Jack for inviting me to Blogwalk Chicago and our email exchanges).

Marty Swimmer and The Trademark Blog: 5 years. Want to learn about trademarks and trademark law - check out these podcasts with Marty and Colette Voegele.

Eric Raymond's The Cathedral and the Bazaar: 10 years. As Nicholas Carr and Tim O'Reilly note in excellent posts you will want to read, Raymond's essay is extraordinarily influential and important and is a must-read for understanding Open Source, wikis, web 2.0, John Robb's global guerillas (hope to write about Robb's great new book, Brave New World, soon), and even blogging itself. I think that the Open Source licenses themselves are much more important than O'Reilly and Carr suggest. It was (and is) about the licensing. That's why I've written about the licenses from time to time. The Cathedral and the Bazaar essay is worth re-reading from time to time, and has had a huge impact on my own approach to thinking about technology and many other areas as well.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Learn more about electronic discovery at Dennis Kennedy's Electronic Discovery Resources page.

Technorati tags: cathedral bazaar open source

Posted by dmk at 10:29 PM | Comments (0)

March 28, 2007

Robust Decision-making

A fun aspect of blogging for me is that occasionally authors send me copies of their books because they like a post of mine on the topic of their book. Recently, I've enjoyed reading and recommend Ross Dawson's Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships (Second Edition) and Rajesh Setty's Beyond Code which the authors sent to me.

The book that I want highlight and recommend to you is David Ullman's Making Robust Decisions. I've done some research into decision-making over the years. I've even had some general discussions about the potential for decision-making software in the legal context.

Making Robust Decisions takes a deep dive into decision-making, especially for teams, and is one of those rare books that I immediately put on my "to re-read" list.

Highlights:

1. As thorough an analysis of the science of decision-making as I've seen in a popular text. There's even mathematics. Fascinating stuff.

2. Thoughtful discussion of the human dynamics at play in group decision-making.

3. Excellent description and analysis of a variety of tools and techniques, with templates and practical illustrations.

4. Most important, a focus on how to turn process into ACTION. Very worthwhile. I seem to be making a lot of tough decisions lately and this book has been very valuable. This emphasis on action will change the way you look at decision-making.

There's also a lot of coverage of topics that have captured my attention over the past few years, including John Boyd's OODA Loop and a good critique of the over-worked notion of consensus decision-making, quoting Margaret Thatcher, "To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects."

Ullman's combination of "robustness" in decision-making and practical action is a powerful approach.

Highly recommended and a big public thank you to David Ullman for sending me a copy and realizing that it would fit so well with my thinking and perspective.

Making Robust Decisions

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Learn more about electronic discovery at Dennis Kennedy's Electronic Discovery Resources page.

Technorati tags: legal technology decision-making ooda making robust decisions

Robust decision-making

Posted by dmk at 08:39 PM | Comments (0)

March 07, 2007

The Day the Internet Music Died

I urge you to read Mark Cuban's post "Say Goodbye to Webcasting."

Does our focus on intellectual property ownership rights have dire implications for the sharing of culture, our cultural legacy, and the sharing of arts among humans? As I once said, "I can't dance to a copy of your copyright registration form."

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Technorati tags: webcasting copyright creativity culture sharing

Posted by dmk at 09:51 PM | Comments (0)

March 06, 2007

Get Well Soon, Tom Collins

One of my favorite legal bloggers and one of my favorite people I've met through blogging, Tom Collins, is having some surgery. I wish him the best and hope all goes well. Please keep him in your thoughts. There's an important message for all of us in his post.

Posted by dmk at 07:06 AM | Comments (0)

February 15, 2007

By Request Week at DennisKennedy.Blog

One of the things I do every year for the blogiversary of this blog is to give readers the opportunity to submit questions that I'll try to answer.

If you've always wanted to ask me a question about this blog, blogging, legal technology, or any other topic then either email me at denniskennedyblog @ gmail.com or leave the question as a comment to this post. Unless you indicate otherwise, I will not identify you as the author of the question. And, of course, I reserve the right to answer your question with an answer to a different question that I'd prefer to answer.

I'll try to answer as many of the questions as I can as blog posts.

Request lines are now open.

Blogiversary gifts are always welcome.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 09:32 AM | Comments (1)

Four Years Ago Today - And So It Began

On February 15, 2003 at 05:20 PM, I posted:

And so it begins . . .

I realized the other day that I had first written about blogs well over a year ago. In fact, the rise of blogs was one of my 2002 predictions for legal technology in my annual legal tech predictions article. As I was working on updating my web site (http://www.denniskennedy.com), I finally decided that I had to have my own blog. Thanks to people like Jerry Lawson, Sabrina Pacifici, the Support Forum at MovableType.org, it's finally here.

The pop culture mavens among you will note the Babylon 5 reference in that first post. For trivia buffs, does anyone know the only alternative name I ever seriously considered for this blog? As I reread the first post, I notice it was a highly appropriate name.

Two days later, on my birthday, I wrote more about the motivation for the blog:

"Today is my birthday. The blog is really my birthday present to myself. The start of a trend in gift giving?"

Wow, I really did write short posts back then.

What I didn't write about was how, at the time of the start of my blog, I had the overwhelming feeling that I was way too late to the game and that blogging had completely passed me by. Perhaps I over-reacted . . . .

The other part of the story, which I don't usually tell, is that starting my blog was never really about "blogging." You see, I had been reading Dave Winer's Scripting News for several years and had become enthusiastic about RSS feeds. In fact, I had produced an RSS feed for my website by hand before I did my blog. What I really wanted was an RSS feed, more so than a blog, and the blogging software (like Movable Type) provided the easiest way to generate an RSS feed. The trouble was that few people knew what blogs were in those days, and far fewer knew what RSS feeds were.

Over the years, I got the idea to turn the time of the anniversary of this blog into a bit of fun and a reader-appreciation week that I've referred to as either blogiversary or blawgiversary week, where I've done a number of different experiments, tried new things, and had some fun in ways that tend to earn me a little criticism from those who think that lawyer blogs should be oh so straight-laced and ever so much "on topic." The subtitle of this blog is "legal technology, technology law and other musings," so I like to do the "other musings" from time to time.

So,we begin the fourth birthday/blogiversary today with an important announcement. To honor DennisKennedy.Blog's fourth blogiversary, I'm very pleased to announce that NASCAR has decided to launch its 2007 season with not one, but two, races tonight. Let's go racing!

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Technorati tags: blawg LexThink! blogiversary

Posted by dmk at 07:24 AM | Comments (0)

January 15, 2007

MLK Day 2007: Holiday Musings

As I've written before (here, here and here), Martin Luther King Day is one of my favorite holidays.

In part, that's because there always seems to be pressure in the work environment not to take the holiday, and instead work right through it. In a certain sense, you must make an affirmative statement to take the holiday. In a way, celebrating the holiday requires that you think about and act on the principles being honored by the holiday. There's still much work to do, as this unsettling article suggests.

I've said:

Over the years, I've noticed that law firms and lawyers are reluctant to celebrate Martin Luther King Day as a holiday. It often seems that they grudgingly allow lawyers and staff to take the day off, if they must, but firms do not encourage anyone to do so.

As I've been reading blog posts about the holiday and the man today, it strikes me that Martin Luther King, Jr.'s writings, including the letter from Birmingham city jail, would make for excellent blog posts (and it still does), and have brought the urgency and discussion that the best blog posts bring to an even wider audience. I don't mean to trivialize the writings, but to point to the potential and power of the medium of blogging and how it might be used in the spirit of the tradition saluted by this holiday. Think about it.

One of the great things about today's Internet is the way you can find audio and video of King's speeches and sermons. I encourage you to set aside some time today to think about the principles celebrated by this holiday, and to take a few minutes to track down an audio or video and watch or listen to it. I guarantee it will be well worth the effort.

You can also follow and participate in the Blawg Review MLK Day post/celebration from the Public Defender Investigator Network here.

MLK quote for the day:

Let us. all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Technorati tags: martin luther king day martin+luther+king holiday

Posted by dmk at 08:31 AM | Comments (0)

January 11, 2007

Calling All St. Louis Bloggers

I had a great time talking about blogging at the meeting of the Computer Consultants of St. Louis on Tuesday evening.

One of the things I enjoyed most was getting to talk with long-time St. Louis blogger Jim Durbin, who runs the STLRecruiting.com site. He was somewhat disappointed when I told him the real story behind my St. Louis is Blawg City USA post and the effect that it had, but we shared a laugh about it. It's fascinating story about the unusual powers of blogs. Jim, we have to get together and continue our conversation.

Jim mentioned that he knows that are at least six groups of St. Louis bloggers in which people have gotten to know each other and socialize. However, he noted, none of the groups really know about or interact with the others. It's an interesting phenomenon.

I thought it might be cool to try to cook up a way to bring those groups together. I'd be interested in some ideas people might have for doing that.

The first idea I had was to extend an invitation to all St. Louis bloggers to Matt Homann's next Idea Market on Monday, January 15. Maybe we can spend a little time trying to find a way to do a St. Louis blogger event? Even if you are not a blogger, if you have a chance on Monday evening, consider dropping by the Idea Market.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by LexThink!(R) - The Legal Unconference. Ask us about private LexThink retreats and conferences for your firm, business or organization. Coming soon - a new LexThink public event.

Technorati tags: st louis bloggers idea market blawg city usa

Posted by dmk at 09:47 PM | Comments (1)

December 31, 2006

Best Wishes for 2007!

Best wishes for 2007!

Blawgspace is a Generous Place (2006)

- Dennis

Posted by dmk at 05:10 PM | Comments (0)

December 07, 2006

Scenario Planning

Dave Pollard on Scenario Planning vs. Collective Vision: Imagining the Possibilities. A must-read.

It's uncanny how Dave's post reflects some of my recent thinking.

Another post that will start you thinking - Evelyn Rodriguez on Make Money the Middle Way.

Lots and lots of good stuff on blogs lately and elsewhere too,as Evan Schaeffer notes.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 09:39 PM | Comments (0)

December 06, 2006

Just in Case You're Not Reading Enough Blogs

I suspect that most every regular reader of this blog probably is already reading quite a few blogs.

Well, it's a good idea to read even more. Just in time to help you out, Filmoculus has a great list called "Best Blogs of 2006 That You (Maybe) Aren't Reading" that will point you to some great, lesser-known, high quality blogs in a number of different areas. It was nice to see some of my favorite lesser-known blogs that I read regularly on this list.

I encourage you to sample some of these and, if you aren't using a newsreader to subscribe to RSS feeds, now's a great time to start.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 09:33 PM | Comments (0)

December 01, 2006

St. Louis Power Outage 2.0 - The Iced Version

As Evan Schaeffer, Marianne Richmond (hey, we went to a Panera's today for lunch too), and Shelley Powers have noted, St. Louis was hit with a devastating ice storm last night. 500,000 without electricity, including Evan's family and my family. That almost matches last summer's outages.

I've never seen so many trees and branches down (something I said after the summer storm). I've also never been without electricity for an extended period (and there's no doubt this will be an extended period) in the winter before. We've been working on alternative arrangements most of the day. I walked around the neighborhood with our daughter taking pictures. Hmm, another limb just dropped from a tree across the street as I wrote this.

It'll be another learning experience.

As bloggers like to say, expect light blogging for the coming days.

Posted by dmk at 03:23 PM | Comments (4)

November 29, 2006

Seven Great Questions

One of the things I love about newsreaders and RSS feeds is the intriguing posts that appear before you. In a way, it's reminds me of the effect of the shuffle feature on the iPod.

Here's an example from Dick Richards' blog, Come Gather Round. It's called "Great Question #7" and it's this:

Who supports my genius and purpose, and who must be left behind?

The post lists his six earlier questions. Check them out.

Spend a week by focusing on one of these questions each day and you may find yourself in a far different place. In any event, this is a post that illustrates the catalytic aspect of consuming the web by RSS.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by LexThink!(R) - The Legal Unconference. Ask us about private LexThink retreats and conferences for your firm, business or organization. Coming soon - a new LexThink public event.

Technorati tags: questions

Posted by dmk at 08:58 PM | Comments (0)

November 19, 2006

The "Unbearable" Everydayness of Blogging

I gave a presentation on blogging, podcasting and RSS feeds on Friday and it gave me the chance to reflect a bit about blogging. The night before, I had attended the unveiling of the impressive lobby display and video our daughter's class produced after their 8th grade field ecology trip to Sapelo Island, the Okefenokee Swamp and the Smoky Mountains (see details from prior years here). At the entrance of the school is a quote from its former director, Jan Phillips, that has grown more meaningful and profound to me each time I read it:

"The reflection on an educational experience is often as valuable to learning as the experience itself."

During the presentation, I was asked a question that made me think about the amount of work it takes to sustain a blog. As I like to say, the difficult aspect of blogging is not the time commitment, but the "everydayness" of blogging.

Over the time I've been blogging, I've noticed a certain ebb and flow to my posting, an almost cyclical pattern of feast and fallow periods. In my case, that reflects a common alternating pattern of taking in information, followed by a period of expressing information. Learning, then writing.

Lately, I've been in an intake period. If you count the number of posts over the last few weeks, you'll see that.

When you live in your newsreader as much as I do, it's intriguing to see how the RSS feeds you subscribe to bring you the insights you need on a regular basis.

Since I gave the presentation, I read two posts that gave my insights into the "everydayness" and work involved in blogging and, in the process, insight into what blogging is about, at least to me.

First, Evelyn Rodriguez, in a post called "All Good Things Come to An End, or Shift Happens," touched on the notion of "blog fatigue" and quoted Hugh McLeod who said:

"I usually come down with a heavy dose of blog fatigue every couple of months or so. It usually lasts a week or two. I think it's normal."

Evelyn's post intrigued me because I have been a regular reader of her blog for a long time, and recently I noticed that it did not seem as compelling to me as it once had and that distressed me a bit. I was looking for the old magic.

She says in this post: "Anyway, I'm back. Yep the blog was up for grabs in the mass clearing too. This blog started after nearly two years of deliberation (er, hemming and hawing) since I knew it'd be pretty much a second job. (And I was right, it is.) But it also was the outcome of true inspiration, which when I mine that space, those nuggets always outlast any and all of my ideas du jour."

Yes, she is back. The notion of knowing that a blog would be "pretty much a second job" and the importance of being in a space of inspiration resonated with me.

Then, this morning, I read a post from another blog I really enjoy, Slaves of Academe, called "My Blogging Workbook." If you have been blogging for an extended period of time, you must read this post. In fact, as soon as I read it, I sent the link to my friends at the Between Lawyers blog with an exhortation for them all to read it. You should read it all to get the full effect, but at least read the last few paragraphs.

In the post, the pseudonymous Oso Raro reflects (there's that word again) on blogging, the work it requires and its impact. I like how she describes blogging as a subjective art that requires both community and freedom of expression, with the thrill of blogging coming from the "performative aspect."

As you read the post, and you really must, you'll find insight after insight into this blogging thing and then, there it is again, you run into a paragraph on "blog fatigue."

In this respect, she says:

[U]nlike the widespread notion of blogging, it is in fact work to maintain a blog. You must have an idea, execute it somehow, with an eye towards communication and community. This, on top of everything happening in one’s personal life, can be a struggle.

Oso writes about academic blogging, but the insights apply to lawyer blogging or blogging in general. Substitute "legal" for "academic into the following quote:

But this returns us to the communitas at the root of most academic blogging. We reach out to build community, to build bridges, to (only!) connect, in ways that are generally not approved in our home (real time) professional communities. Which of course is why blogging remains on some integral level both a) transgressive, and b) dangerous.

Hmm, no wonder that I think the discussion on blogs solely as forms of legal marketing or advertising is misplaced.

The money quote (and the point of this post) - once again substitute "legal" (or the name of your own field) for "academic":

Blogging, and the online communities we exist within, and the work (yes real intellectual work) that we are producing are the future. It may not be the only future, or keep its current form and shape, but it is where we will all end up one day. And in that sense, academic bloggers are truly transgressing, carving out new ground and territory for what will, sooner rather than later, be the space of the profession.

But, as we know only so well, no good deed goes unpunished.

Reflection is a valuable thing, and it is a joy to be part of a blogging community with Evelyn and Oso to help me reflect and see more clearly. It makes the everydayness of blogging oh so bearable.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Technorati tags: blogging blog fatigue

Posted by dmk at 08:28 PM | Comments (3)

November 07, 2006

Election Day 2006: The Applause You Hear

Hosanna! The cheers you hear in Missouri are from those of us relieved that the telephone hell of incessant phone calls from political campaigns will finally be coming to an end. We all dread to pick up the phone at our house when it rings any more. The current approach to political campaigns of bombarding potential voters with recorded phone calls really must be rethought. There's really nothing worse these days than being in a "swing state," "firewall state" or whatever the pundits' phrase of choice for a state like Missouri. I hope analysts find a strong correlation between use of these techniques and losing elections.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Posted by dmk at 07:47 AM | Comments (0)

October 16, 2006

Procrastination Cured! (Well, At Least Helped Some)

I've been planning to write about this topic for a few days. . . .

I've written about David Allen, Getting Things Done and procrastination from time to time on this blog (see this post, for example).

In the last few days, I've been having a bit of a David Allen / GTD festival. I did a big brain dump and collection of tasks,along with a sorting and organizing, in part prompted by watching a video seminar, courtesy of the great people at MindJet, in which Allen talked about the GTD (that's "Getting Things Done") approach and how he uses mindmaps. Details on viewing that seminar can be found here.

Even better, Merlin Mann at the great 43 Folders blog is doing a series of podcast interviews with David Allen on a number of topics.

I listened to the one on procrastination today. It's insightful and enlightening, at both the practical and psychological level. I liked Allen's comment that the prettier his house looked, the more you could tell that he was avoiding a big project. I also was cheered to learn that the time management guru cheerfully admits to the need to deal with procrastination.

This session is especially good for bloggers. Many times, you will find barriers and distractions to getting a post up there, especially if you get hung up on writing the "great American blog post."

Currently, I have a few of those that I'm not writing - but I do have titles for them. Here are just a few on my list that I hope will one day get written and see the light of day: "The Unbearable Everydayness of Blogging," "Reading on the Backstreets," "OODA Loops in the Delivery of Legal Services," "The Coming Legal Expansion to India," "My Email from Patti Smith," "The Compleat Macintosh Primer for Lawyers," to name just a few that I see on the list I'm looking at now. It probably goes without saying that these would all be long posts.

With the new ideas I have, I have a new understanding of the procrastination issue. Soon, action may follow. If you haven't experimented with the whole podcast thing yet, the procrastination podcast might be a good starting place.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Remember the St. Louis Idea Market #2 on October 17 - details here. Hope to see you there.

Technorati tags: legal technology procrastination GTD getting things done podcast

Posted by dmk at 09:25 PM | Comments (0)

October 09, 2006

Shuffle Logic

For those of you interested in the iPod shuffle phenomenon as I am, I thoroughly recommend this excerpt, called "Oh No Steely Dan Again," from Steven Levy's upcoming new book, The Perfect Thing: How the Ipod Shuffles Commerce, Culture And Coolness.

If you use the shuffle feature on your iPod, the excerpt will ring true. You do start to wonder how "random" the randomness is, question whether certain artists are over-represented or under-represented, seem to see recurring patterns over one artist following another, or even seek to find meaning in the pattern that is shuffled out to you. Some even attribute ESP or other magical powers to the shuffle.

In Levy's case, he felt that the shuffle was over-weighting Steely Dan songs. After exhaustive (and fascinating) research, he concluded that the shuffle was indeed random, but that humans have troubles dealing with randomness. As he says, "My original iPod's fixation with Steely Dan turned out to be my fixation - shared with all iPod users, if not all of humanity when trying to deal with randomness."

Now for the really interesting part.

Apple, in response to the sense of non-randomness people had, adding the "smart shuffle" to let you tune how your music is shuffled. Steve Jobs said, "We're making it less random to make it feel more random."

And, now, the money quote:

I had already come to terms with the idea that the iPod version of shuffling creates a sufficiently unbiased distribution to earn the casual appellation of "random". What was bothering me was now something even deeper. Yes, the bothersome clusters of certain artists are within the bounds of randomness. But that made me realise that the seemingly magical effects of the shuffle function - a spooky just-rightness, even brilliance, that comes from great song juxtapositions - were also consequences of randomness.

And, in its own way, that was much more disturbing.

I'm not sure that it's disturbing. It's intriguing, especially in the way that it causes us to see patterns and find meaning in the pattern that is shuffled out to you

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Technorati tags: shuffle ipod

Posted by dmk at 10:17 PM | Comments (0)

October 02, 2006

Meme to Watch: Identity and VRM

Lots of interesting posts coalescing around a theme or meme for me today.

I was listening to a fascinating podcast of a discussion between Jon Udell and Phil Windley about identity issues in our Internet and post-9/11 world. Highly recommended. Interesting stat from the podcast - 20% of identity documents get lost (do you know where your original Social Security card is? Birth certificate?).

They also mentioned P3P, a concept whose name I was trying to remember during a conversation last week, wondering what had happened to the idea.

All of which connected to the VRM - Vendor Relationship Management - an idea that Denise Howell brought to my attention here (part 3 of the podcast Denise mentions is especially recommended). My initial reactions are here. Start with this article by Doc Searls to learn more about the idea of VRM.

This evening, I caught up with this recent post on VRM from Dave Winer. Dave also pointed to this post from Kim Cameron on the topic.

As Cameron says, "This is exciting stuff."

I love it when a meme comes together. This is one to watch. I'm especially intrigued by combining the concept of P3P (not the reality of it) with the idea of VRM and identity management. In all events, the Udell/Windley podcast should definitely be on your listening list.

Watch for more of my thoughts about podcasting and its benefits in an upcoming post soon.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Technorati tags: vendor relationship management identity VRM P3P meme podcast technology law

Posted by dmk at 09:05 PM | Comments (0)

September 26, 2006

Explaining Blogs and RSS: A Primer

It's surprising how it's still difficult to tell, rather than show, people what blogs and RSS are. I've struggled with the explanation for a long time. Today, I have a new approach. thanks to David Maister.

Maister, one of the leading authorities on professional services management, generously and graciously mentioned me and a conversation we had as he started blogging in his excellent "Blawg Review" post yesterday.

One of the coolest aspects of blogging for me is that I occasionally get contacted by people whose work I have long admired. I'm one of the biggest fans of bloggers. I was thrilled when David got in touch and asked to talk because I had been reading his books and articles for years. What I remember most from the call was the wise advice he gave me, and the simple fact that it is much easier to talk to people for the first time when you've read and admired their work. That's in part why bloggers seem to easily make friends with each other - there's an earned respect that comes from reading each other's work.

As an aside, David's blog had one of the fastest speeds from zero to "must read" that I've ever seen for a blog. He has excellent content and a great podcast too.

His post got me thinkiing about blogging and RSS, and the difficulty in explaining it in words to people who are unfamiliar with the concepts.

It's easy to show people a half-dozen or so blogs so that they get the idea - "posts," "reverse chronological order," et al. I've long maintained that if you have have 30 seconds to show people how RSS feeds work in news aggregators, they'll know right then whether it's something that they absolutely must have or whether it's not useful to them. There's little middle ground.

However, the short description still evades us. As many of you know, I like to explain blogs in terms of effects rather than technology. I say, a blog is "an online newspaper or magazine column without the newspaper or magazine." To people who have maintained web pages for a long time, it's useful to describe blogs in terms of a lightweight, easy-to-use content management system that lets you concentrate on content without hassling with HTML.

J.D. Lasica has famously described RSS as "news that comes to you." Lasica's article was one of the main motivators for me to get my blog launched. The phrase is at the same brilliantly concise and quite vague for people who have not seen or used a news aggregator. After all, doesn't all news come to you? It reminds me of the Macintosh's (or iPod's) famous "intuitiveness." Well, yes, it is intuitive, once someone shows you how it works the first time. I remember being befuddled the first time I tried a Mac (many years ago) before someone explained the notion of "double-clicking."

David Maister's post reminded me that I often think of blogging in terms of the benefits of it, not the technology or a precise definition.

Here's the way I propose that you think about blogs and RSS, especially if you are new to this medium.

1. Blogs. Blogs allow you to read in one place the regular (often daily) writing of many of the best thinkers, experts and authorities in subject matters you care about or would like to know more about. (That's why I often describe them as "columns.") For example, in the past, I might have read a book by David Maister when it was published or found an article if I happened to subscribe to a magazine in which he published. If he had a newsletter, I might have subscribed (or my firm might have a subscription that was routed to me). My contact with his work was sporadic and had a hit-or-miss quality.

With a blog, the work and thinking of people I admire is now available on a regular, often everyday basis, in one convenient place. For free. There's a certain informality to the form and often blogs have the feeling of being an email from a friend (more about that topic in another post to come). It's that everydayness and the opportunity for opening a conversation that distinguish blogs from other forms of communication. They also give you a chance to see people you admire discuss a variety of topics (often "off-topic" in terms of their specialities) - a fabulous learning opportunity.

Think of blogs in terms of easy and regular access to the thinking of the best minds on the subjects of highest interest to you.

2. RSS. There is an abundance of riches in the world of blogs. You can find hundreds of blogs that interest you and even if you limit yourself to the leading authorities in your niche areas, you may still find yourself visiting a good number of blogs. It's takes time and effort. You either have to remember URLs or manage bookmarks and favorites. Do you start your day by visiting a bunch of blogs? What if a blogger hasn't posted something new that day? A benefit of the reverse chronological order of blogs is that you can see quickly whether there is something new on a blog.

What if . . . you didn't have to visit each of those blogs individually everyday?

Here's where RSS and news aggregators come in. You can explore the technology later. For now, think in terms of the effects and benefits.

With RSS and a news aggregator, each of the new posts from the blogs I care about automatically appears on my computer in an organized, easy-to-read-and-manage way in a news aggregator or news reader. I don't have to go out to each blog individually. The new material from the bloggers I want to read, after I "subscribe" to the RSS feed, is available to me in one place at my fingertips.

That's magical. And, as I've written before, it's what changes the world.

Thanks, David, for the mention (and the excellent and useful post), for giving me much to think about, and for inspiring me to come up with a new way to explain blogs and RSS.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by LexThink!(R) - The Legal Unconference. Ask us about private LexThink retreats and conferences for your firm, business or organization. Coming soon - a new LexThink public conference.

Technorati tags: legal technology blog rss maister

Posted by dmk at 06:06 AM | Comments (1)

September 18, 2006

Crossroads: Western Wall / Jerusalem

I'm watching (again) a show on CMT called Crossroads that features Rosanne Cash and Steve Earle. I've been a fan of Steve Earle since his great debut album.

It's a warm and relaxed show filled with stories and excellent performances.

But the reason you should try to catch it is a medley they perform live of Rosanne's song called "Western Wall" and Steve's "Jerusalem." Western Wall is amazing, but from the first chord of Jerusalem you know that you are about to witness magic. And that's exactly what you get. What a performance! Beats the heck out of whatever else you might be watching on TV. Trust me on this one.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Technorati tags: steve earle jerusalem crossroads rosanne cash

Posted by dmk at 08:46 PM | Comments (0)

September 17, 2006

Remembering Orianna Fallaci

We lost one of the giants recently when Italian journalist Orianna Fallaci passed away. There have been many appreciations, and I especially liked the one by Kim Pearson.

Like many, I was captivated many years ago by her classic book, Interview with History, which I plan to reread. In it, as in all her writing, you see how it is possible to write with passion and fire about things you care about and believe are important. And how the world needs those who can ask the hardest questions with courage and without compromise.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Technorati tags: fallaci

Posted by dmk at 09:39 PM | Comments (0)

September 11, 2006

9/11 Shuffle

I was thinking about 9/11 this morning as I drove. I've been working onsite with a client and I pass by a memorial sculpted out of materials from the World Trade Centers every day at the highway exit I use. With the flags at half-mast today, it made for a way to take a little pause to reflect.

It was overcast and rainy this morning. It's intriguing how much I associate 9/11 with the sky that was the unbelieveable shade of blue.

As I've mentioned before, I've been experimenting with using the shuffle mode of my iPod to see if I can find meanings and patterns in what is served up.

Today seemed like an appropriate day for that. Here's what the shuffle served up:

Morning:

Redemption - Johnny Cash
Gunpowder - Wyclef Jean
Lucky Town - Bruce Springsteen
Labour of Love - Joe Grushecky
Break it Up ((live) - Patti Smith
Worried Man Blues - The Carter Family
An Unusual Kiss - Melissa Etheridge
Charlie the Chulo - Duke Elleington
Hey Now Baby - Professor Longhair

Afternoon:

Go Your Own Way (live) - Fleetwood Mac
Into the Fire - Bruce Springsteen
Pride (In the Name of Love) - U2
Life in Wartime - Talking Heads
These Days - Johnny Clegg
Lift Me Up - Bruce Springsteen

An interesting article to see today was Robert Andrews' Wired article 9/11: Birth of the Blog. I agree with Andrews that blogs really took off for me and became an alternative channel in the period after 9/11. Much has happened since then.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 09:03 PM | Comments (1)

August 28, 2006

Remembering Katrina by Email

I checked my old email and saw that a year ago today, we got an email on our Between Lawyers back-channel email lst from Ernie Svensen that said:

"I'm on the road now. This storm will cause CATASTROPHIC damage!"

It was chilling then - still is.

Then I see a flurry of frantic messages between us for a few days as we lost touch with Ernie and didn't know what happened to him.

We finally heard from him, with his usual wry wit, a few days later in an email that said:

"Hey thanks! I'll be okay. Trying to set up moblogging. Gotta have the proper tech thing going. Right?"

But the message that struck me the most came from Ernie later that day:

"Thanks. I am safe and so are my friends and family. Now I sit back and watch how my city adjusts to radical change."

Except that we knew Ernie could not just sit back and watch.

Much of what I know about the aftermath of Katrina in New Orleans comes from Ernie's reporting, as is true for many other bloggers.

It is true that we are learning what radical change for a city means, and, unfortunately, in some ways what radical "stays the same" means. There are lessons to learn and lessons we should not forget.

Take a moment and remember.

"[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Technorati tags: hurricane katrina

Posted by dmk at 09:23 PM | Comments (1)

August 24, 2006

Arch 2.0

Shelley Powers makes a great case for getting O’Reilly to put on a scripting, Ajax, and web development conference here in St. Louis. Randy Holloway has also picked up the theme. How do we reach critical mass?

As Shelley says, "I don’t know about anyone else, but I for one am getting tired of conferences held only along the coasts. Arch 2.0. It works."

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Technorati tag: arch 2.0

Posted by dmk at 10:20 PM | Comments (1)

August 22, 2006

By Request Week

I haven't answered requests on my blog for a while and thought I might open things up for requests for the rest of the week.

I do the "by request" feature as a bit of an homage to one of the bloggers who had a large influence on my blogging style, Sherry Fowler at Stay of Execution. Sherry has done "by requests' for a long time. For those who don't know, Sherry was one of the earliest lawyer bloggers and helped pave the way for the use of a more personal style among some long-time legal bloggers.

Here's the way my "by request" feature works. Send me your questions, preferably by email to denniskennedyblog @ gmail . com. You can also leave them as comments to this post. I'll see how many I can answer this week.

Let me start by answering a question I've gotten a lot in the last few days - "are you at the ILTA conference?"

Nope, not this year. ILTA is one of the major legal technology conferences in the US each year. Even though I used to be on the board for the ABA TECHSHOW, I now have to say that ILTA is my favorite legal tech event. I'm disappointed I had to miss it this year and I've been following blog posts from those attending the show. I'm sure that everyone there is having a great time.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Learn more about legal technology at Dennis Kennedy's Legal Technology Central page.

Technorati tags: legal technology ILTA by request

Posted by dmk at 08:39 PM | Comments (0)

August 21, 2006

Your Innovation Style

What is your innovation style? One theory suggests that there are four styles of innovators.

The Innovation Tools blog has a post called "New tool for innovation team design: Innovation Styles Online" that discusses and points to a great website, InnovationStyles, with some tests and other tools, that will help you determine your innovation style and learn more about innovation styles, how to recognize them and the role of stylles in teams.

Near the bottom of the post on Innovation Tools, you'll find a link called "Discover your own innovation style (through October 31, 2006)" that will let you take an online test to determine your innovation style. Try it out.

Those who know me probably won't be too surprised that I fell under the Exploring style.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by LexThink!(R) - The Legal Unconference. Ask us about private LexThink retreats and conferences for your firm, business or organization.

Technorati tags: innovation styles innovation LexThink!

Posted by dmk at 08:43 PM | Comments (0)

August 17, 2006

Mickey Spillane, RIP; Mike Hammer in the 21st Century

I'm a fan of classic American film noir and the hard-boiled detective novel genre.

I decided to mark the recent passing of one of the masters of the genre, Mickey Spillane, by rereading two excellent collections of Mike Hammer novels: The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 1 and The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 2.

Each volume has three novels. Each novel grabs you and compels you to read it from start to finish.

I like the spare and lean writing style, the relentless narrative pace and the twists and turns. It's tough and violent and a great read, although not for those with gentle sensibilities.

I'm intrigued at how the novels seem to bet set so concretely in and capture a specific era and place - New York City in the 1950s - and, yet, it in intriguing way, also capture something essential about our current times, if you suspend judgment and let the stories take you for the ride.

There are still a few more weeks left in summer and it's hard to find a better set of summer reads.

There's even a legal angle: the book "I, the Jury" may change how you think about juries.

Anyway, I found my re-reading of these collections a good and appropriate way to mark the passing of another American icon.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Technorati tags: Mickey Spillane

Posted by dmk at 10:17 PM | Comments (0)

August 16, 2006

Checking in with Elvis

I never met or talked with Elvis Presley, but I once had a late night conversation with an Elvis impersonator that probably was even better than the real thing.

I was thinking about that and my recent "Shuffle Me This" post (note: when Evan Schaeffer writes about one of my posts, I know I've done a good job) this morning as I was driving. I knew today was the anniversary of the day Elvis Presley died.

I had the iPod on shuffle and it played a live version of Joe Grushecky's "Talking to the King," a song about Elvis. This evening, it popped out a song called "Harbor Lights" from Elvis's Sun Sessions.

Coincidence? I don't think so.

If you're thinking about Elvis today, you might enjoy my late night conversation post.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Technorati tags: elvis presley

Posted by dmk at 10:25 PM | Comments (0)

August 10, 2006

Shuffle Me This

I've been wanting to post about the excellent Soulard Idea Market event the other night, but haven't have the chance to write about it in a way that will do it justice.

Like other Open Space events I've been involved in, there were some great conversations, all happening at the idea layer, not the social chit-chat layer.

Matt Homann put up the traditional LexThink big post-it where people could write down stupid ideas. That's always fun and gets you thinking. I didn't get the chance to write anything then, but this morning I was reminded while driving behind yet another SUV where I can't see anything, that the idea of tinted rear windows in cars, SUVs and vans is a stupid idea and probably a dangerous one. I still can't figure out want problem it was designed to solve.

That aside, I've been thinking about another idea - the idea of shuffle.

Here I'm thinking about the "shuffle songs" feature of iTunes and the iPod. I originally thought that the coolest thing about an iPod was that you really could carry your whole music collection with you. I also liked that I could decided exactly what I wanted to here in the order I wanted to hear it.

However, planning and control of what you play has a price. It takes time and, at a certain point, you run out of imagination or want to stop making decisions.

On a plane trip, I simply put the iPod on shuffle and listened to what came to me, surrendering to the element of randomness and letting myself see if I could either simply relax and give up the need for control or whether the randomness would let me see / hear new patterns.

In truth, I still needed to be able to advance past a song if it didn't fit my mood. That element of control is hard to give up.

But lately, though not all the time, I go with what the shuffle plays, without jumping forward. It's a different mindset - kind of an interesting one. After all, it's playing songs that I actually chose to put on my iPod.

And I've found that the unexpected patterns and connections are a treat, making it an enjoyable exercise.

It's not exactly Open Space, but it's a fascinating thinking and creativity exercise. And it reflects the rapidity and randomness of the events that come at us every day lately.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Technorati tags: open space shuffle LexThink! soulard idea market unconference

Posted by dmk at 10:52 PM

July 27, 2006

Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Starting Points

Tom Collins wrote a great post yesterday called "Law Firm Business Interruption" that is required reading. Tom sets out three principles that are essential elements of any disaster recovery plan:

1. Protect Personal Safety
2. Maintain Employee Contact
3. Protect Firm Survivability

If you start with this list, you will be well ahead of most other firms. Read Tom's post for more details.

I would add a fourth key principle: "No disaster recovery plan will survive intact after its first contact with a real disaster."

This point was hammered home again during the recent mass electrical outages in St. Louis (the stories are now that at one point there were more than 1 million outages (out of a potential 2.4 million) in the St. Louis area).

For what it's worth, I've found that the points I've made in the presentations and materials I've written on disaster recovery have stood up very well in the face of my own experiences. I'd now add that even with a good disaster recovery plan, you should not expect to have an easy or fun time.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Learn more about legal technology at Dennis Kennedy's Legal Technology Central page.

Technorati tags: legal technology disaster recovery business continuity <

Posted by dmk at 07:44 AM | Comments (2)

July 25, 2006

Electricity is Back

A big thank you to the surprising number of people who have gotten in touch with me and expressed concern and good wishes in our recent extended electrical outage.

There are still 150,000 outages in St. Louis, so, althought we are very happy (I'm thinking about making some toast, because I now can), I'm hoping that others without power here (and everywhere) get back to normal soon. We appreciate all the sacrifices made by those working on the ground in exceedingly dangerous conditions.

Until I get back to regular blogging in a few days, I recommend this fascinating post from Ron Friedmann as something to think about.

Posted by dmk at 08:30 PM | Comments (0)

July 23, 2006

Please Send Electricity

We're now on day 5 (or day 4, I guess, depending on how you count) without electricity in St. Louis after the freak thunderstorm last week.

I found a restaurant about five miles from home with a WiFi connection (a balky and temperamental one) for a quick blog post.

The latest word in the street is that it could take another WEEK for our electricity at home to be restored. I'm sure that there will be much discussion and second-guessing on the response to this unprecedented loss of the electrical grid in the weeks to come. For example, I'm not sure that Ameren's decision to shut down the system for letting you know how long it might be until your power is restored will be seen as the wisest PR move they ever made. I'm in favor of more transparency than less in these situations, although it is kind of fun to hear rumors and stories that your neighbors and people you run into have heard.

I've been using some of my time on long bike rides (noticed several wires still lying on the ground near us). Rode down to my father-in law's house and trashed the contents of his refrigerator and freezer this morning (did ours yesterday - I was an optimist until then). He's 88 and has been shuttling between his children's house, as have my wife and daughter. Unfortunately for me, everyone with electricity also has cats, to which I am very allergic.

It's interesting that, today, for the second time this year, I've been rethinking my disaster recovery plan - both times based on what happens in the of indefinite electrical outages.

A thought experiment for you: imagine what all you might have to do differently if you have no electricity for a week or more. It's no wonder that Evan is thinking along these lines.

As bloggers like to say, expect light postings, if any, for the next few days.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog)]

Posted by dmk at 06:30 PM | Comments (1)

July 17, 2006

Is This What They Teach at Reed Smith University?

I first learned about "Reed Smith University" and the other Reed Smith approaches to the practice of law that led me to mention the firm frequently as an example of an innovative law firm from Denise Howell. Given that Denise is a pioneering lawyer blogger and widely-recognized lawyer in digital media, Internet and intellectual property areas, it made sense that she would be part of an innovative firm. I see now that, as usual, maybe it's easier to talk the talk than walk the walk.

Saturday, I learned on Denise's blog, Bag and Baggage, that Reed Smith had fired Denise. I'm revising my opinion of Reed Smith, drastically. As Carolyn Elefant suggests, Reed Smith has probably guaranteed that rather than being known as an innovator or a premier law firm, it will be known instead as "the firm that dumped Denise Howell, one of blawging's greatest talents." Probably not the marketing move any firm would like to make, eh?

You might note that Denise's notes about Reed Smith University mentioned above appeared in The Industry Standard. This is the type of publicity in the type of industry publication that most law firms would kill for. Ironic, isn't it?

[Disclosure: Denise is a co-founder and co-author with me of the Blawg Channel and Between Lawyers group blog projects and I don't even pretend to be objective in my comments. I have not talked with Denise, however, about this happening or the events underlying it. My opinions, as usual, are uniquely my own.]

As I've said elsewhere, I thoroughly recommend that you read Denise's post announcing her departure because it is well-written, savvy and raises important issues for the legal profession.

I was struck immediately by the irony that, as an appellate lawyer, Denise would require excellent writing, analytical and organizational skills. These are exhibited in great abundance in her post, making Reed Smith's decision to fire her even more inexplicable than it first appeared to me.

As a friend of mine – an excellent writer – said after reading Denise's post – "why can't I write something that good?" Indeed, I was involved in hiring at law firms for many years and I'd be willing to hire Denise as an appellate lawyer on the basis of seeing that post as a writing sample.

All of which leads to speculation about what Reed Smith is thinking.

Let me say first that law firms obviously can and will make business decisions, especially personnel decisions, for reasons they believe are in the best interest of the firm. Others, of course, are free to second-guess those decisions. It is certainly fair to reach Carolyn Elefant's conclusion: "Because if you're a talented woman planning on having kids, why in the world would you EVER choose to work there?"

I've been thinking about what lessons we might be able to learn from this situation in our increasingly interconnected and Internet-focused world.

Based on my experience in law firms, inexplicable firing decisions (and sometimes inexplicable hiring decisions) almost invariably result in people inside and outside the firm drawing one of three conclusions:

1. The firm is slimming down for a merger. One standard approach in a pre-merger setting is to strip away people who will not fit into the new entity. Often that may mean of counsel and other lawyers in non-traditional arrangements. Since Reed Smith has engaged in some merger activity recently and there were stories of another one "on the street" at the end of last year, you might reasonably conclude that something along those lines was involved. If you saw other departures or departures from another likely merger candidate, this theory would be reinforced. Even if nothing is in the works, this type of decision invite exactly that kind of speculation..

2. The firm simply made a bad business decision. Hey, law firms don't always make good business decisions. I suspect that the negative economic and PR consequences of this move will far outweigh the savings from eliminating Denise's salary. However, I agree with Denise's assessment of the business acumen of the managing partner of Reed Smith, so I think this conclusion is less likely than #1. However, since Denise is the classic example of a person around whom to market an innovative or Law 2.0 approach, the decision seems to reflect a commitment to an "old school" practice of law. "Old school" may prove the best way to go, but I question the approach and think that signaling a commitment to an old school approach undercuts efforts like Reed Smith University. Ironically, the fact that Denise was an appellate lawyer who did a lot of brief writing and was incredibly tech savvy made her the perfect test case for innovative approaches to dealing with work that could have served the firm well as a model for the future.

3. The firm may be having financial problems. Almost any time an experienced lawyer gets fired, people start to wonder about the finances of the firm. I was a partner at a firm where we might have a partners' meeting in which we learned that we were having our best financial year ever, but also make a decision to terminate an associate, and then would see the staff and other associates worry that the firm was about to padlock the doors and go out of business. It's just the way people react today. One of the most interesting presentations I attended this year was given by Alan Rich of Thomson Elite on why law firms go out of business. It's a thought-provoking presentation that had a lot of resonance for me. In most of the cases, you saw firms that were riding high closing their doors in remarkably short periods of time. In each case, there seemed to be one of more management decisions that, in retrospect, made no sense and reflected a decision to go with "business as usual" when business was no longer usual. I think that this is the least likely of the three conclusions, but I also think, based on my experience, that it will be the one that people spend the most time speculating about, especially if there is even one more departure. I don't think that law firms give that result enough consideration these days before taking actions.

As I've said elsewhere, I'm flummoxed by this decision, but suggest that we all look at it for lessons that we can learn about how we deal with talented people with non-traditional approaches and how to retain them, and for lessons about how best to run a law firm. As my title says, I'm mainly left with this question: "Is this what they teach at Reed Smith University?"

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Technorati tags: legal profession reed smith reed smith university denise howell Law2.0

Posted by dmk at 10:07 PM | Comments (4)

July 12, 2006

Not the Net; It's the Applications

Mark Cuban has a great post called "The Internet is old news and boring.. Deal with it" that will challenge your way of thinking about the Internet and its implications. Challenging your thinking is a good thing.

A few money quotes:

+ Its not the net, its the applications stupid !

Falling costs to create , host and deliver digital bits enable entrepreneurs to be entrepreneurial. Kids can save enough money these days to buy a computer and create applications their friends can use and maybe even buy year round for less than they can buy a decent lawnmower to mow lawns with only in the summer. Its the brainpower that is changing our world. THe internet is just a utility to deliver the digital bits they create.

I cant wait for my daughter to ask me why people used to get so excited about the internet and I can tell her that after the first few years it made no sense to me either.

+ The net hasn't made the net better. Its better pricing, capacity and performance for all the things we use to run all the applications that attach to the net that have made the net better.

+ The biggest compliment I can pay to the net and to all those pioneers who got it to this point is that its boring.

+ What we have seen are incremental applications that have been powered by the amazing ongoing drop in pricing of PCs, hard drives, memory and BACKBONE (not last mile) bandwidth. None of which are “the internet ”

Some interesting things to think about, whether you agree or disagree, as the Internet becomes more and more ubiquitous. Maybe it's now time to stop capitalizing the word "Internet."

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Learn more about legal technology at Dennis Kennedy's Legal Technology Central page.

Technorati tags: legal technology internet

Posted by dmk at 08:01 PM | Comments (0)

July 11, 2006

Meeting the Law Librarian Bloggers

I had a great time meeting about 30 or so law librarian bloggers and bloggers-to-be in St. Louis last night. Connie Crosby offers her perspective here.

As always, it is great fun to meet other bloggers in person. I've long been a big fan of what law librarians are doing with blogs (note category #2 here) and it was a pleasure to meet some of the bloggers I've read for a long time in person and to see some BlawgThink alumnae again.

Congratulations to Sabrina Pacifici who received a very deserved and very prestigious award for her work at LLRX.com and the BeSpacific blog at this AALL annual meeting.

If you ever get the chance to go to a gathering of bloggers, do whatever you can to try to attend. I've always found a generous, welcoming group who are as smart and interesting as their blogs are.

As an aside, it was interesting to see how a LexThink Lounge event would work very well for a group of this type and the vendors who want to reach that group.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by LexThink!(R) - The Legal Unconference. Ask us about private LexThink retreats and conferences for your firm, business or organization. Coming soon - LexThink Lounge - April 19, 2006.

Technorati tags: bloggers LexThink! Lounge LexThink! law librarians

Posted by dmk at 07:22 PM | Comments (2)

June 19, 2006

Great Advice on Public Speaking

If you do any public speaking, or ever want to do some, you must read Dave Pollard's excellent blog post about public speaking, blogging and comunicating called "As Long As You Believe It."

There is a ton of indispensable practical advice in this post. You'll also find a great summary of lessons long-time speakers will have observed and learned over the years. It's essential reading.

The money quote gives you three key lessons:

1. Know your stuff,

2. Focus on what's really important, really novel or really interesting, and

3. Only speak on subjects you care about to audiences you care about.

I agree with Pollard that point #3 is the big one. He says, "As important as knowledge and focus are, passion is even more important. I've seen nervous, tongue-tied speakers muddle through presentations extraordinarily well simply because they obviously felt very strongly and deeply about what they were saying -- so the audience made allowances. When people sense that you really care about and believe in something passionately, and want to convey that passion to them, they will go out of their way to pay attention."

He concludes with some words that you will want to keep in mind: "In writing, as much as in oral discourse, what you know and what you can tell are interesting and useful, but what you really believe in, what you instill with every ounce of passion in your heart and soul, is what people remember, what changes them. And what can save the world." The name of his blog, of course, is "How to Save the World," and I thoroughly recommend that you spend some time there.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by LexThink!(R) - The Legal Unconference. Ask us about private LexThink retreats and conferences for your firm, business or organization.

Technorati tags: public speaking passion

Posted by dmk at 08:43 PM | Comments (2)

June 13, 2006

Blogging is Local - St. Louis Blog List

While blogging definitely transcends geographic barriers, one of the most fun aspects of blogging is meeting and getting to know the other bloggers in your town. Don't ignore the local aspects of your blogging efforts.

It's nice when bloggers make it easy to find other local bloggers. In St. Louis, finding other local bloggers just got easier with a handy starter list of St. Louis blogs from Jim Durbin of StlRecruiting,com.

It'd be great to have a complete list of St. Louis blogs in one place (and all of the feeds available in one OPML file), so I encourage you to let Jim know about the blogs that are missing from his list. If your locale doesn't have such a list, I encourage you to start one.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Technorati tags: saint louis blogs blog list st. louis blogs

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Posted by dmk at 01:55 PM | Comments (1)

June 12, 2006

The Blogging Arc

On his ever-interesting and informative blog, John Robb sets out his personal blogging arc, reflecting five years of blogging, in a post called "The Two-Way Attention Economy?" It's fascinating reading as an alternative to all of the "blogs as necessary marketing" pieces that you see so often these days. Yes, blogs can be a marketing vehicle, but many long-time bloggers will probably recognize the arc that Robb describes (except for being one of the top 100) and point to similar conclusions.

The money quote:

My personal arc (over 5 years of blogging) is as follows:

1) reluctantly started blogging.

2) found I enjoyed it.

3) was ranked for a bit of time in the top 100 blogs. This was nice. It was also nice to have a high Google rank. That partly faded because a) I didn't care about it and b) the level of competition rose quickly.

4) found something more useful. An open online identity (my name is on the blog) yielded work, contacts, and recognition that anonymity doesn't provide. That benefit doesn't require a high ranking to accomplish.

5) found that the blog is as much for me as anyone else.

6) enjoy the response that other people have to my thinking. As long as there a few fellow travelers out there with me, that is reason enough to write.

Robb is one of my favorite bloggers and this post, especially point #6, strikes me as spot-on correct.

I wonder how many other long-time bloggers trace the same type of arc.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

LexThink!(R) - The Legal Unconference. Ask us about private LexThink retreats and conferences for your firm, business or organization.

Posted by dmk at 10:38 PM | Comments (1)

June 02, 2006

Live Springsteen Videos on AOL

Just when I think that the Internet cannot possibly get any cooler, it always ups the ante and amazes me.

From Columbia Records today:

AOL Music to Offer Song from Every US Concert by Bruce Springsteen with the Seeger Sessions Band

In an unprecedented move for Bruce Springsteen and AOL Music, the online music destination will offer an exclusive video performance from every single stop on Springsteen's just-launched North American tour with the Seeger Sessions Band. The morning after each concert, one hand-picked song from the show will be presented on AOL Music along with photos, set lists, recaps and more, enhanced by the "voice of the fans," Backstreets.com.

Bruce's five-week North American tour kicked off Sunday night in Boston, and today on AOL Music, fans can watch John Henry, Erie Canal, O Mary Don't You Weep, and Old Dan Tucker from shows in Boston, MA, Washington D.C., Columbus, OH and Indianapolis, IN respectively. By the morning after the tour's closing-night homecoming concert in Holmdel, NJ on June 25, some 18 different performances will be compiled and available on demand at AOL Music.

Great stuff. Here's the link I used to watch the videos.

If this is live concerts 2.0, I'm definitely on board.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Technorati tags: springsteen live videos

Posted by dmk at 06:03 PM | Comments (1)

May 24, 2006

St. Louis Blogger Get-Together

Let's put aside for the moment whether St. Louis really is Blawg City USA. One thing for certain is that there is a great group of bloggers in St. Louis and I always enjoy getting the chance to meet them.

We recently got together for lunch (details here) and to exchange a few ideas. We might even start a regular event we are calling the Soulard Idea Market. However, we'll definitely continue our new tradition of having regular lunch events. Let me know if you are interested in the Soulard Idea Market or the next St. Louis blogger lunch. And, yes, we would consider sponsorship offers.

I highly recommend that you take the chance to get together with bloggers in your town and meet them in person.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by LexThink!(R) - The Legal Unconference. Ask us about private LexThink retreats and conferences for your firm, business or organization.

Technorati tags: bloggers LexThink! soulard idea market saint louis blawg city usa

Posted by dmk at 04:34 PM | Comments (0)

April 25, 2006

Searching for a Good Topic for a Blog Post - Just Another Day in the Life of a Blogger

Last week at TECHSHOW, a number of people asked me about blogging. There are several common misconceptions about blogging.

Some people asked me not to blog about our conversations or thought that I was going to dash away from whatever I was doing to blog. I never blog about conversations or "live blog" or post during or immediately after an event - not my style.

Others wondered how I found time to do "all that blogging," and were surprised that my goal has always been to post 3 to 5 posts a week. They would probably have been more surprised to know how much I was looking forward to taking a break from blogging while attending TECHSHOW.

In fact, it's often harder to decide on a topic to post about than it is to write the post.

Today is a perfect example.

I thought I'd write on some more of my reactions to TECHSHOW. Then Tom Mighell and I decided that it made more sense to talk about our findings from TECHSHOW in our next podcast rather than to write a bunch of posts or a long post.

Then I noticed that I've had a couple of articles come out recently and thought I'd mention those and link to them. Unfortunately, the two articles I wanted to link to are not available on the web. The first is called "Increasing Profitability: Moving into alternative billing via technology," and it appears in the April / May 2006 print issue of Law Office Computing. In the article, I consider the role technology can play in contributing to a lawyer's or law firm's profitability.

The second article, which may be available on the web for a limited time soon, appears in the April / May 2006 issue of Law Practice Magazine and is called "Tech Costs Spinning Out of Control?" It's a roundtable article in which Sharon Nelson, Craig Ball, Jim Calloway, Ross Kodner, John Simek and I discuss ways solos and small firms can get more bang for the buck with technology. It's also worth getting your hands on this issue to read Tom Mighell's excellent article on the current state of blogging.

Unfortunately, I don't like writing a blog post about an article that doesn't have a live link to the underlying article. That ruled that topic out.

My next idea was to write an initial post on my initial experience with my new MacBook Pro, which, as some of my readers know, came to me when Apple selected me as one of a test group to experiment and evaluate Macs in the legal environment. However, I'd rather use the MacBook Pro and get the hang of it rather than write about it yet. I will say that I'm really liking it so far.

I then thought about either mentioning the free BlawgWorld eBook or the upcoming New Orleans, New Law event that many people I know will be involved with and for which exhibitors and sponsors are still sought. However, I felt I needed to write about them in more depth than I was prepared to do today.

Then I realized that I had taken two good short topics I could have used and posted about them on the Between Lawyers blog. I don't like to "echo post" my Between Lawyers posts, so I ran into another dead end there.

The result is that common posting trick of bloggers - the metapost - or post about the process of writing (or not writing a post). Rather than writing a complete, developed post, I can allude to a few unrelated topics, talk about process and still have a post.

It takes many tricks to blog on a regular basis.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Technorati tags: legal technology musings

Posted by dmk at 07:19 PM

April 18, 2006

Pre-TECHSHOW/LexThink Lounge Odds and Ends

Hope to see some of the readers of this blog at either the LexThink Lounge event or the ABA TECHSHOW over the next few days.

I'm not much for "live blogging" - I prefer to talk to people when I get the chance to be with them in person - so I'm not sure how much posting I'll do over the next few days.

In the interim, you might enjoy the audio clip I posted over at the Between Lawyers blog or thinking about Kevin O'Keefe's excellent question about when the legal profession will start to move to RSS. As my friends know, I've been waiting to help the legal profession make that move for the last few years.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by LexThink!(R) - The Legal Unconference. Ask us about private LexThink retreats and conferences for your firm, business or organization. Coming soon - LexThink Lounge - April 19, 2006.

Technorati tags: legal technology LexThink! Lounge LexThink! RSS Between Lawyers TECHSHOW

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Posted by dmk at 09:06 PM | Comments (1)

April 04, 2006

Our Electricity is Back

A short, but violent, storm swept through St. Louis on Sunday afternoon. Our electricity went out with the first gust of wind. Power returned late last night. The electric company returned this morning for more repairs in our neighborhood and the power was out again for a few hours today.

As we rely more and more on technology, this state of affairs can be a real drag, especially if you work out of a home office (or any office that happens to be an area without electricity).

I was talking with a writer today who had interviewed me for quotes for an article for on extranets and we joked about writing an article on the trials and tribulations of the tech-reliant in a time without electricity.

I did some thinking about whether there were some lessons I could learn about disaster recovery planning. There are some, of course.

The tricky part in all in this episode was that the power could have returned at any time, and it usually is not out for as long as it was this time.

For example, I did the trip to a local restaurant with WiFi access yesterday and then was surprised that the electricity was still out (as was my battery on my Tablet PC by then).

I did not try some of my more creative options - heading over to my father-in-law's to check in on him and use his electrical outlets, for example.

The irritating thing in this episode is that we were right on the dividing line - our neighbors across the street all had power the whole time.

By the way, I'm not sure how Abe Lincoln and others were able to read by candlelight.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Learn more about electronic discovery at Dennis Kennedy's Electronic Discovery Resources page.

This post brought to you by LexThink!(R) - The Legal Unconference. Ask us about private LexThink retreats and conferences for your firm, business or organization. Coming soon - LexThink Lounge - April 19, 2006.

Technorati tags: legal technology disaster recovery planning

Posted by dmk at 08:39 PM | Comments (1)

March 27, 2006

National Sleep Awareness Week 2006 Starts Today

I'll be ringing in National Sleep Awareness Week this evening by taking a follow-up sleep study tonight. As some of you know, I'm among the estimated 18 million Americans trying to deal with sleep apnea. My condition has lasted several years and is characterized as mild-to-moderate (but still difficult). I have made some significant improvement and have gotten praise from my doctors for doing everything they suggest.

As a result, I've become a big advocate for getting sleep-tested when the symptoms are apparent (male, over 40, snorer, 17" neck size, to name a few). For more info, check out this article and Wikipedia entry.

If you have sleep apnea or know someone who does (or might have), the best resource I've found is Paretz Lavie's excellent book, Restless Nights.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Technorati tags: sleep apnea apnea

Posted by dmk at 04:57 PM | Comments (0)

March 21, 2006

Ray Bradbury on the Uneasy Coexistence of Art with Advertising

Something to think about:

"If you go to the newsstand today, you see 1,000 magazines, and there's hardly an idea in them. They've been invaded by advertising. I had a poem in Good Housekeeping a few years ago. I looked through and I couldn't find it. I finally called them and asked, 'Where's my damn poem?' It was on Page 150, opposite the Clorox ad."

Ray Bradbury, author of Farenheit 451

From the March 19 NY Times via the Rock & Rap Confidential email list.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Technorati tags: musings ads

Posted by dmk at 09:39 AM | Comments (0)

March 16, 2006

Blog Posts That Got My Attention Today

A few blog posts I liked today, all of which will make you stop and think:

Shelley Powers' "Simple Philosophy"

David Maister's "Why Training is Useless"

Deborah McMurray's "Are companies really firing their outside law firms in record numbers?"

Tyler Cowen's "Why don't more businesses use prediction markets?"

Steve Dembo's "EdTech Connect Webinar Series| DiscoverySchool.com"

Jonathan Snook's "Feeds as a platform + future of aggregators"

MasterMaq's "Teaching Kids About Cybersecurity"

Jesper Bindslev's "Strategic Agility and Corporate Blogging - The OODA loop as a model for organizing corporate blogging activities"

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by LexThink!(R) - The Legal Unconference. Ask us about private LexThink retreats and conferences for your firm, business or organization. Coming soon - LexThink Lounge - April 19, 2006.

Posted by dmk at 08:07 PM | Comments (0)

March 09, 2006

Too Busy to Be Productive?

Everyone I know is incredibly busy. As an example, here's a quote from a recent email from a friend of mine: "I am DROWNING right now."

We all face the ironic situation that our labor-saving devices and productivity tools (software and hardware) have left us with a vague feeling that they have helped us only to work harder and less productively.

So you see people stretched thin and becoming less patient. Notice what happens 15 or 20 minutes into a meeting or phone call. People even schedule calls a few minutes before another meeting so they can jump off and feel they have knocked another item off the to-do list.

People regularly come to me with ideas for group projects (often related to blogging). My new test is to say that it will be worth pursuing only if the people who want to do it are willing to commit to doing a one-hour conference call. Often, that call never gets scheduled - people get too busy to give up the time and effort to put together, set-up and have that call.

So, for all you busy people, which is probably all of us, I've found something that you must find some time to read and think about. It's from Dave Pollard and its a post called "Too Busy Being Unproductive to Learn to Be Productive."

The money quote (among many):

One of the paradoxes of modern life is we're too busy to learn to do things that would make us less busy and more productive. . . . If you're skeptical, spend a half hour observing a co-worker at his/her PC and you'll be astonished: It's like watching someone being tortured -- awkward workarounds, unnecessary steps, time wasted searching in the wrong places the wrong way. The cost to every enterprise, and our economy as a whole, must be gargantuan.

An important guide for the too busy society.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by LexThink!(R) - The Legal Unconference. Ask us about private LexThink retreats and conferences for your firm, business or organization. Coming soon - LexThink Lounge - April 19, 2006.

Technorati tags: Dave Pollard productivity too busy

Posted by dmk at 04:01 PM | Comments (0)

March 01, 2006

Spring Bike Rides

The temperature today hit 75 degrees and I had to go out on my first long bike ride of the winter. I took my usual route - Grant's Trail. The good news was that the gap between my hoped-for level of fitness and my actual level of fitness wasn't as big as I had feared it would be. The bad news is that someone seems to have made the hills a little higher over the winter.

As I rode today, I realized that part of what I like about bicycling is that it is a form of moving meditation, giving you both a time to think and a time to slow your thoughts down.

Part of the reason for this comes from the safety issues. It's not safe to ride while listening to an iPod on headphones or talking on a cell phone. Checking email on a Blackberry - pretty dangerous.

So, you get a time of relative quiet and removal from distractions - a good combination for most of us.

Now, if there were only a good, safe way to capture the thoughts and ideas that flow while riding . . . .

When I returned from my ride, there was a single yellow crocus blooming in our front yard. It's not spring yet, but it's a taste of spring, with a promise of more rides to come.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Technorati tags: cycling

Posted by dmk at 08:03 PM | Comments (1)

February 24, 2006

Curl up with a Good Book this Weekend

Rosa Say has done a cool thing on her blog by getting a bunch of bloggers to let her know of posts where they reviewed books they liked. She's then posted a list of of those books and excerpts of the review posts. She calls this the 2nd Annual Love Affair with Books.

The result is a great reading list. Take a look at the post and make a list for your next trip to your favorite library or bookstore (or Amazon). You'll also find some new blogs that you will want to check out.

My contribution was my review of Cliff Atkinson's Beyond Bullet Points.

I'd like to thank Rosa for inviting me to join in and for creating a cool way to use blogs in a helpful way that benefits her readership greatly. Happy reading.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by LexThink!(R) - The Legal Unconference. Ask us about private LexThink retreats and conferences for your firm, business or organization. Coming soon - LexThink Lounge - April 19, 2006.

Posted by dmk at 04:32 PM | Comments (0)

February 23, 2006

St. Louis Blogger Lunch Today

By a string of coincidences and an exchange of emails, I ended up at an impromptu lunch with four St. Louis bloggers today. It was so much fun that we are talking about making it a regular event.

We also want to do a St. Louis blogger meet-up one of these days soon and get even more of the St. Louis bloggers together.

We had three BlawgThink alums (four, if you count me) - Michelle Golden, George Lenard and Marianne Richmond - and Microsoft's Randy Holloway (who wanted to attend BlawgThink but had other commitments).

Meeting other bloggers is my favorite part of blogging.

I'm pushing Randy to see if he can get the keys to one of the meeting spaces at Microsoft's offices here in St. Louis to host a blogger meet-up. Watch for more details. Maybe I'll finally get my chance to meet my favorite St. Louis blogger, Shelley "Burningbird" Powers, in person if we can put this event together.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by LexThink!(R) - The Legal Unconference. Ask us about private LexThink retreats and conferences for your firm, business or organization. Coming soon - LexThink Lounge - April 19, 2006.

Technorati tags: St. Louis bloggers BlawgThink

Posted by dmk at 08:36 PM | Comments (1)

Smart Man Online Interview

I've long enjoyed Yvonne Divita's Lipsticking blog, so it's an honor to be interviewed by Yvonne for her "Smart Man Online" feature today.

I talked about a number of topics and talk quite a bit more about writing and blogging than I typically do on this blog.

If you don't already read Yvonne's blog, shame on you, but go ahead and check out the interview and sample some of the excellent material she has there on Internet marketing to women. I got to meet Yvonne at the first LexThink conference, but I was a fan of her blog long before that.

Thanks, Yvonne, for all your kind words and giving me the chance to be one of your "smart men online." It's a blogging honor that I truly appreciate.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Posted by dmk at 08:20 PM | Comments (1)

February 21, 2006

Pulling the Plug on the All Q & A Format for this Blog

I decided last night to put an end to the all question-and-answer format I have been experimenting with since the beginning of the year. For new readers, the idea was that I would write the title of each post as a question that the post would then answer.

My reasons for taking the approach were:

1. It was something different and might be a way to reinvent my blog a bit.

2. People have always enjoyed my "By Request" days where I answer questions.

3. Mainly, though, I thought it might be a way to help me write blog posts more quickly and easily.

After almost two months, I had drawn a few conclusions:

1. It wasn't making it easier and quicker to writer blog posts. In fact, in some cases, I spent more time working on the question than the answer (I'm kidding), and some posts didn't lend themselves to the Q & A format or resulted in awkward questions.

2. I did not get a lot of feedback on the new format and what I did was from people who questioned the approach I was taking or liked the old way better.

3. I noticed some interesting, slightly negative results in Google search rankings that might be attributed to the use of questions in the post titles.

In other words, I was beginning to shrug my shoulders whenever I thought about the approach. It wasn't a negative experience, but it wasn't a positive experience either.

Last night, some of the smartest bloggers I know told me it was time to abandon the approach. That confirmed my thinking.

I decided that since it's my blog, I can do whatever I want, including changing my mind.

So, I'm dropping the all Q & A approach, although I still do the occasional "By Request" days and use a question as a post title from time to time.

Blogging is about experimenting. Some experiments work really well and some not so well. Those are the easy experiments to evaluate. It's the ones that end up in the middle that are hardest to decide what to do with.

So, I'm thinking up a new experiment. Anonymous blogging has been done to death and probably won't work for me (see the title of this blog). I've seen pictures of me appearing on various blogs lately and I'm intrigued by the idea of doing graphics and pictures on my blog.

By the way, of the recent pictures of me from BlawgThink, I greatly prefer the one here to the one here (from the fun-loving bloggers at RethinkIP).

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http//www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Posted by dmk at 07:42 PM | Comments (0)

February 20, 2006

Where's the Rest of Blogiversary Week?

Life intervened on my blogiversary plan. My father-in-law had chest pain and was hospitalized and had a few procedures last week. He's now home and doing well. Our plans and schedules got turned around for a few days.

So, blogiversary week will just end without further fanfare. I have some "by request" posts that I'll respond to later this week, but I think I'll simply return to regular programming.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)

Posted by dmk at 10:35 AM | Comments (0)

February 16, 2006

What Was The Most Important Blog Post You Read (or Re-read) Today?

It has to be John Robb's post, "The Next Attacks." Read it and see if you agree. Be sure to follow the link that explains his reference to a "black swan."

Dave Pollard's "Three Things to Teach Your Children" is another candidate for most important post.

On the professional side, Ron Baker's "Attorneys Aren't Knowledge Workers" is another must-read.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Posted by dmk at 06:48 PM | Comments (0)

February 15, 2006

By Request: What Would I Do Differently If I Started Blogging Today?

Leading intellectual property law blogger Steve Nipper had a great post the other day called "Five things I would do differently if I started blogging today" that I highly recommend to your attention. He has some wise observations and some great tips for both new bloggers and long-time bloggers.

I started this blog three years ago today. To help you understand my point of view, at the time I felt that I was starting my own RSS feed and that the blog was the vehicle for the RSS feed. RSS was the motivation and the driver for this blog. As I've mentioned before, I was soaking up everything I could about RSS at the time, Dave Winer's Scripting News was my prime and daily resource, and I spent much more time researching what the blogging tools could do in generating RSS feeds than I did in researching what they could do in terms of blogging.

First, let me concur that Steve's main points in his posts - portability and user friendliness - are ones that every blogger needs to think about on a regular basis.

Here is my somewhat iconoclastic list:

1. I'd Treat My Blog More Like a Website. I make no secret that my focus for my blog and the audience I consider when writing my blog is the audience that subscribes to the RSS feed. Even though I know that a huge number of readers visit my blog directly, I'm surprised when someone tells me that they "visited" my blog.

As a result, I think I underserve the non-RSS portion of my audience, don't think about the blog experience as much as I perhaps should, and have not explored what blogging software, such as Movable Type, can do as a content management tool for a combined blog/website experience. I'm intrigued by some of the things another RethinkIP guy, Matt Buchanan, has done and has talked about doing in terms of making his blog more webpage-like.

What does that mean? Updating certain posts with fresh information or lists of links. Using posts as repositories of information (say, a list of my articles). Fleshing out the "blog as mini-portal" concept. There are a lot of ideas there.

Once you move into a feed-dominant approach, I think that you focus primarily on content and less on the actual design and user experience of the visitors to the blog (do bloggers really understand what the message they are sending when they have a long column of not-very-relevant Adsense ads on the front page of their blogs or a blog roll in which there are hundreds of blogs and six of the first ten are either dead links or blogs which haven't been posted to in months?)

In retrospect, I might have decided to do the idea I had a few years ago to redesign my site and adapt it into Movable Type. RSS is still what interests me most, but I think I neglected some things that would have worked well for the large numbers of people who do not yet use RSS.

2. I Would Have Used More Emoticons and Humor Warnings. Many people still do not believe me that I started this blog not as a lawyer blog, but as an experiment in writing. I wanted to try different kinds of writing and let it find its own audience. As a result, I'll do things on my blog that I would not recommend that the standard lawyer blog do. But, I know that.

One thing that I like to do is write about subjects ironically or to attempt to inject some humor. One of my friends likes to tell me that my humor is pretty dry and it's hard enough to know when I'm not being serious in person, but it's even harder to know that in my blog writing.

Once upon a time, I used little "humor warnings" when I thought there was a good chance that people, especially lawyers, would not be able to tell from the context that I was joking around. I haven't done that in a while. I also use a lot of self-deprecating humor, which people don't always understand that I'm doing (that comes from growing up in small-town Indiana, where both self-deprecating humor and deadpan-delivery are admired traits).

The unstated rule in blogging seems to be that you not use emoticons (smileys) to let people know that you are joking. ;-) This, of course, preserves the "but I was just joking" defense if someone takes exception to your post, but sometimes leads to some misinterpretations.

This has become more of a concern as the blogworld has grown and not every blogger knows every other blogger. In the past few months, I've felt that too many of my comments have been misinterpreted and a smiley here or there would probably help matters.

3. I Would Have Done More Collaborative Blog Projects Earlier. The whole blogging thing is worth it for me just because it gave me the chance to work with Between Lawyers group. If you add LexThink!(R) to that, that's quite a "return" on my blogging investment. I'd like to do more of that, and to have done it sooner. The bloggers I've met over these three years are amazing people. I'm happy that they've let me join them in creating whatever blogging will grow into.

I'd still like to do that big collaborative project that a bunch of us have been talking about for way too long.

4. I Would Not Have Turned on Comments. I turned on comments on my blog after not enabling them for close to the first two years of my blog's life. Now that they are on, I don't really think that I can (nor do I really want to ) turn them off. But I have a lot of second thoughts about them.

I estimate that the ratio of comment spam to good comments is at least 50:1. It's part of my regular routine to clear out spam comments. On the other hand, one good comment from someone you respect makes all the hassle seem worth it - at least now that they are on. In retrospect, I would have left them turned off and ignored the people who like to say that you don't have a "real blog" if you don't have comments on.

5. I Would Not Have Spent Two Years Trying to Decide What the Right Thing to Do on Ads and Sponsorships Was and Then End Up at the Same Place I was at Two Years Ago. I used to write a lot on this topic. My feeling was that randomly-served ads really did not make sense for blogs (unless you have huge amounts of traffic) and that the National Public Radio sponsorship model was more appropriate for blogs. However, there was tons of discussion about ads on blogs, ads in feeds and related issues. I wanted to do the right thing and follow the model that the leading blog thinkers felt was best.

The blog world moved to server-based ads. I do some of that, through Blogads, in part because Henry Copeland was a speaker at our BlawgThink conference, but, now more than ever, I think that a tailored sponsorship model is the better approach. I'll consider any approach these days and it is clear that the ad-based model has become a standard, but I think I should have gone my own way from the beginning.

6. I Would Have Done More Experimenting. I'm really curious to see where today's generation of highly-focused, marketing-oriented blogs go. I think that many of them are great and I learn from them on a regular basis. I also know that most of the long-time bloggers are writing on topics and in ways that are far different and far broader than what they did when they started. It seems that somewhere between a year and a year-and-a-half, many bloggers start to write more personally or to explore new directions. It will be interesting, in a good way, to see what happens with the more corporate blogging efforts.

Some might say that I've probbaly experimented more than most with the blogging form. I still remember the negative feedback I got when I experimented with a blog post written in the third person.

However, there are many things I haven't tried and I'd like to have been more willing to experiment with new features, approaches, audio and the like.

So, I'd add to Steve's list of key points one thing - a willingness to experiment.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

blogiversary

Posted by dmk at 05:18 PM | Comments (3)

Is It True That My Blog Has Its Own Amazon Wishlist?

My working theory is that at some point after your second year of blogging, your blog begins to take on a life of its own. It's more than just that it demands to be fed with new posts every day, like an online Tamagotchi pet.

Bloggers start talking about their blogs as if they are another person and they even have pet names or acronyms for their blogs. Last summer, Doug Sorocco of the RethinkIP blog was in St. Louis and we had lunch. He kept talking about the "Artip" blog this and that. Gradually, I figured out that he meant RTIP. I didn't want to admit that I didn't know about his new blog and I resolved to look it up later. On the drive home, I finally realized RTIP was the insider name for RethinkIP.

I can't believe the number of bloggers who have pet names for their blogs. I've started to refer to mine as DKB. Between Lawyers has, of course, turned into "BL" when we talk about it among the authors. We actually considered what the shortened or pet names might be when we named Between Lawyers.

Anthropomorphize is the technical term for this phenomenon.

So, to make a long story short, I was talking with my blog about the blogiversary week thing. It said, "Shouldn't I be the one getting presents? Let's face it, the audience comes to me, not to you."

A fair point.

My blog then said that there were a lot of things that I had touched on in my posts (actually, it said "our posts") in the last three years that it would like to learn more about. It then said that it would like to put together an Amazon wishlist so that readers could send the blog books and other items it was interested in.

Right. So, I said, "If you can make the wishlist, I'll post about the wishlist in the blog and we'll see what happens." I thought that would be the end of it, seriously, but blogs can be innovative, insistent and persistent. Today my blog reminded me that today is its official birthday and handed me the URL to its very own Amazon wishlist.

Well, a promise is a promise, right? If you like my blog and want to send it a birthday present, you now have a handy list of gift suggestions. Send any gifts to me and I'll pass them along to the blog.

Blogs really do seem to take on a life of their own.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Technorati tag: blogiversary

Posted by dmk at 04:01 PM | Comments (0)

February 14, 2006

Did You Say You Were Offering Some Discounts on Your Services for Your Blogiversary Week?

I did say something about some special discounts for some of my services during my blogiversary week.

I was going to offer some discounts on a few selected speaking and consulting packages, but I decided to do something much simpler.

Simply, if you book any speaking or consulting engagement from me this week (until February 20), you'll get a ten percent discount on the price we agree to. If it's a flat-fee arrangement, I'll knock ten percent off the price. If it's an hourly-fee engagement, I'll reduce my hourly rate by ten percent. It's that simple. The only catches are that you need to book with me this week and this discount does not apply to my legal services or to LexThink services and/or events.

Take a look at my speaking and consulting pages on my website for some ideas of the services and seminars I provide. This would also be a great time to book one of the new legal tech audit packages I've just started to offer.

As I said before, I mean for this week to be a reader appreciation week for readers of my blog.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by Dennis Kennedy's legal technology consulting services, featuring RSS and blogging consulting, technology audit, strategic planning and technology committee coaching packages especially for medium-sized law firms (15 - 100 lawyers) and corporate legal departments. More information on the "Second Pair of Eyes" packages for legal technology audits and strategic planning may be found here (PDF).

Technorati tag: legal technology blogiversary

Posted by dmk at 08:00 PM | Comments (0)

February 13, 2006

What Free Downloads Are You Offering for Your Blogiversary Week?

There are five free PDF downloads I'm offering to readers of this blog this week

1. My eBooklet called Preparing Your Law Firm for the Internet Era: 150 Steps Toward a 21st Century Practice of Law (PDF, 324K)

2. My eBooklet on Rethinking Legal technology (PDF, 215K)

3. An introduction to my thinking about electronic discovery technology issues (PDF, 128K)

4. The collection of my articles I republished on my blog last fall (PDF, 740K).

5. My PowerPoint slides from my recent presentation on Trends in Electronic Discovery Technology for 2006 (PDF, 594K).

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by Dennis Kennedy's legal technology consulting services, featuring RSS and blogging consulting, technology audit, strategic planning and technology committee coaching packages especially for medium-sized law firms (15 - 100 lawyers) and corporate legal departments. More information on the "Second Pair of Eyes" packages for legal technology audits and strategic planning may be found here (PDF).

Technorati tag: legal technology

Posted by dmk at 02:27 PM | Comments (0)

Announcing the 2006 Blogiversary / Birthday Week at DennisKennedy.Blog

Longtime readers of this blog will know that I like to do something now and then to show my appreciation for my readers.

Last year, I had the idea to use the week of my blog's anniversary (February 15) and my birthday (February 17) - this blog was an early birthday present to myself in 2003 - as a way to have a reader appreciation week. It seemed to work out well last year and I've decided to have another blogiversary / birthday week this year. It's meant to be fun and to help me remember not to treat my blog or me too seriously.

So, I'll have a continuing set of blogiversary-related posts this week and some regular posts as well. I'd also like to answer your questions, so ask away and I'll have some "By Request" posts this week too.

I've put together some special features, some free downloads, some discounts on some of my consulting and speaking packages, and some surprises. And three big announcements below.

I want to thank the people, like Ed Poll, who have already wished my blog and me happy birthday. Best wishes to Ed, who is celebrating his birthday by going to a professional cycling camp, something I'd like to do someday.

Let's jump right into the three big announcements for the week.

1. In a HUGE announcement, NASCAR has decided to recognize my willingness to mention that I am a NASCAR fan, despite the preachy advice you get that lawyers should never mention any personal interests or show any personality on their blogs (especially not for stock car racing or anything else seen by these critics as not professionally dignified), by graciously scheduling this year's Daytona 500 on Sunday, February 19, as the capper to blogiversary / birthday week at DennisKennedy.Blog.

2. As a special gift to my readers who would like to extend the celebration an extra day, the US government has generously designated Monday, February 20, as a holiday. That's the kind of appreciation I want to show for my readers.

3. The Law List on PubSub jumped the gun on this week's celebration by listing DennisKennedy.Blog as the #1 law-related blog on Saturday February 11! To go from our modest blog beginnings to the coveted #1 slot is an accomplishment that I am quite proud of, even if I did notice the irony of achieving that ranking when I didn't post anything that day or the day before. No matter - it was still a #1 ranking and I'm planning to have the screen shot framed. I see that I've slipped to #2 today, but you can still tell that I was #1. I'll let wiser minds than mine try to figure out what that all means.

Please enjoy the week. Take it in the spirit that it is intended. And, thank you so much for reading this blog and being part of the network that it has created.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by LexThink!(TM) - The Conference, Re-imagined. LexThink! - Think big thoughts, do cool things, change the world. Ask us about private LexThink retreats and conferences for your firm, business or organization. Coming soon - LexThink Lounge - April 19.

blogiversary

The official announcement.

Posted by dmk at 02:18 PM | Comments (1)

February 12, 2006

Will There Be A Blogiversary / Birthday Week Again This Year at DennisKennedy.Blog?

Yes, there will - starting tomorrow, Monday, February 13.

Tom Mighell (who is my #1 answer to the question Neil Squillante poses here) asked me yesterday if I really needed a whole week to celebrate my combined blogiversary (#3 - this blog debuted on Februrary 15, 2003) and birthday (February 17, which I share with Michael Jordan and Jim Brown, among others).

The answer, of course, is "Yes!"

I had the idea last year to do a blogiversary/birthday event as a fun, tongue-in-cheek way to have a reader appreciation week and to have an excuse to have some fun on my blog.

You can expect a variety of special posts, giveaways and free downloads, discounts on some of my services, and other surprises. I'll also try to answer as many of your questions as I can in a whole week of "By Request" posts (email your questions for me at denniskennedyblog @ gmail.com). There's way too much stuff going on for me to accomplish it all in anything less than a week.

Expect more details tomorrow, but you can start off with a free download of the slides from my recent presentation on Trends for 2006 in Electronic Discovery.

Long-time readers will know that it's blog features like this one that have brought me criticism from those who believe that law-related blogs must be totally serious and oh-so-professional every second of every day. However, I want to do something to show that I appreciate my audience and that it is important to have fun every now and then. I expect that I'll give them more fodder for their criticism before this week is over.

Stay tuned for more details.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Technorati tag: blogiversary

Posted by dmk at 07:53 PM | Comments (0)

February 06, 2006

What Was Worse: the Super Bowl Game, the Commercials or the Rolling Stones?

I must admit how I am flummoxed at how people who brag about how they use their Tivos to skip commercials seem to watch and study commercials during the Super Bowl.

However, let me address the question.

1. The game was not very good, but Hines Ward had an MVP game and the Jerome Bettis story line was a great one. And the Steelers had a atrick play that worked. The game was not the worst of the three choices, although the clock management of the Seahawks at the end of the first half and at the end of the game reminded me why I don't like to watch college football games anymore.

2. Admittedly, I don't get the fascination with commercials, but I did see a colleague from my old law firm, Andy Puzder, now CEO of Hardee's in a commercial. Being able to say that you know someone in a Super Bowl commercial is kind of cool. So, for admittedly a personal reason, the commercials were not the worst, although I think most of the advertisers would have gotten a zillion times more bang for the buck by advertising on blogs - but you knew I would say that.

3. With all the prep for this event, did anyone think of doing a sound check for the Rolling Stones? The sound was terrible. The recording of "Start Me Up" that plays over the PA at every sporting event must sound about ten times better. I don't think that we need an extended version of "Satisfaction" last night or ever. I found myself thinking, "Let's get back to the game. Will this ever end?" Yet another of those odd cultural events that was better in concept than reality. So, the Rolling Stones get my vote as the worst of the three.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by Dennis Kennedy's half-day electronic discovery seminar - "Preparing for the New World of Electronic Discovery: Easing Your Transition from Paper to Electronic Discovery." Contact Dennis today for more information and to schedule a seminar for your firm or legal department.

Posted by dmk at 06:08 PM | Comments (0)

February 03, 2006

Did You Want to Clarify that You Are NOT Part of the USALAW.com Blog Network?

I definitely want to clarify that and correct any misimpression people may have.

One of the best things about my trip to LegalTech was that I got a number of opportunities to talk with Kevin O'Keefe, who I have long admired as one of the pioneers in the use of the Internet by lawyers. Check out this roundtable article we did with Kevin from back in 2000 about virtual communities to learn more about his background and get some insights into his innovative thinking about ways lawyers might use the Internet.

I read Kevin's recent post on the USALAW.com blog network and found myself nodding my head in agreement as I read about the concerns he expressed.

It would be very easy for someone going to that site to see a listing of excerpts of my posts on this blog and conclude that I had applied for and was part of that blog network. THAT IS ABSOLUTELY NOT THE CASE.

I want to make it clear that I have no involvement in the USALAW.com blog network WHATSOEVER. I have not talked with them and, like Kevin, was not asked for permission to have excerpts put on their site. Although what they are doing may qualify as "fair use," I am concerned that people think that I am part of their blog network, endorse it or receive financial benefit from it. THAT IS NOT THE CASE.

It is very likely that my blog will become part of a blog network in the near future and I do not want people to be confused about which network I might be in. In addition, I do not want to lose opportunities to be invited into another blog network because people mistakenly believe I am part of the USALAW.com blog network.

It is possible to repurpose RSS feeds in many ways these days and probably many of those ways will technically qualify as "fair use."

HOWEVER, I have two simple rules for blog networks and other aggregation sites whose business model presumably involves making money, through ads or otherwise, by aggregating other people's feeds or "repurposing" their content where there is no license that explicitly allows for that:

1. Ask yourself how you would feel if someone else took your writing or other creative work and used it in the way you intend to use other peoples' work.

2. Notify people and ask permission, at least as a courtesy, when you "repurpose" their feeds on an ongoing basis, even if you think it is "fair use." Most of the time I will say yes (I let people reprint my articles and posts on a regular basis), but I hate to learn from someone else that my content is appearing somewhere else and that people think that I am involved in the other site, especially when I know nothing about the other site or who is behind it. And I really don't like it when I'm talking to someone about joining a blog network, since it makes it look like I am part of another blog network.

I've already posted a notice about another site that I am not associated with. I'm hoping I do not need to set up a new category for posts in which I announce that I am not associated with blogs or aggregation sites. Just ask me about what you plan to do - it's really easy to do.

Read Kevin's post - he makes some excellent points.

As a final point, as we continue to move into a more commercialized blog era, bloggers do not want to find out that someone unknown to them is making more money off their content than they are, unless they have applied a Creative Commons or other license that allows others to do so. I have not.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Posted by dmk at 06:52 PM | Comments (0)

January 27, 2006

When and Where is the Blogger Meetup at LegalTech NY?

Tom Mighell and I have put together the details for the Sunday evening blogger meetup we're putting together while we are in New York for the LegalTech conference.

This is going out to everyone who expressed interest in meeting up (bloggers or otherwise) on Sunday night in NYC. Rather than try to find a restaurant that would fit all of us, we decided that you're on your own for dinner. Let's meet for drinks at 8:00 p.m. at the Hilton New York's Bridge Bar. The address is 1335 Avenue of the Americas. It's just off the lobby. The Hilton is where LegalTech will be held, so hopefully you'll all be somewhere in the neighborhood. See you Sunday night!

There's no need to RSVP for the meetup, but you can let Tom or me know that you will be joining us so we can look for you. My guess right now is that there will be ten to twenty people there, but we'll be happy to have as many people join us as are available. And, no, you don't have to be a blogger (or a legal blogger) - just pretend that you are thinking about starting a blog.

Just a reminder that I'll be speaking about Top Trends in Electronic Discovery Technology on Tuesday, January 31 at 3:30 PM as the guest of my friends at Caselogistix.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Posted by dmk at 04:49 PM | Comments (0)

How Do You Think Nonprofits Can Benefit from Blogs and RSS?

Marshall Kirkpatrick interviewed me via Skype IM last night about this question and a wide range of other technology, blogging, RSS, OPML, legal and nonprofit questions. It was a lot of fun.

He's posted the interview, Communication, Law and Web 2.0, on the Netsquared.org site, where there is a lot of great stuff happening at the intersection of nonprofits and technology, including a cool upcoming conference.

I encourage you to read the interview, of course, but I also hope that you spend some time on the site and see what they are doing and whether there might be ways that you can help.

Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by LexThink!(TM) - The Conference, Re-imagined. LexThink! - Think big thoughts, do cool things, change the world. Ask us about private LexThink retreats and conferences for your firm, business or organization.

Posted by dmk at 04:31 PM | Comments (0)

January 26, 2006

Was That Just Your One Thousandth Blog Post I Saw?

Hey, it was! That's cool. One thousand posts. As some wags who think I write long posts might say, "That must be, what, five million words?"

The third anniversary (or, as some bloggers like to say, the start of my fourth year of blogging) is fast approaching. Since my blog's birthday is quite close to my birthday, I'm thinking over having another blawgiversary event on my blog this year. Details to come.

Speaking of birthdays . . . earlier this week I became an uncle again, time two, when my wife's sister and my brother-in-law, Mike and Maureen McLean, became the parents of twins, Ava and Marissa. Everyone is still in the hospital, but it sounds like all is going well. Pretty exciting.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Posted by dmk at 07:18 PM | Comments (0)

January 23, 2006

How Can Web 2.0 Help 24 and Jack Bauer Fans?

Brad Feld points to the JackTracker, a way to track Jack Bauer's activities on 24 using Google Maps. If you are a 24 fan, this app will give you a nice example of what a Web 2.0 app is.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Posted by dmk at 08:41 PM | Comments (0)

January 16, 2006

Why is Martin Luther King Day One of Your Favorite Holidays?

As I've written before, I have some historical reasons for considering Martin Luther King Day as one of my favorite holidays. I was also thinking today that this is a reflective holiday, one that allows you some welcome time to reflect after the hustle and bustle of the Christmas / New Year's / winter holiday season.

For 2006, I thought I'd note the day by linking to some of the posts on the day that I especially enjoyed from people like Dan Oestrich, Halley Suitt, Heather Leigh, Bernard Hibbitts, Joyce Wycoff, Lisa Stone, Tom Watson, Betsy McKenzie, Troy Worman, Doc Searls, W. David Stephenson, Paul Caron, Don Blohowiak, Tony Colleluori, Ernster the Virtual Library Cat, Will Richardson, and Marty Schwimmer.

From MLK: "I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become reality."

Technorati tag: Martin Luther King

Posted by dmk at 05:15 PM | Comments (3)

January 13, 2006

What's a Monk-Fest?

My daughter and I are big fans of the Monk TV show. My wife is a much more casual watcher of the show.

So, Grace and I have been gearing up for the season premiere of Monk tonight. Yesterday, she decided to invite three of her seventh grade classmates (also Monk fans) over for what we are calling a "Monk-Fest" to celebrate the new season. I understand that I will be allowed to watch the episode on the same TV that they will be watching, but then will probably have to clear out of the way.

I'm also gearing up for the first four hours of the new season of 24, which starts Sunday night. I've long been a fan of that show. Unfortunately, I don't have any friends who are fans that I'll be inviting over for the premiere. I'll be waiting to see what other bloggers who watch 24, such as Professor Yin and Fred Faulkner, have to say about the new season. However, it'd be more fun if geography weren't an issue and I could watch the premiere with Professor Yin, Fred and a few others simply by walking over to his house or having them over to mine. That's one of the limitations of the blogosphere.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by Dennis Kennedy's half-day electronic discovery seminar - "Preparing for the New World of Electronic Discovery: Easing Your Transition from Paper to Electronic Discovery." Contact Dennis today for more information and to schedule a seminar for your firm or legal department.

Posted by dmk at 01:12 PM | Comments (1)

January 11, 2006

What Were Justice Blackmun's Law School Grades?

What can't you find on the Internet these days?

From the "too much about nothing" blog (hey, I gave up trying to find the author's name or I would have mentioned it), it's the list of Justice Harry Blackmun's law school grades from his law school transcript.

Obviously, Blackmun went law school in the days before "grade inflation."

That "C" in constitutional law probably would be a problem in today's world of Senate hearings. Interesting how grades that today would all but keep someone from getting hired at most law firms proved to be no impediment to well-respected service on the Supreme Court.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by LexThink!(TM) - The Conference, Re-imagined. LexThink! - Think big thoughts, do cool things, change the world. Ask us about private LexThink retreats and conferences for your firm, business or organization.

Posted by dmk at 06:41 PM | Comments (1)

Are You the Anonymous Editor of the Blawg Review?

All right. Move on. Move on. There's nothing to see here.

I had hoped to stay out of the anonymous Blawg Review editor brouhaha, but now I have people wondering if I'm the editor. I can say categorically that I am not.

While I understand that there are good reasons that people want to blog anonymously (and my point of view on blogging is to let a thousand flowers bloom), the flip side of anonymous blogging is that it can put people who are suspected of being an anonymous blogger into the different position of trying to prove that they are not the anonymous blogger.

I'm now quite sympathetic with what Evan says in his post here about the difficulties of being caught in the middle. I should be even more sympathetic with Evan because I jokingly suggested at one point that he was the famous Anonymous Blogger and then found that far more people than I expected took me seriously.

For what it's worth, until the comments from people close to the situation that were added to Matt's post explained how the whois information pointing to ALM and other "clues" could be misinterpreted, I was utterly convinced by Matt Homann's "Monkish" explanation of the "solution" to the mystery.

As I'm able to understand the logic, the question whether I am the anonymous editor of Blawg Review arises from the following "clues":

1. On Between Lawyers, we have used an anonymous "Lawyer X" character. So, you have a pattern of behavior.

2. If you "Google" the name Ed Post that has been associated with the anonymous editor, you'll find references to a famous St. Louis murder case. This suggests that the editor is in St. Louis or has ties to St. Louis and I've been known to refer to St. Louis as Blawg City USA. (This clue, of course, also points to Evan.) Indeed, by coincidence (or as further proof, depending on how you look at these things), I worked as a staff attorney for the St. Louis court that tried the Ed Post case and, it's possible, but I don't remember for sure, that I might have even researched an issue or two that came up in that case. So, the thinking goes, if the editor is actually leaving clues, I might be leaving obscure clues that point to me.

3. The Blawg Review Awards post, like my Blawggie awards post, was quite long. Long posts automatically get associated with me, I guess. So, the argument would be that a leopard cannot change his spots.

Hmmm, I'm starting to convince myself - maybe it is me. No - I got an email from the BR editor and I know that I did not send it to myself, so I'm certain that it cannot be me.

As impossible as it may be to prove or disprove a negative, I simply point to the name of my blog and ask how likely is it really that I would be blogging anonymously? Some wags might also note that the fact that there was no award for me or my blog in the Blawg Review awards conclusively proves it wasn't me behind the awards. In addition, I could hardly both praise Neil Squillante's BlawgWorld in the Dennis Kennedy character and then criticize it anonymously - that's not who I am. Similarly, after Law.com canned my partner in LexThink, Matt Homann, from its blog network, it would be very bad form, and completely out of character for me, to anonymously do another blog that joined the Law.com network - I'd have some seriously 'splaining to do to Matt.

So, no need to speculate about me or ask me about this anymore. Let's move on. Let me get back to regular blogging. Nothing to see here. As a time-filler until the new Monk season starts on Friday night, though, I do admit that I am enjoying reading about the detective side of the story.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Posted by dmk at 04:52 PM | Comments (1)

January 01, 2006

Did You Decide Whether You Are Changing to a Question-and-Answer Format for Your Blog in 2006?

I'm going to experiment with the approach for a while.

When I mentioned in a post a little while ago that I was thinking of going to a Q & A approach (a la the Ask Dave Taylor blog (and it was cool that Dave left a comment about that post)), I wasn't as surprised by the number of negative reactions I got as I was by the most common reason that people gave me not to go that route - that I'd find the format too confining.

Maybe I will, but my initial thought was that it would actually be a less confining approach for me and I wanted to shake things up at DennisKennedy.Blog and try a different approach. I think that the Q & A approach will make it a bit easier for me to write more focused posts and maybe more posts, giving me the ability to cover more topics. I suspect that I'll do a mixture of types of posts before I decide whether to adopt the new format completely.

Just to remind people: although I welcome questions from my readers and think that the Q & A approach will generate more of them, the question-and-answer format is simply a writing device where in most cases I'll be writing both the questions and the answers.

Later, I may see what people think of the new format using the cool new Web 2.0 survey tool called Quimble that Tom Mighell just alerted me to.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by LexThink!(TM) - The Conference, Re-imagined. LexThink! - Think big thoughts, do cool things, change the world. Ask us about private LexThink retreats and conferences for your firm, business or organization.

Posted by dmk at 07:40 PM | Comments (0)

Happy New Year - 2006

Best wishes to all readers of DennisKennedy.Blog for a great 2006!

To those of you I got to meet and work with in 2005, I want to thank you for getting the opportunity and hope to work with you on more cool projects in 2006. To those I haven't gotten the chance to work with yet, I hope that we get that chance in 2006.

In all events, I truly appreciate what the readers of this blog have brought into my life in the past few years. I hope I can continue to make this blog one of your regular reads.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 07:29 PM | Comments (0)

December 31, 2005

A Reflection on Blogging at the End of 2005

This quote from Rich Karlgaard via Doc Searls captures something essential about blogging at the end of 2005:

Blogging is not overhyped. You may be forgiven for thinking so, as no day goes by without a story on blogs. But blogs are no fad. They are cheap and easy to do. And blogs fulfill that deepest of human needs as defined by psychologist Abraham Maslow: self-actualization. People write blogs because they want to know themselves and want to be known by others and because they want their lives to count. When a communications medium is both riding the Moore's Law cost-capability curve and tapping into a deep need, it's no fad.

All best wishes for 2006!

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 11:03 AM | Comments (1)

December 29, 2005

Disaster Remembrance Week

Blogs got a lot of attention in 2005 - for a lot of reasons, good and bad. However, there probably has not been enough attention paid to the practical impact blogs have had in times of disaster to assist others in need.

The WorldWideHelp Group is promoting this week as Disaster Remembrance Week.

From the announcement:

"Last December and this January, the online community came together as never before to help in the aid efforts in South-East Asia. The lessons learned there were put to use, and improved upon, when the other tragic events of the year unfolded.

Can we harness that goodwill, that togetherness, that willingness to help once more?

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Disaster Remembrance Week

Posted by dmk at 08:47 AM | Comments (0)

December 27, 2005

Reinventing DennisKennedy.Blog for 2006

I have been thinking quite a bit lately about DennisKennedy.Blog and the directions I want to go with it. I've gotten some constructive criticism lately (or at least I think it's meant to be constructive) and some good suggestions from a number of people.

The four comments that seem to arise most often are: (1) the posts are too long, (2) the blog should have more focus, (3) jokes or other attempts at humor should be labeled, and (4) the posts are way too long.

So, I had been thinking about "reinventing" the blog before I saw Hugh McLeod's great drawing called "if you can't re-invent yourself." Now I'm working on at least a modest reinvention of this blog for 2006. Reinvention, from time to time, is a good thing, I think.

I'm also encouraging people to let me know your ideas and suggestions.

What's in the works? Here's what I'm considering:

1. Shorter posts. People have convinced me that "long posts" should actually be done as podcasts.

2. The biggest change I'm considering is to move completely to a question-and-answer format, much like the Ask Dave Taylor blog, of which I'm a big fan. There's always been a good response to the "By Request Days" (other than by people who got confused the first time I did it). Someone told me that they really liked the Q-and-A format for my writing and, as I've read Dave Taylor's blog, it seems attractive to me. Just to be clear, I'd be making up most of the questions are using the questions as titles of the posts, although I'm sure that the format would lead to more audience questions.

3. One thing that became very clear in 2005 is that blog advertising and blog advertising networks are now considered quite acceptable. I've had some reluctance to go very far in that direction, but now will move in that way. Your sponsor and advertiser inquiries are now welcome.

4. I also think that the blog's focus will be more explicitly on technology - legal technology and the impact that technology has on the law and the practice of law.

But that's just my current thinking - I'm not sure yet what I'll finally decide - and I do have some other ideas as well. I invite your reactions and suggestions.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Posted by dmk at 01:19 PM | Comments (3)

December 26, 2005

Dan Donovan's Limited Edition, Fine Art Photographic Prints of Busch Stadium

Dan Donovan - professional photographer extraordinaire and my brother-in-law - has partnered with the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team (a long-time client of his) to produce a series of limited edition, fine art photographic prints of Busch Stadium, which you can see and purchase at http://www.dandonovanfineart.com.

As Dan notes, "The last game at the original Busch Stadium was played on October 19, 2005, with the team moving to the new Busch Stadium in 2006. To commemorate both stadiums, this series of prints has been created. There are currently 5 prints in the series, with more in development."

My personal favorite is the one Dan calls "Clouds," but I encourage you to check out the collection and how talented Dan is. Even if you are not a baseball fan or a baseball stadium buff, you'll enjoy these photos. If you are, you'll want to add one of these to your collection.

Dan also does great, creative portrait photography.

The details on the photo series and purchase info can all be found at http://www.dandonovanfineart.com. Be sure to tell Dan that you learned about the photos on this blog.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Posted by dmk at 11:00 AM | Comments (0)

December 14, 2005

"By Request Day" - What Are Those Funny Symbols in Some of Your Posts?

Here's what I'd like to say: Writing on the Internet requires that you consider a different type of reader and that you accommodate a reader who likes to scan. Although some recommend avoiding long posts, like I have been known to write, if you write long (or short) posts, you want to break things up into short paragraphs, use headings, bullet points, bold and italics, and make the posts easier to read and visually interesting.

The funny little symbols and characters, I'd like to say, are a clever device to create visual interest and give my readers something break up the parade of words on a page.

That's what I'd like to say.

Unfortunately, the real story is this:

I sometimes write posts in Word. In the case of my reposted articles, I create the posts from Word documents. I might also copy portions of Word documents into my posts when I write them.

Unfortunately, in some Word documents I had turned on the "smart quotes" or "curly quotes." For reasons I don't understand, my version of Movable Type does not handle those curly quotes as regular quotes. Even worse, I cannot see that there is a problem when I "preview" he post before I published it. Even worse than that, I don't see the problem in my newsreader when I view the RSS feed for my blog. That's important because I don't often look at my blog in my browser, but I do look at the feed in my newsreader.

What I've learned is that the "smart quotes" and the "smart apostrophes" turn up as odd symbols and characters on my blog rather than as regular quote marks and apostrophes. I then have to edit the original post, change the quote marks and apostrophes (which are visible at that point in Movable Type) and republish the post. It's a pain and it's not a task that ranks high on the priority list.

I've now found a few tricks that usually catch the problem before it happens, but the problems occurs every now and then, especially in the reposted articles. I'll eventually find a more or less fool-proof method, but that's the explanation. If you can visualize a quote mark or apostrophe when you see those funny symbols, you'll know what I meant - but you were probably already doing that.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by Dennis Kennedy's legal technology consulting services, featuring RSS and blogging consulting, technology audit, strategic planning and technology committee coaching packages especially for medium-sized law firms (15 - 100 lawyers) and corporate legal departments. More information on the "Second Pair of Eyes" packages for legal technology audits and strategic planning may be found here (PDF).

Posted by dmk at 09:06 PM | Comments (0)

"By Request Day" - Read Any Good Books Lately?

I'm always interested in what books people are reading and what they like. I always try to read books that people recommend to me. Lately, my brother and I have been recommending spy novels and thrillers back and forth. A few years ago, I gave him a Robert Ludlum book and he stayed up all night reading it. That started us on passing books back and forth.

There are two books that I've read recently that I highly recommend for the audience of this blog.

The first is Gerry Riskin's The Successful Lawyer - a great collection of practical wisdom on a variety of subjects involved in the practice of law or any other profession. It's also available with a companion audio CD through the ABA Law Practice Management book store.

Earlier in my career, I had the chance to participate in the Edge Group's rainmaker education program at my law firm. I'd rank it among the very best training I ever received as a lawyer. I mention this because this book includes the core principles from that rainmaking course. They're solid, practical and well-supported by my experience.

The book has 49 short chapters, each of which is packed with a punch and great practical tips. In fact, each chapter is like the conversation you would have liked to have with a mentor or experienced colleague during your career. It's a book that you can read quickly, if you want, but also one that you will want to return to again and again and work through the ideas and exercises in it. Add me to the long list of fans of this book. It'd be a great gift for yourself or for a lawyer you know.

The other book I want to recommend is Bob Burg's Endless Referrals, just out in a third edition. Ironically, I met Bob recently via email when I committed one of the cardinal sins of emailing people you don't know - accidentally using the wrong name in the salutation to the email. Even worse, I didn't realize who Bob was until he sent me a polite reply and we exchanged a few emails and got to know each other a bit.

Finally, I realized that Bob was the author of Endless Referrals, a book that I had found quite valuable when I began my solo career. Bob told me that a new edition of the book was out and asked me if I wanted to get an early review copy. Of course, I would.

Bob sent me a copy and I devoured it in one setting. I think that this is a gem of a book that is required reading for anyone who has customers or clients or works with other people. That, I believe, would be everyone. The book is about principles of business networking, but it goes far beyond that.

The money quote:

"All things being equal, people will do business with, and refer business to, those people they know, like and trust."

Think about blogging in that context.

Like Riskind's book, this book is full of practical information that you can really use, including suggested language for certain conversations. I dog-eared a lot of pages in this book. I was also surprised to see how much of Burg's advice from the earlier editions I had internalized and made part of what I do. Even if you have read the earlier editions, the third edition is still a must-read.

As an aside: I've been sounding out a few people about using Skype chat to create a book group to discuss books like these on a regular basis. Let me know if you might be interested.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog)]

This post brought to you by LexThink!(TM) - The Conference, Re-imagined. LexThink! - Think big thoughts, do cool things, change the world. Ask us about private LexThink retreats and conferences for your firm, business or organization.

Posted by dmk at 08:01 PM | Comments (0)

November 19, 2005

Starting off my Vacation with Ross and Paul

It's nice to take a little vacation.

I started off my vacation visit with my family for Thanksgiving week by speaking with Ross Kodner and Paul Unger at an all-day seminar on legal technology for the Allen County Bar Bar Association. We covered almost every aspect of legal technology during the day and I really enjoyed myself doing the event.

Ross, Paul and I spoke for the same group last year and I believe it was even more fun than last year. As most everyone knows, you won't find anyone more knowledgeable about legal technology and how to present it than Ross is. Paul is also quite knowledgeable and a pleasure to present with.

I took the lead on a digital marketing session and chipped in with a few insights, ideas and tips of my own throughout the day. Well, maybe more than a few, because my voice is gone today. Anyway, the whole day was just a pleasure for me and I left thinking about how genuinely fun the day had been. Thank you Ross, Paul, Maribeth and the other people at the Allen County Bar and all the attendees.

We're back for Thanksgiving visiting my parents, brothers, nieces, nephews and other relatives. I'm planning to take some time to rest and relax and might avoid, to a large extent, the blogosphere and email.

Matt Buchanan of RethinkIP is nearby and we'll probably get together one day this week and that likely means some "rethinking" will be going on. It's unavoidable when you get together with those guys.

But otherwise, I may decide to stay pretty far off the radar for a week or so. I'm sure the blog world will get along just fine without me for a few days.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 11:22 AM | Comments (0)

November 14, 2005

Blawgspace is a Generous Place - Round 2

If you asked me to pick out my favorite blog posts on this blog, I know that a post I wrote in December 2003 called "Blawgspace is a Generous Place" would always, always be on my list and I recommend that you read it.

On my plane ride home from BlawgThink last night I found that when I wasn't looking forward to getting home to my wife and daughter, I was thinking about that post.

There was a session on Saturday morning, which we had called a "Five by Five" where five of the first and best legal bloggers were going to be asked five questions as an introduction to the day of Open Space discussions. Matt and I were to be the moderators. Just before the session, I talked through the way we would handle the moderating with Matt and how my goal was to stay out of the way of our speakers. I was going to ask the first question and we then alternate asking the questions.

Matt surprised me (and for those who saw my surprise, I can assure you it was genuine) by asking the first question and turning the session into a Six by Five by telling me that I was part of the panel when he asked the first question. When he started asking the question, I couldn't believe that he had forgotten the sequence we had talked about moments before. Of course, as soon as I felt a microphone in my hand, I was ready to join right in.

At more points than you can imagine, I looked down the line of speakers - Ernie, Marty, Sabrina, Tom, Carolyn - who I now know so well and have admired so much for so long, and realized that I am the "baby" blogger among them and that I truly felt honored to be with them and thankful for all the help and friendship they've given me and so many others over the years.

The word I also think about with them is "generosity." There is a generosity in sharing information, insights, time, experience, wisdom and friendship. They and the other "First Ones" of legal blogging - we wish that all of the others in that first group of legal bloggers could have been there, especially Denise Howell and Sherry Fowler - created something unique and special in the world of legal blogging. It's something that made me want to be part of it and to carry on, in my imperfect way, the generosity, helpfulness and sharing that they have always shown.

What's really cool is that each succeeding group of legal bloggers have shown that same generosity, a willingness to help others and a tendency to push toward new forms of collaboration. I get so much energy and so many new ideas from the newer bloggers. They are show their own kinds of generosity and also seem to be reaching out to build bridges and create new kinds of relationships. I don't want to mention names (because this post is already long and the young bloggers love to tease me about my tendency to write long posts), but examples would be the role Evan Schaeffer has played in helping law student bloggers and almost everything the RethinkIP guys have done (even teaching me Skype instant messaging so I can hang out with them in real-time).

These days, you can get all wrapped up and even exercised about the blogging phenomenon, blogging as a marketing or even whether everyone should or should not be a blogger. So much so that you can forget that blogging is ultimately about people and people who care about words, getting the word out, about causes and getting the word out, and about helping people and getting the word out.

From BlawgThink, I 'll remember many things, but the ones I'll carry with all involve people and people meeting people.

As just one example, I knew that BlawgThink was going to be the first in person meeting between Ernie and Marty. From the time I first saw Ernie in Chicago, he kept saaying "I can't wait to meet Marty." He kept asking when Marty was getting in and what time we'd get to meet him. I started joking with Ernie that he was acting like meeting Marty was like meeting the one of the Beatles. Ernie said, "No, it's better than that." Of course, even as I teased Ernie, I couldn't keep from saying, "Marty is such a great guy!" and trying to be sure that I was there when they first met in person.

The meeting was magical, in case you wanted to know. And, one of these days soon, we're all getting out to California, or wherever, to get the whole Between Lawyers group together.

It's easy to get over-analytical about blogging. Today, I see blogging as being about good people with good hearts trying to do good things and make this world a little better place who have found a communications tool that works for us. We don't always succeed and blogging may well not be the right tool for everyone, but sitting on that panel Saturday morning made me feel like I had found a great place and a great community of kindred spirits, and that Blawgspace in 2005 was still a generous place.

As I've also said in another of my favorite posts, which referred to the great song "People Get Ready" - you don't need a ticket, just climb aboard.

Thank you to everyone in any way involved with BlawgThink (especially JoAnna), everyone who has helped on inspired me with my blog, and to all the readers of this blog. And to Matt, I think we really did something we can be proud of - there could have been no better partner to work on this than you, my friend.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog)]

blawgthink

Posted by dmk at 12:04 PM | Comments (0)

November 08, 2005

Randy Holloway and I Are Interested in a Big St. Louis Tech Event - How About You?

Randy Holloway at Microsoft is looking for feedback on the idea of staging a low-cost tech event (perhaps on Web 2.0?) in St. Louis. Count me in. It'd be great to have a big, cool tech show in the middle of the country,

Randy says:

"If a free (or very low cost) technology conference were hosted in the St. Louis area (or perhaps at a nearby university), would there be any interest? Something like this takes about 100 people to gain critical mass."

If interested, please respond to Randy's poll or or email at the addresss he gives in this post.

Randy is a great guy and very passionate about blogging, technology and the tech community. You might enjoy the podcast Randy and I did together a few months ago.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by Dennis Kennedy’s consulting services, featuring RSS and advanced blogging consulting and technology committee coaching packages for law firms, corporate legal departments and other professional services providers.

Posted by dmk at 10:14 AM | Comments (1)

October 26, 2005

Al Robert Requests Some Help

Al Robert, an alumni of LexThink 1.0, posts a request for help in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. He's a great guy in a tough spot, as you'll see from his post. I wanted to help get the word out and, if you have ways you can help out, please get in touch with Al. As he suggests, "what a difference a day can make," for any of us, at any time.

It's important to remember that the effects of natural disasters do not end for those directly involved as our memories of the disasters start to recede.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 08:32 PM | Comments (0)

October 11, 2005

The Best Blog Post Title Ever. Really.

Thanks, Cindy. That made my day. The fact is that law librarians are way too underappreciated.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 10:19 PM | Comments (0)

October 06, 2005

NY Gala for Sclerodema

A few weeks ago I spoke at a conference and got to meet one of my fellow speakers, Tony Colleluori, a renowned criminal defense lawyer, a terrific speaker and a multiple blogger (see his criminal defense law blog and That Lawyer Dude). In a short time, I knew that Tony has a heart of gold, cares about the profession of law and his clients in a way that you seldom see these days, and that he absolutely loves his wife. I also had the sense that Tony would be a formidable adversary if you ran up against him in court. In short, he became my favorite criminal defense lawyer.

I mention Tony's wife because she is suffering from scleroderma, a connective tissue disease that greatly limits what she can do.

With hurricanes and other disasters taking center stage in 2005, the Scleroderma Foundation, like many other lesser-known charities, is struggling to raise funds. Its big fund-raiser is its National Gala in New York City.

If you are in NYC and have the chance to attend the Gala, please consider doing so. You'll get your money's worth just hearing Tony tell a few of his stories. If you can put the Scleroderma Foundation on your list of charities for this year, that would be a nice thing, too. If you know people with extra dollars to help a small charity, please mention this to them. I'm sure that Tony would be happy to provide you with more details.

And while you are thinking about this, please consider the Spina Bifida Association, currently chaired by one of my best friends in the blawgosphere, the amazing (but easily-embarrassed by me making this kind of fuss) Doug Sorocco. See Doug's testimony before Congress on quality of life issues for those with spina bifida here.

I've added both charities to my WhatGoesAround GiveList if you'd like an easy way to contribute to them. If you like my blog, one thing that you can consider doing is making a contribution to one of my favorite charities through WhatGoesAround.org - a cool idea and something I prefer rather than having a "tip jar" on this blog.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www,denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 10:56 AM | Comments (0)

October 03, 2005

Practice Makes Perfect

This one might be the most important post I read today or any other day.

Ankesh Kothari on the Marketing Eye blog has a post called "Practice Makes You Perfect," which focuses on the following quote from Pablo Casals on the subject of practice.

From the post:

"Reporter: Mr. Casals, you're 95 and the greatest cellist that ever lived. Why do you still practice six hours a day?

Pablo Casals: Because I think I'm making progress."

I find that inspiring. How about you?

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by Dennis Kennedy's consulting services, featuring RSS and advanced blogging consulting and technology committee coaching packages for law firms, corporate legal departments and other professional services providers.

Posted by dmk at 08:58 PM | Comments (0)

September 28, 2005

Announcing a "Do Not Disturb" Sign for November 15

From the press release:

"Columbia Records will release the 'Born To Run 30th Anniversary Edition' box set on November 15. Personally supervised by Bruce Springsteen and Jon Landau, the box set includes "Hammersmith Odeon, London '75," an astonishing film of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band's legendary 1975 concert at the Hammersmith Odeon in London; the new film "Wings For Wheels: The Making of Born To Run;" the classic album in remastered CD form; and finally, a 48 page booklet of previously unpublished photographs. With its two DVDs, the package offers approximately four hours of previously unseen footage."

Courtesy of my friend Jim McKelly, who monitors these things for me when he's not winning bushel baskets of teaching awards. Perhaps it will be a good day to try a first listening/watching party via Skype chat?

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Posted by dmk at 09:02 AM | Comments (1)

September 27, 2005

"By Request" - What are Your Favorite Blawgs?

There are so many good ones that I hate to make a list because I'll later be kicking myself for leaving a great one out. My 2004 Blawggies award list is still a good starting point.

Your question, however, raises a subject I've been thinking about lately. And that is that there are some extremely good writers among the legal bloggers.

Lawyers are usually thought of as writers of, well, legalese. Lawyer bloggers have done a lot to overcome that stereotype. In some cases, some blawg writers have become such good writers than I enjoy them and recommend them for both the writing and the content.

I just want to highlight a few people and do not intend for this to be a comprehensive list.

I want to point first to my colleagues at the Between Lawyers blog. I've become very familiar with their writing both in their blogs and the amazing back-channel email list we have going.

Consider the following:

Ernest "Ernie the Attorney" Svenson - Ernie's posts have long been a pleasure to read, but if you have any question about Ernie's greatt talent as a writer, you need only take a look at a few of his post-Katrina posts. His post on his first return to New Orleans is a gem - touching and determined. Here's some free advice to book publishers: get Ernie signed up to write a book about his Katrina experiences!

Tom "Inter-Alia" Mighell - Tom has become my favorite person to write with and we're now writing two columns together. Tom has a gift for writting short, direct posts that you might take for granted unless you try to write in that way on a regular basis. I often say that I write long posts because it is so hard to write the types of short posts that Tom does so well.

Marty "The Trademark Blog" Schwimmer - Marty is the master of the short, concise, clever and witty post, with a clear and cogent point. Concise, that is, except when he gets going on "political" issues. Read a selection of his trademark posts and I guarantee that you will be impressed.

Denise "Bag and Baggage" Howell - First of all, Denise is known as the absolute master of writing great titles for posts. Another legal blogger told me the other day that Denise's titles are so great that he gets hooked into reading posts where he's not even interested in the topic. Denise has such a great, comfortable writing style. The other day, though, she wrote a post called "NorCal" that I really, really liked, in a great new voice that reminded me of William Gibson, the cyberpunk novelist, who is one of my favorite authors. I've been bugging Denise to write a novel called "NorCal" in that same style.

If you took a vote among long-time legal bloggers on who the best writers among legal bloggers are, there's no question that Sherry "Stay of Execution" Fowler and Evan "Legal Underground" Schaeffer would be at the top of the list.

Evan is such a strong, accomplished writer. He can write in a number of styles and, amazingly for a lawyer, has even made me laugh out loud (intentionally). His blog is a daily must-read and, as I've said before, he is the legal blogger most likely to be paid for writing movie and TV scripts in the near future.

You need only read a few of Sherry's post before you realize that you are in the presence of a gifted writer. I've long enjoyed Sherry's blog for both her insights and her talent as a writer. Of all the legal bloggers, Sherry has had the most influence on me as a writer (Marty's efforts to get me to be more concise have not had his desired impact), and on other legal bloggers as well. Several years ago, we started calling Sherry the bravest legal blogger because of her willingness to write in a direct and personal manner in ways that others of us were very reluctant to do. I admired that greatly and it gradually inspired me to be willing to experiment with some more personal topics and styles. With Sherry, I always come back to how much I enjoy reading her writing and appreciating her talent. I'm so pleased that she's going to devote herself to her writing and encourage publishers looking for a new star to take a good look at what Sherry is writing.

Ah, another long post, but that will give you some of my thoughts on the subject of legal bloggers who are excellent writers.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by Dennis Kennedy’s consulting services, featuring RSS and advanced blogging consulting and technology committee coaching packages for law firms, corporate legal departments and other professional services providers.

Posted by dmk at 09:25 PM | Comments (0)

"By Request" - How Do I Get an Invitation to BlawgThink?

Some people do not understand the invitation-only approach that we are taking for the LexThink!(tm) BlawgThink event. In part it's due to space constraints, but it it also has to do with our "unconference" approach for this conference and our desire to create the best experience for our attendees that we can.

The first set of invitations have been sent out. With the exception of one rather grumpy law professor, the invitations seem to have been well-received. Just kidding. We invited some of the nicest law professors we know.

We've held some invitations back for sponsors and for a second round of invitations.

All you have to do is get in touch with Matt or me, tell us about your interest and get us your contact info and we'll get you on the list. At this point, we are especially interested in finding non-bloggers who are interested in becoming bloggers (or learning more about blogging) and established bloggers who can provide different perspectives to legal bloggers.

Updates and information on BlawgThink will be provided at the LexThink website, which now contains the agenda for the event. We'll be announcing speakers over the next few weeks.

Also, if you are interested in speaking at or sponsoring BlawgThink, please let us know and we will talk with you about the details.

I hope to see you there, but you will need to request an invitation in order to attend.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by LexThink!(TM) - The Conference, Re-imagined. LexThink! - Think big thoughts, do cool things, change the world. Coming soon - LexThink BlawgThink - the legal blogger unconference.

Posted by dmk at 09:09 PM | Comments (0)

"By Request" - Why Did You Take Most of Your Articles Off Your Website?

Frankly, I made a mistake doing that. Many people told me that I was offering too much free content and I should only offer a few teasers and drive people to buy e-books instead.

I went against my instincts and removed most of them. Now I want to go back to my old approach and probably make some of my PowerPoint slides freely available as well.

What I'm planning to do is to republish most of my favorite articles as individual blog posts to make them part of my blog database. I'll also provide a PDF download option.

I believe it's more valuable to offer a lot of free material on your website, but still provide some options for people to support your efforts through the purchase of convenient collections of materials. That's the approach to which I plan to return.

[Originally published on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by Dennis Kennedy's eBooks - Preparing Your Law Firm for the Internet Era: 150 Steps Toward a 21st Century Practice of Law, Dennis Kennedy’s Legal Technology Primer and Unlocking the Secrets of Legal Technology and Technology Law: Finding Your Way in the First Internet Era.

Posted by dmk at 09:00 PM | Comments (0)

"By Request" - Have You Written Any New Articles Lately?

I get asked this question a lot and I always get a chuckle when I hear it. You see, I've always thought that my blog posts, especially the extended ones, were articles.

I've written quite a few articles this year. I've also written some chapters for a forthcoming book (anthology) on information security.

Tom Mighell and I write the monthly "Strongest Links" column on Law Practice Today. I also write, on average, one article every two months on legal technology or law practice management topics on Law Practice Today.

Tom Mighell, Evan Schaeffer and I are writing a regular "Thinking E-Discovery" column on DiscoveryResources.org.

The other two places my new articles regularly appear are on LLRX.com and Law Office Computing. I'm currently working on an article about software updates for Law Office Computing.

Before the end of the year, I'll be writing my annual legal technology predictions article. I have a few other articles in mind. I expect to write two articles on "client-driven technologies," an article on how the combination of CaseMap 5 and Adobe Acrobat 7 may be the perfect tool set for small electronic discovery cases, and maybe something on either Web 2.0 tools for lawyers or the Open Source licenses. These days, I generally prefer to publish on the Internet, either on LLRX.com or Law Practice Today.

My articles do get republished in print and on the Internet on a regular basis as well, so you never know where you might see an article from me.

And, of course, I'm always willing to write articles and white papers for pay on other topics that interest me.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by Dennis Kennedy's half-day electronic discovery seminar - "Preparing for the New World of Electronic Discovery: Easing Your Transition from Paper to Electronic Discovery." Contact Dennis today for more information and to schedule a seminar for your firm or legal department.

Posted by dmk at 08:47 PM | Comments (0)

"By Request" - Why Did You Add an Email Subscription to Your Blog's Feed If You Are Such an Advocate of RSS?

That's a very fair question. My decision to provide an email subscription option grew out of conversations I was having with Matt Homann, Tom Mighell and the Rethink IP guys on this subject. In fact, we all might have been on a Skype chat where we talked about the topic.

Although I think almost exclusively of the subscribers to my RSS feed as my audience when I write my posts, I also realized that a large number of people visit my blog to read it and still use email, not a newsreader, as their primary information information retrieval tool. I was also getting the occasional question about how to subscribe to my blog by email.

In the Skype conversations I mentioned, people were talking about FeedBlitz as an easy way to provide an email subscription to your RSS feed. When I looked into it, I saw that I could offer a choice of email subscriptions that could include one, two or all of the blogs where I write: DennisKennedy.Blog, Between Lawyers and LexThink. That made it an easy decision to try the experiment of adding the email subscription option that visitors to this blog will see in the left-hand column of the main page.

I still think that using a newsreader to subscribe to my RSS feed is the best way to consume this blog, but I wanted to make the email option since so many people still live in the email world.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Posted by dmk at 08:29 PM | Comments (1)

September 22, 2005

Grace Kennedy's Book Review Published in St. Louis Post-Dispatch

My daughter wrote a short book review for a class assignment that was published (along with one of another of her classmates) in last Sunday's issue of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch - her first print publication. It was part of a cool thing the newspaper is doing to get middle school students to write about what books mean to them.

Regular readers of this blog know that I've posted two of Grace's essays on this blog here and here.

Grace was very excited about this. I was way more excited than I get when my own articles are published. As I've mentioned before, I really like the way her school, The College School, teaches writing and the way they help their students get recognition for their writing.

Because I don't know whether the link to the newspaper site will be permanent, here's the text of the review:

What this book means to me

Grace Kennedy, 7th grade
The College School

[Originally published on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Posted by dmk at 08:00 PM | Comments (0)

September 21, 2005

The ACME Products Catalog

From the the Drawn blog comes a link to an an illustrated catalog listing all of the ACME products that appeared in the classic Warner Bros. cartoons.

From the ACME Atom Re-arranger to the ACME Wild-cat, you'll find it in this great trip down memory lane.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by Dennis Kennedy's eBooks - Preparing Your Law Firm for the Internet Era: 150 Steps Toward a 21st Century Practice of Law, Dennis Kennedy's Legal Technology Primer and Unlocking the Secrets of Legal Technology and Technology Law: Finding Your Way in the First Internet Era.

Posted by dmk at 11:30 PM | Comments (0)

September 13, 2005

Thomas Paine and the Tradition of Blogging

Every now and then, you'll see someone refer to Thomas Paine as a blogger or even as the first blogger.

Now, I'm about as big a fan of the Internet as you'll find, but even I realize that Paine was writing well before the Internet was invented. However, it is tempting to picture Franklin and Paine hacking a line of kites with keys tied to their strings in a thunderstorm to create a broadband connection and sending out RSS feeds.

I mention this because I've just finished reading Harvey Kaye's Thomas Paine and the Promiose of America. It's a good book to add to your reading list in this Age of Blogreason.

I'll note that Kaye does not call Paine the first blogger. His coverage really runs from Paine to Reagan (John Kerry gets one sentence, I believe), so you'll have to draw your own blog parallels, if you choose to do so.

The book works at two levels. First, it does a good job of covering Paine's life and works, highlighting major themes. Second, it explores the legacy of Paine and follows Paine's path from popular Founding Father to being all-but-erased from the history books to re-discovery and adoption by a variety of political figures.

The coverage of the mid to late 1800s can seem a little dry (or maybe that was because I was reading that part late at might), but it's a fascinating tale and history well worth reacquainting yourself with.

The best recommendation of the book is that it made me want to re-read or read for the first time all of Paine's works. I understand why bloggers want to claim Paine and non-bloggers see Paine in the blog world. He stands uniquely both before our time and of our time. Kaye's book makes my list of recommended reads for bloggers.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Posted by dmk at 11:13 PM | Comments (0)

September 12, 2005

"By Request Day" - I Noticed Bruce Springsteen Announced New Concerts. Are You Going to Offer a Discount Again to Customers Who Get You Tickets?

OK, some of you had some fun at my expense because I offered a 10% discount to people who booked my electronic discovery seminar (see link below) at the same time there was a Bruce Springsteen show in town if they got me a good ticket for the show. I'll admit that it was an idea ahead of its time and one not likely to get much traction among law firms. But, you never know.

Well, a new set of concerts has been announced and I'm announcing the same 10% discount offer. Here's the new concert list. Call me for details.

In the meantime, I'll be digging into the new Bruce Springsteen: VH-1 Storytellers DVD, which is a fascinating inside view of an artist's creative process, much like my favorite book of 2004, Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by Dennis Kennedy's half-day electronic discovery seminar - "Preparing for the New World of Electronic Discovery: Easing Your Transition from Paper to Electronic Discovery." Contact Dennis today for more information and to schedule a seminar for your firm or legal department.

Posted by dmk at 10:11 PM | Comments (0)

"By Request Day" - Does Yvonne Divita's Comment That You Are "Human" Help or Hurt Your Reputation as a Lawyer?

Yvonne Divita is a great blogger and a great person. I met her in person at the first LexThink conference and learned a lot from talking to her about her area of expertise: marketing to women. But I had long admired her blog before we met.

Today, she mentioned me and my blog by saying about me: "Dennis Kennedy: lawyer extraordinaire -- mainly because he's human; sorry, Dennis, we had to say it." Let me say that I was triply flattered. First, just by being mentioned by Yvonne on her blog. Second, for being mentioned on a list with some of the bloggers I admire most in the whole darn blogosphere. Third, for the nice comment Yvonne made about me.

Sure 'nuff, though, someone had to ask whether I thought the comment hurt or helped me as a lawyer. I assume the question addresses the "human" comment, not the "lawyer extraordinaire" part.

Now, I have gotten this comment from time to time in my legal career or the common variations: "you're not like other lawyers" or "you're too nice to be a lawyer."

When I ask people what they mean, they'll say things like I'm helpful, or that I care about people, or that I take the time to explain things so they can understand them, or that I'm, well, human.

Damn, what have the rest of the lawyers been out there doing?

As for the question, I'm still naive enough to believe that being considered "human" has to help my reputation. I'm not ready to believe that we live in a world where it hurts it.

So, Yvonne/Jane, no need to apologize. Your comment made my day.

For those interested in a cool effort to humanize lawyers, take a look at the group blog I'm part of called Between Lawyers. I think that Jane might like that blog too.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by LexThink(TM) - The Conference, Re-imagined. LexThink! - Think big thoughts, do cool things, change the world. Coming Soon - LexThink's BlawgThink 2005.

Posted by dmk at 08:52 PM | Comments (1)

"By Request Day" - "When People Say 'He Gets It' What Exactly Do They Mean?

I must confess at this point that I was hoping for some easier questions for my By Request Day.

Interestingly, this question comes from someone who I believe really does "get" it.

This comment, as you note, might have several meanings.

First, it can simply mean that you agree with a point that the person has been saying for years and rarely finds someone who agrees with the point. This may be a good thing or it may be a bad thing, depending on who is doing the talking. It's a mixed blessing when someone whom you otherwise think is a wacko starts slapping you on the back and saying that you "get" it.

Generally, however, I think the term gets used to described someone who is able to see the "bigger picture" and appreciate the context in which his field or subject fits. The comment also suggests that you have some ability to see patterns where others don't realize that they exist. That can be a gift or a curse.

Someone who appreciates the fact that Google currently returns an article on Arnold Schwarzenegger as the first result on a search on "he gets it" probably really does "get" it.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by Dennis Kennedy's half-day electronic discovery seminar - "Preparing for the New World of Electronic Discovery: Easing Your Transition from Paper to Electronic Discovery." Contact Dennis today for more information and to schedule a seminar for your firm or legal department.

Posted by dmk at 08:39 PM | Comments (0)

"By Request Day" - Do You Think RSS WIll Ever Be Adopted by the Legal Masses?

The questioner clarified the original question with: "Will a majority of attorneys ever use an aggregator as a primary means for collecting information?"

Let me answer this one by telling a little story. In the fall of 2003, I wrote an article called "Beating Information Overload with News Aggregators." The article initially appeared in the ABA's Law Practice Management magazine and other places as well.

It's probably my best effort at explaining, in very practical terms, what the benefits of RSS and news aggregators are to lawyers and others.

Here's the punch line: I thought the world would change because of my article and lawyers would flock to using RSS and news aggregators.

Lately, people seem to enjoy telling me that I'm still a year or two ahead of the curve on the use of RSS in law.

So, I'm not sure that I'm the best person to answer this question. If I have anything to do with it, the answer will be yes. I think it may take a lot longer than I initially thought.

I look back at that article from time to time. I consider it one of my best articles. I wish it would have had the impact I thought it might have.

We'll all just have to get the word out about the benefits. Or, perhaps better, take advantage of the benefits and make others curious about the edge we are gaining.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by Dennis Kennedy's consulting services, featuring RSS and advanced blogging consulting and technology committee coaching packages for law firms, corporate legal departments and other professional services providers.

Posted by dmk at 08:24 PM | Comments (0)

By Request Day - What Do You Think of the Law.com Blog Network Parting Ways with Matt Homann?

Note: Yikes! One of the dangers of announcing a "by request day" is getting unexpectedly busy with work and then having my blogging friends taunt me about "where are the by request posts?" I may have to answer the requests over the next few days.

I kind of expected this question. I was out-of-town when Matt Homann posted about Law.com ending his run on the Law.com blog advertising network (a great post, done with humor, insight, and, dare I say, graciousness) and haven't had the chance to post about it in a thoughtful way before now.

As you know, Matt is both a friend and my partner in LexThink, so it should not surprise you that I come down squarely on Matt's side in this one.

First of all, I was surprised that any publishing/media company would take any action that was within even a hundred miles of opening itself to the possibility of criticism that it was basing its decisions on continuing membership in the network on the content of what a blogger was writing or that it might be somehow being punishing Matt for what he said or didn't say. I'm willing to take at face value that Law.com was going in a different direction with its network, that Matt's blog no longer fit that direction, and that nothing more was happening. However, I know a few people who have privately raised some questions and some eyebrows.

By way of disclosure, I was approached by Law.com to join this blog network very early on and was intrigued by the idea. As it turned out, for some of the same reasons that you don't often see my articles appearing in American Lawyer Media publications or on Law.com, we simply could not come to terms on the basic contract. From my point of view, there were some deal-breakers and we quickly decided that it simply wouldn't work out. I can be a real pain in the ass when negotiating on the rights I want to retain in what I write.

We parted on amicable terms - I liked the idea of the network and I suggested other bloggers who I thought might be good candidates for the Law.com network.

Out of that process, I formed a very high opinion of Lisa Stone, who was putting the blog network together, and would be willing to work with her on another project in a heartbeat. In fact, I agree wholeheartedly with the comments Matt made about Lisa in his goodbye post.

Because legal bloggers are looking to "monetize" their blogging efforts, there has always been a lot of interest in the Law.com blog network. For some of the long-time bloggers, however, neither the business model nor the contractual arrangements of the Law.com blog network really work.

However, if you get any group of legal bloggers together, I can almost guarantee that the Law.com blog network will come up as a topic of the conversation in which people are genuinely interested. In every one of these discussions, people will mention several ways that they think that Law.com could improve the network. There is also speculation about when the competitor legal blog networks will develop and what they might look like.

I will always point favorably to Law.com as a first mover and a pioneer in recognizing what was happening in the world of blogs and seeking to create an arrangement that might mutually benefit Law.com and legal bloggers. Bringing in Lisa Stone to put the network together was a brilliant move.

That said, I do have some concerns about what happened with Matt.

If I had been part of the Law.com blog network and Matt would have been let go in the way he was, I would have resigned, noisily, right then and there. That's me - I'm the theatrical kind. I'm not being critical of the other bloggers in the network, because everyone makes their decisions on their own facts and circumstances, but I am surprised at how little mention I can find about Matt's departure by the other bloggers (I was a little lazy in my search, but presumably it would have shown up highly in Google).

Hey, it took me a month to write anything, so I'm no role model, but it does raise the question whether Matt's exit, and the perceived reasons for it, had some kind of "chilling effect" on bloggers in the network. I'd point to Lisa Stone's post as a good way to handle the matter.

I'm now going to be curious and wonder whether anyone else who leaves the network at this time was asked to leave.

Given Matt's personal popularity and the wide respect he has among legal bloggers, I suspect that it will become difficult for Law.com to attract high-profile legal bloggers to its network. That will also open the door wider to potential competitor legal blog advertising networks. Competition is a good thing! I'd be happy to hear from anyone putting together a competitor network, as I 'm sure Matt and other non-Law.com bloggers would be.

Matt's situation also raises a question (and again I'm surprised that this question arises in the context of an arrangement involving a media/publishing business) about what is really expected in terms of content and editorial control when a blogger joins a blogging network, takes sponsorships or otherwise attempts to "monetize" a blog. I believe from now on lawyer bloggers will want to see guarantees that they can write what they want on their blogs. This issue is becoming more important as many legal bloggers, and Matt is just one example, are using their blogs to talk about a variety of topics that may not be considered "law-related" by some.

I honestly don't know every little detail in Matt's situation, but, for the reasons I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I'll accept his version on his blog as the truth for purposes of answering this question. I simply raise some questions, not criticisms, that struck me (and others I have talked with) when I read Matt's post. My best guess is that while Law.com helped legal bloggers take an important first step toward monetizing their blogs, the second and following important steps will be taken by others.

Just my two cents on a $64 question of the day.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by LexThink!™ - The Conference, Re-imagined. LexThink!(tm) - Think big thoughts, do cool things, change the world. Coming soon - LexThink's BlawgThink 2005.

Posted by dmk at 07:36 PM | Comments (0)

September 09, 2005

By Request Day #1: Hey, What Happened to Your By Request Day?

I thought I was giving myself enough flexibility by saying that I'd do a "by request day" either yesterday or today. That wasn't the case.

Work got in the way. Sometimes blogging has to take a second seat.

I'll see if I can do some answers to requests (thanks for sending them in) this weekend. If you have a question for me, email it to me or leave it as a comment.

At least my last two days weren't as bad as this blogger's seem to have been.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by Dennis Kennedy's consulting services, featuring RSS and advanced blogging consulting and technology committee coaching packages for law firms, corporate legal departments and other professional services providers.

Posted by dmk at 08:35 PM | Comments (0)

September 07, 2005

It's Time for Another By Request Day at DennisKennedy,Blog

One of the things I admire about Evan Schaeffer is the large number of continuing featurettes he has on his blog.

The only featurette I've been able to do consistently, and the one for which I've earned the greatest criticism during my blogging career, is my "by request" days. Come to think of it, I think Evan gets criticized for some of his featurettes, too.

Undeterred by my critics, who, not being bloggers themselves, generally seem to have some misconceptions about how blogging is actually done, I've decided to have another "by request" day.

You know the drill. Email me questions you have for me at denniskennedyblog @ gmail.com and I'll do a series of posts answering these questions on either Thursday or Friday.

I have some questions already in the hopper, but you know that I can't resist trying to answer really interesting questions. Of course, I reserve the right to duck certain questions.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by Dennis Kennedy's half-day electronic discovery seminar - "Preparing for the New World of Electronic Discovery: Easing Your Transition from Paper to Electronic Discovery." Contact Dennis today for more information and to schedule a seminar for your firm or legal department.

Posted by dmk at 06:54 PM | Comments (0)

September 01, 2005

The Most Important Post I Read Today: Pollard on Katrina and 9/11

One of my favorite blogs is Dave Pollard's How to Change the World. His post called "Do Events Like 9/11 aand Katrina Make Us Crazy?" has really made me step back and think, as he has captured, synthesized and articulated some of the things I have been thinking about lately. Read it and see what you think, especially his levee analogy. Highly, highly recommended.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).

Posted by dmk at 02:33 PM | Comments (1)

August 31, 2005

Karen Kovacik's Metropolis Burning

Karen Kovacik is one of my most talented friends, a highly-respected poet and someone I'm always pestering to start a blog. She's spent a good deal of time in Warsaw, Poland in the last few years and I've always enjoyed her emails and letters from her stays in Poland.

Her newest book, Metropolis Burning, draws in part on her experiences in Poland and has garnered praise from a number of commentators. Anything Karen writes gets my highest recommendation, so I encourage you to read this book.

For those of you in Indianapolis, Karen is doing a reading on September 9.

{Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by Dennis Kennedy's consulting services, featuring RSS and advanced blogging consulting and technology committee coaching packages for law firms, corporate legal departments and other professional services providers.

Posted by dmk at 06:49 PM | Comments (0)

Hurricane Help - Starting Points (or New Orleans Relief, part 2)

Glenn Reynolds has a great list of organizations you can donate to for assistance in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

B.L. Ochman and Evan Schaeffer recommend the Red Cross as your best choice.

I have not yet seen or heard of systems being set up via Amazon or elsewhere as happened after the tsunami, but would be surprised if we do not see that.

Ernie the Attorney's most recent posts are highly recommended to give you a flavor of what is happening.

If you go to Technorati, you can set up a watchlist (with an RSS feed) to view reports from bloggers and other news updates in one place.

Denise Howell has also pointed to the National Geographic's list of relief organizations.

From the Slidell Hurricane Damage Blog is a reference to a special Craigslist site for New Orleans related to relief and other efforts. A bit more detail on the same topic can be found ont the Lifehacker blog.

There is also a Katrina Aftermath blog that will probably provide good information and resources. Note the recent post about how spammers hit the contact email shortly after the site launched.

Robert Scoble has another good collection of pointers to news and resources. Among them is PoynterOnline, which among other things, points to this useful Guidestar database.

If words don't convince, then John Robb has pointed to a collection of pictures that might.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 05:28 PM | Comments (0)

New Orleans Relief, part 1

I'm planning to collect and post a set of links about ways to help out with the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

For now, however, my biggest relief is that my friend and blogging colleague Ernie Svensen has gotten out New Orleans safely. The posts on his blog about his experience are both touching and compelling. The last email he sent to our private Between Lawyers email list when he first tried to evacuate was harrowing at the time and frightening accurate in the aftermath. I'm very happy that he's out of the city now.

Although lawyers don't often reveal personal feelings, I will admit that I worried greatly over the last few days about Ernie once I learned that he had not been able to evacuate before the storm hit.

It's difficult to comprehend what it means for a major US city to be out of business and all-but-vacant for what may be a period of months.

I will try to post links to relief and other efforts and point to ways people can help.

I was also asked to help publicize the following press release:

"THE ABA WILL HELP HURRICANE VICTIMS

WASHINGTON, D.C., Aug. 30, 2005 – As the eyes of the nation remain focused on the hurricane-ravaged southeastern United States, especially Mississippi and Louisiana, the American Bar Association stands ready to assist those injured by Hurricane Katrina.

FEMA is now in the process of establishing a hotline staffed by ABA volunteer lawyers to assist victims in each affected state. A complete listing of the FEMA hotlines and other available legal resources will be posted on the ABA Web site, www.abanet.org, in the coming days."

While legal services are obviously not the first priority at the moment, there are many other things that lawyers and other readers of this blog may be able to do to help. I recommend staying tuned to Ernie's blog for his reports and insights into the situation.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskenney.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 12:46 PM | Comments (1)

August 26, 2005

Doing My Part to Make the Blawgosphere a Bit More Wry

I returned from the recent ILTA conference and noticed today two blog posts I seem to have inspired.

First, Alex Lubarsky returned from a bit of a hiatus with a great post on electronic discovery issues on his Alextronic Discovery blog. The post mentions that I got to meet Alex at ILTA and notes a comment that I made that was part of the reason that Alex got back to posting on his blog. I appreciate that Alex noticed the wryness of my comment to him. Although I'm flattered, I'll take his kind words calling me a "blawger legend" with a shot of wry.

Second, no list of the very best legal bloggers is complete without the name of Evan Schaeffer on it. I'm honored to have played a small part in Evan's decision to take up blogging. Evan has a new post that he notes was inspired by me in which he wryly discusses at some length the use of the F-word in legal pleadings and his own personal history of using the word in his writing. I'll note, in my own wry way, that I'm flattered to be the inspiration for the post, I think.

All of which reminds me to mention the new "Thinking E-Discovery" column (first column here) that Evan, Tom Mighell (a true blawger legend whose blog just celebrated its third birthday) and I are writing on the DiscoveryResources.org site. By the way, I'll note in a wry way, the only use of an F-word you'll see in our column will be the word "forensics" or the word increasingly being uttered by lawyers who lose cases because they know nothing about about electronic discovery.

Hey, it's great to be back home after a long trip. I'll be writing about some of what I learned at ILTA in the near future.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by Dennis Kennedy's half-day electronic discovery seminar - "Preparing for the New World of Electronic Discovery: Easing Your Transition from Paper to Electronic Discovery." Contact Dennis today for more information and to schedule a seminar for your firm or legal department.

Posted by dmk at 08:07 PM | Comments (0)

August 13, 2005

Metallica Redux

There certainly seems to be no middle ground on my now infamous Metallica post. Some consider it one of their favorites of all my blog posts, while others treat it as the poster child for what not to post on a "professional" blawg because it, horrors, dares to bring in the "personal" element into a "professional" blog. Ironically for the latter group, my post, in part, is about the differences between speaking in an authentic voice and using a calculated and managed voice.

I noted this morning that VH1 tonight is replaying Metallica: Some Kind of Monster. Here's your chance to re-read my post and see the movie that inspired it. Or you can stick to reading only those oh so professional, mono-topically focused blogs. You know what I'd do.

[Originally published on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by LexThink!(TM) - The Conference, Re-imagined. LexThink! - Think big thoughts, do cool things, change the world.

Posted by dmk at 08:01 AM | Comments (0)

August 08, 2005

Racing in the Street (A First Draft)

Regular readers of DennisKennedy.Blog will be familiar with the recent story line in which my friend Jeff and I decided that we had to try to get tickets to see Bruce Springsteen in both St. Louis and Milwaukee and then successfully got great tickets in both cities. Our plan, which we accomplished, was to take our wives to the St. Louis show (for which we had 4 tickets) and then go to the Milwaukee show (where we had two tickets) as a boys' night out. It was a complicated strategy, requiring coordination of trips to and from St. Louis, Milwaukee and Rockford, Illinois.

As someone once said, mission accomplished.

To our credit, both Jeff and I will admit that there is a certain amount of youthful impulsiveness to our plan and we recognize that some people have quite puzzled looks when they heard what we planned to do. In fact, Jeff's kids asked their mom if their dad had turned into some kind of groupie. On the other hand, it's always good for your children and your friends to understand that there are some things that you are really passionate about. Hey, we've been going to Springsteen concerts for more than 25 years.

As I was driving back from Rockford today, I had the chance to think about the two concerts and my reactions to them.

First, I had to note that, somewhat ironically, our boys' night out concert in Milwaukee ended up with both of us wishing we would have have two extra tickets for our wives. When we left the Bradley Center, one of the first things Jeff said was "Dawn would have really liked this show." In my case, Springsteen played one of his true rarities, "All That Heaven Will Allow," which is the first song Colleen and I danced to at our wedding reception. Heck, I would have liked to have my wife, my daughter and all of my friends with whom I've ever seen a show in the past or would want to in the future be there.

You might want to look at the set list for St. Louis and Milwaukee, or even the newspaper reviews for the St. Louis show.

The long-time fan will realize immediately that the set lists are nothing short of astonishing, with several rarities and a number of tour debuts.

Seeing two shows in two nights also helped me understand the bigger picture and the thematic structure to these shows. More on that later.

If I would have only seen the St. Louis show, I would have simply said that it was one of the best of all the shows I've seen. We had the best seats I've ever had for a Springsteen show and the show had nothing but highlights. My intuition that "Backstreets" would make an appearance proved to be right on target and it was a show-stopper. We also got some of my favorites like "Two Hearts" and "Lucky Town" and thorough treatment of the songs from Devils and Dust. Springsteen's virtuosity as a musician and performer was on display all night and you couldn't help but marvel at his approach to making a one-person show consistently visually, sonically and esthetically compelling. I learn to so much and am inspired at so many levels when seeing one of his shows.

So, move ahead a day and Jeff and I are driving to Milwaukee. My thought was that the St. Louis show was about as good as it gets. I hoped the Millwaukee show would be as good, but thought mainly about how it might be different. What I didn't expect, and honestly could not comprehend because I honestly did not see room for much improvement, was that the Milwaukee show would not only be different but also markedly better, taking things to a whole nother level, as they say.

Anyway, Jeff and I are talking about the prospects for the show. Our mutual feeling is that we are along for the ride and that whatever he does will be great. I venture the prediction that we might get a "Racing in the Streets." Jeff, although he thinks it will be unlikely, repeats his wish that he would get to see a version of "Point Blank." We run through a couple of other possibilities, but mainly we are just two happy guys who are getting to see a second show. We also figure that the "Backstreets" and "Two Hearts" we got the previous night probably at least make us even with our friend Jim who got to see a version of "The Promise" in Cincinnati.

Now let me describe what happened:

1. Shut Out The Light - Here's a song no one could have predicted as an opener. A rare song that I've always really liked. Played on the pump organ to set up bookends with the closing song.

2. Reason To Believe - This other-worldly version of this song amazes me in both its concept and its power. In the album version, this dark song talking about people finding a reason to believe seemed only to offer a sense of hope in the music itself, not the lyrics. In the live version, Bruce deconstructs the song - to the extent you might have found something uplifting in the music, that has been replaced by a blues; the lyrics are sung through a voice synthesizer, giving them a sense of even greater alienation; and the lighting and the performance itself is other-worldly. I find this version incredibly powerful (and, interesting, it also serves the purpose of making the audience more receptive and quieter during what is to come). Jeff had seen this version a few months and go and had talked about its meaning. His idea, which I like a lot, is that by breaking away the pieces of the song which on the album could be interpreted to show why you might have a reason to believe and lighting the stage in red, Springsteen was emphasizing the negative elements - that there is an evil in the world and that your reason to believe or faith must come out of your dealing with the evil in the world. I'm intrigued by that interpretation, but it struck me too that this version of the song forces you to address the question of what gives you a reason to believe in a world where the traditional moorings you have relied on are broken, distorted and all but unrecognizable. It's the question, or the questioning, that's important. That sets up the two songs that close the show.

3. Devils & Dust - This is a great song. What if we are facing just devils and dust, even if God is on our side? I like the way this song works with Jeff's interpretation of RTB.

4. My Father's House - A rare gem. A treat to get to hear this one. Jeff has elbowed me and said, wow, two out of the first four are new ones for the tour.

5. Long Time Comin' - This song has grown on me greatly in two nights. Springsteen talks about his own children and the lyrics here have quite a wallop for any parent. In the course of two nights, Bruce has done an interesting thing: although the song is clearly done in a character's voice, Bruce talks about how he might be too cocky in his payoff line: "I ain't gonna fuck it up this time" and, after talking about changing the line in St. Louis, sings the line as "I hope I ain't gonna fuck it up this time." By the way, you do get some adult language in this show.

6. Frankie - Oh my God! Frankie is probably my favorite of all of the obscure non-album songs. It's rarely been play at any time. I might have even mention it to Jeff as something that it wasn't even worth thinking about because the odds of it being played were to great. The show has just entered the realm of magic and I'm starting to wonder if it really is possible that the second show could be better than the first.

7. Back In Your Arms - A reprise of the opener from St. Louis. I'm really liking this song. I'm starting to wish Colleen had come with me.

8. Ain't Got You - I had been thinking about "She's the One" all day. Ain't Got You is in the "She's the One" family. Played on the coolest white guitar.

9. State Trooper - Can't imagine a better version.

10. Nebraska - Four out of the first ten songs from Nebraska! Another rare treat. I really had no idea what could follow the crescendo that had been created.

11. Reno - Now I see that this song is one of the structural points of the show. It's not that it is a logical follow-up to Nebraska, but it's a return to the show's structure - a touch-point. I'm somewhat uncomfortable with this song, more so because it is a story-song than because of its sexual explicitness, which is also somewhat discomforting. I've made some peace with the song, though, because I like it's use of a film-noir style of flashback and visual imagery (hotel blonds, e.g.)

12. All That Heaven Will Allow - Bruce notes that the show has gotten a little dark and he needs to prove that he is a guy who writes happy songs. As I mentioned, performances of this song are extremely rare and it was the song we chose for our wedding. I would be the guy with tears running down his face. Very emotional moment.

13. Point Blank - I think I heard Jeff gasp. All of the comments I've read about the show point to this song as a highlight. We saw one of the earliest performance of this song at a concert in 1978 and the song is powerful just in itself and for the memories it evokes. I'm thrilled that Jeff's wish came true.

14. Racing In The Street - Several people designated me to participate in that music survey thingy that a bunch of bloggers did. To be honest, I couldn't have even limited myself to a top 5 Springsteen songs, let alone a top 5 of all songs, so I've never done the survey. If you forced me to pick one Springsteen song as my favorite, this song would be one of the finalists and might be the winner. It touches the great mystery in a subtle and endlessly fascinating way, ultimately proving more interesting to me because of its indirectness than the more direct "Something in the Night," another song that I really like.

15. The Rising - My opinion of this song keeps going up. I like the whole The Rising album (and would love to have heard the acoustic blues version of "Counting on a Miracle"), but if we only get one, this is a great one to get. And, hearing "Nothing Man" the night before was another rare treat.

16. Darkness On The Edge Of Town - Yet another version of this song. This one, back on guitar, may be the best of all.

17. Jesus Was An Only Son - Part lecture, part song, derived from the version he did on VH1 Storytellers, this is nothing but great.

18. Leah - A beautiful, beautiful song. If I could learn only one song to play well on guitar, I'd be more than happy for it to be this one.

19. The Hitter - Not my favorite on the new album and another story song, I've grown to appreciate it more. Interestingly, it has some of the out-of-body imagery that you find in Reno. That continuing sense of other-worldliness, of being separated from what is stable, trusted and what you are accustomed to.

20. Matamoras Banks - Another story song, which keeps me a bit detached (by this, I mean that I basically learn the story - it has a beginning and end - and that it becomes to easy to focus on and grow tired of the narrative over time). Here Springsteen makes a political comment about the need for a humane immigration policy that is more strongly made by the song. After the build to this point, the last two songs don't seem to have the energy to cap off the show, but the version of Matamoras Banks is a beautiful one and definitely appreciated by the audience. Today, I began to think about the theme of connection that runs through this show and understood how MB really works well as a thematic capper. The sense of alienation set out by "Reason to Believe" reaches a nadir of sorts in a song about someone who dies in the effort to cross over into a new kind of connection.

(encore)

21. Open All Night - Amazingly, the fifth song from Nebraska. A rocking, cool version that's a great encore stopper.

22. Growin' Up - You've gotta be kidding me. Another special and rare treat.

23. Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street? - The show now seems almost historic with a second song from the first album. Fascinating line: "What's the dope? The dope is there's still hope."

24. The Promised Land - The first three songs are encore songs. Now, we turn to the two-song set conclusion. Here I think the thematic circle gets closed. In this version, this well-loved classic gets slowed-down and each line of the lyrics emphasized. The guitar is turned into a percussion instrument. The performance is both virtuoso and shocking innovative. I'm not sure what else it is like. So, here we have arrived at deconstructed "Promised Land." What does "promised land" mean in today's world? Reason to believe? Promised land? What have we gotten ourselves into? What do we teach and pass on to our children in a world that has stopped making sense to us? Where have we come to?

25. Dream Baby Dream - The resolution, perhaps. In recent tours, Bruce has closed with one of my favorite songs - Land of Hope and Dreams. That song now seems incongruous for where we may now find ourselves. Reluctantly, it has to go. What replaces it is an astonishing parallel "Reason to Believe," in its own way as other-worldly and strange (it's not the closer anyone could expect - I'm not sure how many people would have the vision to conceive, image and produce this performance and then have the courage to actually do it). A simple description will not do it justice. It is repetitive, like an incantation, almost shamanistic. You will not see anything like this at any other concert you will be going to this year. The phrase "dream baby dream" and similar phrases are repeated over and over in a swirling fashion, layered over a earth-shaking swirling pump organ soundtrack. It builds and builds until Bruce walks off the stage and the unattended organ finsihes the song. Then the lights come up and the show is over. It is disconcerting as hell, but it does present an answer to reason to believe. The answer is in the questioning, the mystery, the courage to face it and give voice to efforts, to search, to test, to put out in front of the world what you have, at least so far. Ultimately, it's about using your voice, your creativity and your art to deal with any increasingly alien world of terror, fear despair and a sense of brokenness and to create a new world through communication and new connections.

Summer is here and the time is right
To go blogging in the street.

Jeff: Thanks for talking me into going to these concerts.

Note: This is a first draft that was posted without editing and probably will be revised, cleaned up or otherwise changed in the future. Typos, alas, probably made it through to the published post.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 11:08 PM | Comments (0)

August 03, 2005

Anticipating a Springsteen Show

One of the cool things about the Internet is being able to track the Bruce Springsteen tour as it tracks toward my town thanks to the great Backstreets website (how about an RSS feed, though?). The last few shows have been jaw-droppers for long-time fans and I can't wait until I hear from my friend Jim about the Cincinnati show. I assume that he will be speechless for a few more days after seeing a performance of "The Promise."

The money quote from that one, by the way, is:

"When the promise is broken you go on living
But it steals something from down in your soul
Like when the truth is spoken and it don't make no difference
Something in your heart goes cold"

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by Dennis Kennedy’s eBooks - Preparing Your Law Firm for the Internet Era: 150 Steps Toward a 21st Century Practice of Law, Dennis Kennedy’s Legal Technology Primer and Unlocking the Secrets of Legal Technology and Technology Law: Finding Your Way in the First Internet Era.

Posted by dmk at 08:50 PM | Comments (0)

July 28, 2005

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

There's nothing like finding a good spy thriller novel to read for the summer. Oops, this one may well be the real story.

I really enjoyed Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins, which I found in the new books section at my local library when i was looking for some good summer reading. It gives an insider's view of recent economic history and US dealing with what we tend to call the Third World.

Perkins posits the theory that what he calls the corporatocracy has led to more troubling results than any conspiracy we might imagine.

What's an "economic hit man"? Perkins says: "Economic hit men are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars."

I found this a good summer read that makes you think and go hmmm from time to time. I'll let others debate the "truth" of all this - I recommend it for the summer reading list, if only to get one answer to that question, "why do so many in the rest of the world seem to hate the United States?"

[Originally published on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by Dennis Kennedy's eBooks - Preparing Your Law Firm for the Internet Era: 150 Steps Toward a 21st Century Practice of Law, Dennis Kennedy’s Legal Technology Primer and Unlocking the Secrets of Legal Technology and Technology Law: Finding Your Way in the First Internet Era.

Posted by dmk at 09:13 PM | Comments (0)

July 27, 2005

The End of an Era in American Industry

My Dad would not want anyone to make any fuss over this, but I learned last night that today is my Dad's last day of working and he is now officially retiring.

We all knew that he wasn't going to stop at age 65, nearly 4 years ago. Early this year, my Mom said that Dad was talking about actually retiring. Then Dad said something about it. Then we heard maybe the end of July. Then we heard that he had actually gotten the paperw to fill out.

As I mentioned, Dad wants no fuss over this and I'll say simply that Dad's retirement is well-earned and that, obviously, much of my work ethic and attitudes about work, working hard and doing good work were learned from my Dad and his example.

It'll be interesting to see what Dad does in his retirement. He just bought a 1953 Ford pickup to restore and my brothers apparently have plans to get him involved in some of their projects. My daughter has some plans to get him to teach her how to weld one of these days when we get back to visit them in Indiana. However, I suspect that Dad might take a day or two to relax.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www,denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by Dennis Kennedy’s consulting services, featuring RSS and advanced blogging consulting and technology committee coaching packages for law firms, corporate legal departments and other professional services providers.

Posted by dmk at 09:21 PM | Comments (1)

July 26, 2005

A Big Thank You to Canada

I want to send a big thank you to Canada for sending a big cold front down that broke the back of the hellacious heat wave we've had in St. Louis.

This morning, I rode my bike very early in the morning and felt that it was the most uncomfortable day yet. This evening, my daughter and I caught the leading edge of the cold front as we picked up a pizza. Disappointingly, the leading edge hadn't reached our house by the time we got home (about 2 miles away). A few minutes later, the wind started and the temperature dropped a good ten degrees. Yes, that was me dancing around the front yard.

After the last many brutally hot days (including those days where the forecast predicted a heat index of 125 degrees(!)), it was very welcome relief.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by Dennis Kennedy's half-day electronic discovery seminar - "Preparing for the New World of Electronic Discovery: Easing Your Transition from Paper to Electronic Discovery." Contact Dennis today for more information and to schedule a seminar for your firm or legal department.

Posted by dmk at 10:27 PM | Comments (1)

July 25, 2005

Why Aren't Kids Going into IT (or Law) These Days?

Mitch Wagner at Information Week has set off a fascinating discussion that, frankly, has some profound implications, with his blog post "Why Kids Aren't Getting Into IT."

The money quote:

"Kids these days are worried about money and survival, in a way that we haven't seen since before the baby boom. The kids who will enter college in a few weeks are kids who turned 14 when the planes hit the World Trade Center. They spent most of their adolescence, the time when kids get ready to enter the world of adulthood, learning about terrorism, war, the economic downturn, outsourcing, layoffs, increasing deficits, the health-care crisis--am I leaving anything out here? They resemble, in outlook, the generation that grew up in the Depression and fought in World War II. They grew up knowing the world is a scary place."

I don't know if Mitch is right, worng or somewhere in between, but his post prompted quite a discussion in the comments section and it strikes me that he raises some questions that we all should be spending a lot more time thinking about these days.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by LexThink!™ - The Conference, Re-imagined. LexThink! - Think big thoughts, do cool things, change the world.

Posted by dmk at 12:16 PM | Comments (0)

July 06, 2005

More Blog Postings from Dennis Kennedey - Between Lawyers and LexThink

This blog is not my only blogging effort these days. Please check out the two other blogs where I post on a regular basis - the Between Lawyers blog and the LexThink blog.

On Between Lawyers, I probably had a little too much fun, along with making some serious comments, while discussing the current Supreme Court vacancy.

On LexThink, I've been posting on a variety of recommended readings on innovation and related topics. There's some great material that I've mentioned on the LexThink blog lately.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by Dennis Kennedy's half-day electronic discovery seminar - "Preparing for the New World of Electronic Discovery: Easing Your Transition from Paper to Electronic Discovery." Contact Dennis today for more information and to schedule a seminar for your firm or legal department.

Posted by dmk at 09:00 PM | Comments (0)

July 04, 2005

Independence Day Readings

I've gotten into the habit of re-reading the Declaration of Independence on July 4. I have thoughts about that today on Between Lawyers.

I'm not sure why I've begun to do this. In one sense, I assume that I do so because I think that it still speaks to me or, at least, that I think that it should still be speaking to me. In another sense, I'm interested in its vitality and the nergy that lives in the words. Lately, I'm fascinated by the act of courage that it embodies and the way that it shows that there are times and places where the course of events makes it imperative that you do things your own way.

Recommended reading if you have a few free moments today. Or, like me, you might decided to make the time and take a few minutes out of your day to read it. Think about it.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by LexThink!(tm) - The Conference, Re-imagined. LexThink! - Think big thoughts, do cool things, change the world.

Posted by dmk at 08:22 AM | Comments (0)

June 28, 2005

Springsteen on the Floor - Part 2

For those of you who were curious . . . .

Doctor Jeff and I had great luck on Saturday, landing sixth row, orchestra pit tickets for the St. Louis Springsteen show. These are the best seats I've ever gotten for a Springsteen concert. Our results for the Milwaukee and St. Louis shows almost make up for the terrible luck we've had for the last few tours.

For those of you who like to keep track of these things, my best reserved seats for concerts have probably been:

second row, right in the center, for John Cougar Mellencamp; second row for the Joe Strummer version of the Clash; second row for Neil Young on his great tour with the country band, the International Harvesters; fourth row for Midnight Oil; and fourth row for Neil Young's "grunge" tour. I'm probably forgetting something that a friend of mine will remind me about.

This doesn't count the results of various efforts to work my way to the front of shows, especialy in the days of festival floor seating before the Cincinnati Who concert tragedy (like others of my age, I do know someone who was knocked to the ground in that incident, but fortunately was not hurt). I'm also not counting shows in very small venues.

There are, of course, plenty of not-so-good seats on my concert list.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

This post brought to you by Dennis Kennedy’s eBooks - Preparing Your Law Firm for the Internet Era, Dennis Kennedy’s Legal Technology Primer and Unlocking the Secrets of Legal Technology and Technology Law.

Posted by dmk at 10:00 PM | Comments (0)

June 24, 2005

Like Burningbird, We're Burning in St. Louis

Shelley Powers accurately captures the today's summer feeling here in St. Louis in her post "Don't Visit St. Louis." It's demoralizing and a little dangerous. This afternoon, My daughter and I drove over to the bookstore and passed two banks with signs indicating the temperature was 105 degrees. And it's that wet, humid kind of heat. Apparently no relief in the forecast.

Steve Nipper was in town yesterday at the rethink(ip) tour made its second stop in St. Louis in recent weeks. Doug Sorocco was here a few weeks ago. We got a few hours to have a great conversation, but I think that Steve experienced enough summer weather to be in hurry to get back to Idaho.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 08:11 PM | Comments (2)

June 23, 2005

Summer Reading Recommendation - Stealing History

I finished reading Roger Atwood's Stealing History: Tomb Raiders, Smugglers, and the Looting of the Ancient World last night and recommend it as a good book to add to your summer reading list.

It's a sad and compelling story about the staggering level of looting of ancient graves and archaeological sites, giving both some history and a glimpse at the unprecedented level of plundering of cultural heritage of countries, the loss of knowledge of ancient civilizations and the trade that facilitates it all. What are we doing to ourselves? This is stuff that we all need to know about.

A rain forest here, a previously unknown civilization there - pretty soon it adds up to something tragic.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 09:35 PM | Comments (0)

June 21, 2005

Scott Brewer, Indianapolis Poetry Reading

It's been one of those stretches lately where I keep hearing from my college friends.

My friend and Indiana poet Scott Brewer sent me a press release about his new book of poetry and a reading scheduled for next week in Indianapolis. I can guarantee that Scott will do a great reading - he was a great actor in college theater, with tremendous presence, and his performance in a theatrical version of Rashomon was as good as anything I've ever seen on stage. He was also known to slip into verse when hurling insults (and the occasional firecracker) at other friends across the courtyard at our fraternity house on otherwise quiet evenings in battles of words that became legendary, so perhaps this poetry thing is not so surprising.

In other words, Scott is a good friend and a great guy and I'm thrilled as can be about this new turn in his career and his return to the arts.

If you are in Indianapolis, take the time to check out Scott's show, tell him I sent you, and ask him how he got the nickname "Buck." I wish I could be there.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The Big Car Gallery and the Poetry Alliance of Indy collaborate for local poets reading and book release event on the 26th of June.

A local poets reading and book release party for Indiana Instinct - Everyday Blues a book of poems by local author Scott Brewer, will be held on Sunday afternoon, June 26th from 4 pm to 7 pm at the Big Car Gallery <http://bigcar.org/pr/>. The gallery is located on the second floor of the Murphy Arts Building, 1043 Virginia Ave., Suite 215, in Indianapolis. Scott is a member of the Poetry Alliance of Indy <http://www.webspawner.com/users/poetryjam/> and received a 2005 Indiana Arts Commission Individual Artist Project grant to publish his first book.

Brewer has been writing poetry for 10 years, and has taught poetry workshops for the Education Center of Tipton County. He is a member of the Writer’s Center of Indiana. The subjects of the poetry found in Indiana Instinct - Everyday Blues range from love, family, and friends to art, music, and other poets from an Indiana viewpoint.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskenedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 11:20 AM | Comments (0)

June 20, 2005

On the March with General Sherman

I've been spending most of my spare time in recent days immersed in reading the two volumes of General W. T. Sherman's highly-regarded memoirs. I read the presumably definitive Library of America edition, which has much to recommend it, except that I wish they would have bumped up the font size a notch or two.

I found the memoirs absolutely compelling and recommend them to anyone wishing to take on a big reading project (over 1,000 pages) that will greatly reward you for the effort.

I have not written yet about the recently-concluded season of "24," but there was a fascinating parallel in the way that Sherman barely had a chance to rest after ending the war before he was under heavy attack from politicians with their own agendas.

A few other observations:

1. Over and over, I was struck with the notion that here is the portrait of the truly competent man, one who gets things done.

2. I was fascinated by the Sun Tzu-ian way that Sherman's genius at strategy was revealed in the battles he did not fight. Time after time, you see him approach entrenched, well-positioned and fortified forces, and then maneuver in ways that the opposing forces retreat from those seemingly superior positions.

3. Although Sherman's reputation for "telling it like it is" is well-deserved, I was also struck by his generosity. How many famous people would prepare a second edition of their memoirs with the goal of correcting mistakes and allowing people who disagreed with his interpretation of events to submit their stories and printing them in that second edition? In an odd sense, the appendix to the memoirs almost feels like a comments section of a blog.

4. Sherman also seemed to be one of those people who was everywhere and knew everyone in the 19th century and the memoirs abound with fascinating stories of the California Gold Rush and a variety of other events and figures in addition to the compelling story of his war years.

The money quote (for me):

"Some men think that modern armies may be so regulated that a general can sit in an office and play on several columns as on the keys of a piano; this is a fearful mistake. The directing mind must be at the very head of the army - must be seen there, and the effect of his mind and personal energy must be felt by every officer and man present with it, to secure the best results. Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster."

Sherman's work has application in many areas, but I hope that people at the Pentagon are still reading this one, along with John Robb's Global Guerillas. I didn't plan this, but so far this year I've been reading a lot on military strategy - Alexander the Great, Patton, John Boyd and now Sherman.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 09:35 AM | Comments (0)

Springsteen - On the Floor

My pal Doctor Jeff saw the Chicago stop on the current Bruce Springsteen tour and raved about it. He got in touch with me when the new US tour dates were announced and said that we had to try to see the shows in St. Louis and Milwaukee.

A quick look at the recent set lists shows why. That, and a 27 year tradition since the first Springsteen concert I attended - a magical show at Notre Dame in 1978.

So, Jeff and I, more like a couple of college kids than the seasoned professional services providers that we are, were on the Ticketmaster website ready to go on Saturday morning and talking on the cell phone so we could make a snap judgment about the quality of the seats we might get and whether to forego poor seats at Milwaukee to roll the dice on concentrating on St. Louis tickets next Saturday.

After a few failed attempts, Jeff says, "I got floor seats." We decided to take them. 19th row on the floor - some of the best seats I’ve had for a concert in quite a while.

However, there's always room to improve, and we'll see what we can do for the St. Louis show when tickets go on sale next Saturday.

I'm starting to get the bug for this tour. Here's my new discount. If you book my half-day electronic discovery seminar and provide me with a good seat for a Springsteen show in your city on the evening before the seminar, I'll waive my travel expenses. The tour calendar is here.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 09:04 AM | Comments (1)

June 14, 2005

By Request Tuesday - What Do You Think About The Recent Discussion And Interpretations Of The Legal Marketing And Advertising Rules As They Apply To Blogs?

To be honest, I find them impossibly confusing. I generally write about this issue on Between Lawyers, but since you asked, I'll take a stab at it here.

By way of background, I think I first started speaking about legal ethics rules for web pages back in 1996 or 1997, so I have some history on these topics. I think that the web page rules evolved in a fairly straight-forward way, with a few standard requirements, usually being the placement of some disclaimer language.

What concerns me is that there appears to be a trend of not treating blogs under the web page rules, as would be logical, amd instead treating them as some new kind of animal.

Personally, I see the debate from the academic viewpoint. My blog is, as I say repeatedly, an experiment in writing. It has nothing to do with my legal practice – ask the legal marketing people if they recommend writing about Metallica documentaries and NASCAR to advertise a legal practice. To the extent I use my blog to promote anything, I promote my speaking and consulting businesses.

In fact, lately I have done all my law-related posts to Between Lawyers, which is an educational and, hopefully, an entertainment vehicle, not a law practice marketing or advertising vehicle.

Some people do not understand why I have taken this approach. Allow me to illustrate. At the recent Missouri Solo and Small Firm Conference, I had a discussion with the main education specialist for my legal malpractice carrier about whether a Missouri lawyer may do legal work for non-Missouri clients under the current or future multi-jurisdictional practice rules. Most lawyers will know what the answer was.

If I used my blog to "advertise" my legal practice, I'd simply get inquiries from clients whose work I couldn't take. The current ethics rules make it all-but-impossible as a practical matter to refer work to another attorney and try to take a referral fee – the reasons are far to complex to get into while sitting in a drum store - so there's no reason to try that approach.

As a result, I've decided not to mention my law practice on my blog. I market the law practice in non-Internet ways in Missouri, although I provide standard information on my website, as I have done for almost ten years.

The recent discussion and interpretation have given me concern that I still might not be doing enough and that the mere fact that I am a lawyer who writes a blog will make me subject to a regime of rules designed for lawyers who run yellow page ads, billboards and the like.

As I said, I find it all confusing and hope that, as was the case with web pages, there is a move toward clear and easy to follow rules.

As an interesting aside on this whole legal advertising rule, I'll note that when I was in large firms, my friends in small firms complained all the time that there was one set of ethical rules (as they were enforced) for big firms and one set for small firms. I used to laugh at them and tell them to chill out. Now, I find that I'm talking like they were.

Here's an example. I received a blow-in card with a publication that was an ad for the Orrick law firm.

The ad had a very large green "$O" and then made a reference to how they "win cases" in the first sentence.

As you probably know, the recent talk about blogs has focused on creating unreasonable expectations of results, mentioning past successes, and unsubstantiated factual comparisons.

I admire Orrick for being willing to prepare and use an ad that seems to go right in the teeth of the type of reasoning that has been used in connection with blogs. I simply don't have the guts to do anything like that. I suppose that some cynical small firm lawyers will say this is another example of one rule for big firms and one rule for small firms, but I simply think of it as being "aggressive."

To be crystal clear, I personally have no problem with the Orrick ad - I actually like it. I'm just confused by the interpretation of the advertising rules as they apply to lawyer blogs.

And that's the end of another edition of By Request Tuesday. Thanks for your questions.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 09:05 PM | Comments (0)

By Request Tuesday – How Do We Know Which Questions Are Real Requests And Which Ones You Make Up?

Hmm, I'm not sure that I do either. I've noticed that I tend to ask me easier questions.

The important point is that the answers are all real and that's what matters.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 09:04 PM | Comments (0)

By Request Tuesday - Are You Wasting Another Whole Day by Answering These Questions or Otherwise Neglecting Your Work?

I'm writing this post and many of the other posts I'll put up this evening while sitting here in a drum store while my daughter has her drum lesson. I think that even the strongest critics of lawyer blogging will think that this is OK.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 09:00 PM | Comments (0)

By Request Tuesday – Did You Ever Decide What to Do about Ads in Your RSS Feed?

Yes and no. I decided to take a wait-and-see attitude until June 30. I decided that if there is not clear community consensus that ads in feeds and ads on blogs are a bad thing or will get me shunned, I'll go in that direction if I find sponsors or advertisers who are interested in paying me to do so.

I just have never been convinced that the Amazon tip jar was a good way to go.

I still struggle with the issues of independence, objectivity and the like. And they are very difficult issues. One of the most interesting approaches someone suggested was to move away from sponsors and advertisers in the legal technology space (my most natural sponsors, but also the ones that raises the thorniest issues for me) and seek out advertisers outside my subject area. I think I was flattered that the two sponsors he mentioned first as examples were Jaguar and Mercedes, but his idea of looking at banks, credit card and financial organizations, rental car, airline and travel companies and others for whom my audience is a good match struck me as a good way to bring in revenue while avoiding the different types of conflict issues that can arise when you use sponsors who are in your field. Unfortunately, I have the contacts in the legal tech industry, but I don’t know how to get out to the decision-makers in the other types of companies. I'd appreciate any help on that. It seems like there would be a niche for a marketing person who could pair up blogging sponsors with bloggers. And I'm referring to sponsorships rather than traditional online advertising approaches.

The answer: We'll see. June 30 arrives soon and I'll look into some options. I welcome any inquiries.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 08:58 PM | Comments (0)

By Request Tuesday – How Many RSS Feeds Do You Currently Subscribe to?

My favorite piece of writing this year was the post I called "Heart of Blogness – My Journey into Scoble Country," which told my tale of getting up somewhere north of 1,000 feeds in my newsreader.

I recently talked with someone who had 778 feeds in his newsreader. I told him that it took 1,000 or more to impress me.

My answer: I don't know. I'm in the process of pruning the list and probably will delete any feed that is not a full-text feed (unless it's really good). It's a lot. I might have crept back in Scoble Country, but I won't admit to that.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 08:53 PM | Comments (0)

By Request Tuesday – Will You Be Writing a Book?

I get asked this question a lot. I've been talking with Yvonne Divita about turning my eBooks and perhaps other writing projects into books or booklets that Yvonne would publish through her print-on-demand publishing business.

I've written three chapters of the brand new fourth edition of Flying Solo, published by the ABA's Law Practice Management Section. The book's official release is June 28 and there is a pre-publication discount available. I've seen page proofs for a good number of chapters and I was a co-editor of the technology chapters. I think it will become a must-have book for any lawyer (and perhaps other professionals as well) who has started or plans to start a solo practice.

I've also contributed a couple of chapters to an upcoming ABA book on information security issues.

For the most part, however, I'm more interested in shorter works and audio these days than book projects, although I do discuss ideas people have for me from time to time. I've turned a couple of those down. I have talked to people and have found myself receptive to the idea of doing a co-authored or multiple-authored book.

And, every time I see someone mention as a new and novel idea something that is in the draft of the book project I worked on in 1998 called "The Fully Connected Law Firm" (publisher went out of the publishing business in mid-project), I get tempted to resurrect that project.

However, I don't foresee any new books for traditional publishers on the horizon as solo efforts from me.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 08:46 PM | Comments (0)

By Request Tuesday – Will You Be Doing Some Podcasts?

I have been talking with people about doing audio seminars or podcasts for the past year. As you may know, I've done a couple of webinars for Fios on electronic discovery and I've been pleased to hear about the traffic the on-demand electronic seminars I recorded for Merrill have done.

Zane Safrit of Conference Calls Unlimited interviewed me for what technically was my first podcast.

People have talked to me about a number of types of podcasts or "internet radio" shows. Examples have included a regular interview show and a "reader's guide" to what's worth checking out in the blog world, in addition to webinars on various topics. It should surprise no one that we have been talking about both a Between Lawyers podcast and a LexThink podcast.

To this point, I've been the hold-up because I wasn't convinced about the medium. My opinion has changed dramatically in recent weeks and I've been telling people that listening to the Adam Curry / Ron Bloom Podshow Strategycast was a watershed event for me.

I've become very intrigued by the medium and its potential. I want to explore the idea of podcasting and potential podcast efforts with much more urgency. I'm about to start actively looking for partners, sponsors, producers and others who want to work with me in producing shows in the podcast medium.

I think that means the answer to your question is "yes."

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 08:34 PM | Comments (0)

June 09, 2005

Rockin' the Legal Blog World

Steve Nipper follows up my now infamous Metallica post, with his new post on Guns N' Roses and intellectual property law on rethink(ip).

The money quote:

"So. Where do you stand? For you, is it about the fans or is it about the music? Are you willing to rethink the band if they won't change...if they aren't willing to produce the music fans want?

Sometimes someone has to get their act together and rethink the band."

I spent a very enjoyable day today with Doug Sorocco, another of the rethink(ip) guys, who was in St. Louis for the day. I got the chance to learn more about the rethink(ip) vision. Trust me, these guys definitely rock. They've made me do some rethinking.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/]

Posted by dmk at 09:29 PM | Comments (0)

June 08, 2005

Knowledge Work as Craft

Jim McGee has fascinating post called "Apprenticing at Light Speed" about "knowledge work as craft" and the strains that the pace of change place on the apprenticeship model (we are all apprentices).

The money quote (among many choices):

"That leads me to my more fundamental concern about apprenticing our way to improved knowledge work; where are the Jedi masters? Where is that senior research scientist who already understands how to connect robotic gene sequencers and bioinformatics? Where is that senior investment manager who understands how to connect new derivative-based financial instruments with electronic markets? If those people even exist, do they have any real skill at helping those who work for them learn better and faster? How should their managers help them strike the right balance between advancing current knowledge work practice and educating those apprentices in the appropriate mysteries of the craft?"

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 11:17 PM | Comments (0)

June 06, 2005

The Verizon Follies: My Continuing Cellular Comedy

My friends get the biggest laughs from my experiences with cell phones. I don't have good luck with cell phones. In fact, I once had to reboot a cell phone because I locked up the cell phone OS trying to see how the IR interface worked.

Ironically, the only thing I really care about with a cell phone is its reception. A few years ago, after unhappy experiences with reception from other carriers, I switched to Verizon. How's it working? You know those “can you hear me know?” commercials for Verizon – I want them to send that guy out to my house.

I once had to call Verizon customer service and, for fun, made the call from my basement. They actually asked me if they could call me back on a land line. I mentioned that, although I was calling for other reasons, my reception at my house and in the areas I would most like to use the phone was terrible. They immediately said that they made no promises about reception.

When I ride my bike, I always take my cell phone in case of an accident or emergency. Today, I was driving along a stretch I ride on a regular basis and noticed no bars on the cell phone. I hope that I don't fall or have the bike break down there.

On the other hand, my reception when I am out of town is usually awesome. I once recorded my message on my voice mail while I was out of town because the reception was so much better.

However, my favorite story comes from a trip we made through Indiana last year on the return home from visiting my parents, brothers and relatives. We wanted to stop at the Indianapolis Speedway and wanted to check as we approached Indianapolis on the availability and times of a track tour. By the way, calling from the road is one of the main reasons I wanted to have a cell phone. I could not complete any calls. I wanted to call customer service, but simply could not find the number under any of the menus. Undeterred, I tried a few tricks to generate an error message and one popped up that gave me a number to call.

After about 20 minutes on the phone, we got the advice to "try the call from a pay phone." I love that.

On Friday, I was going on a family camping trip with my wife's family at Meramec State Park, one of the most popular state parks in Missouri. The park is a few miles from the town of Sullivan, which is right on I-44. In other words, it is not in the wilderness.

I had a conference call scheduled that I planned to make from the campsite and planned to return some other calls. At the time to be on the conference call, I noticed that there was no service available. It's fair to say that this was not something I expected – but, hey, a little professional embarrassment builds character.

As it turned out, this was not just a Verizon problem. No one else there could get a signal on their carriers either. Later, my brother-in-law determined that if you stood at a certain spot near a certain tree using a Sprint phone, you could get a signal to make a call, but you couldn't tell if the person on the other end could hear you.

I recently went through a 24-hour period where I had phone calls with five of the most tech-savvy lawyers in the country and, in each case where someone was on a cell phone, the sound quality of the call was atrocious.

If I hear people talking on cell phones these days (and I will invariably hear them because they are talking so loud), the side of the conversation I overhear goes something like this: "What! Say that again! You're cutting out! I didn't catch the last part of that! What!"

I don't know about you, but I'm starting to have some doubts about this whole cellular system. It seems like we are moving backward, rather than forward. It's not great for making calls, at least for me, but it's given me some great stories.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 09:04 PM | Comments (0)

May 26, 2005

William Lind on Cabbages, Kings and Cessnas

Robert Coram’s biography of John Boyd has fuelled my interest in Boyd, OODA loops, military strategies and Fourth Generation warfare. This will come as no surprise to those of you who know that I always list John Robb’s Global Guerillas as one of my favorite blogs.(Well, a blogger has to have some hobbies).

Boyd is considered one of the most brilliant strategists of the recent era and I highly recommend Coram’s book about him.

The good news is that Boyd, now deceased, has a number of colleagues who carry on his tradition. I think that you have to be up to speed on these matters to have a chance of trying to understand our modern world.

A week or so ago, I was talking with a former cop about the recent Cessna incident in Washington, DC air space. No matter how we tried to put some kind of positive gloss on that incident, we failed, and I walked away from the conversation feeling a bit more pessimistic.

William Lind’s essay, Of Cabbages and Kings, helps me understand why the incident and the response to it is disturbing. Lind is one of Boyd’s proteges. As we approach Memorial Day, you might want to set aside a few minutes to read Lind’s essay.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 10:09 PM

May 25, 2005

I Like the Way Matt Handled This One

I know that Matt Homann has agonized for the last few months over an issue involving an old blog posting he made about LegalMatch. The situation was, at many levels, not really of his own making, but it had put him in a tricky spot.

It also made it difficult to make the decision to move LexThink into the business of private conferences (in addition to more public conferences, to be announced soon). With LegalMatch as the first private LexThink customer, it became important for Matt to reach a decision about how to handle his LegalMatch issue.

Matt reached his decision today and publicly announced it today. I really like the decision Matt made and the painstaking and careful process he took to make that decision. He's asked for people to let him know what they think about the decision he made. Let him know.

For me, I'm more pleased than ever to be working with Matt and Sherry on building out the LexThink vision. I might miss the conversations I've had with Matt over the past few months about LegalMatch, but I definitely look forward to the room it will free up to talk more about where LexThink will be going.

DISCLOSURE: To the extent any fee LexThink receives from LegalMatch is not plowed back into LexThink development efforts, I'll be entitled to some share of the fee. I believe that this has no impact whatsoever on the opinions I express in the post, but you should factor it in to your evaluation of what I've said here.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 09:13 PM

May 24, 2005

Blogs as Marketing Tools – Drawing a Negative Inference

I've been confused and irritated lately because of the way an "All Request Tuesday" feature I did on my blog has become the poster child for some about the dangers of blogging for lawyers.

In fairness, I expected some criticism for the feature, but not for the reasons some have chosen to use - reasons that often show a lack of understanding about the standard mechanisms of blogs and a surprising willingness to paint with a very broad brush, using some troubling assumptions.

It disturbs me that the comments and questions have a negative effects on other bloggers and probably caused Evan Schaeffer to change his approach to blogging.

Since my blog is designed and intended NOT to be a marketing device for my law practice, it's surprising that people have singled it and me out for criticism on this topic. I expected a backlash against blogs and bloggers in 2005, but I didn't expect that the backlash would hit me, especially for the reasons I've seen and heard.

Ah, well, it gives me something to blog about.

Here's the story.

A few months ago, I realized that I had a bunch of email messages, article excerpts, draft posts and ideas lying around that I was never going to get around to polishing into posts for my blog.

I came up with a couple of ideas. One was to publish them as they were and identify them as "scraps and workshop" in honor of the NRBQ album of tht name. Another was to have an "idea garage sale" a la Matt Homann and publish them by that approach. The other idea was to write a question that introduced each of them and have an "all request" day.

I liked the last approach because it suited the pieces well, had some theatricality to it and might even lead to people sending me requests. And it has.

My concern was that people would see what I was doing and criticize me for pretending to answer "real" questions from my "audience." I decided it was worth the risk, and that it would be fun.

So, over a period of weeks, I put the "all request" day together and had a whole set of posts collected in a Word document.

On the appointed day, I sent the posts out over the course of the day, trying to give the illusion that people couldn't stop asking me questions. The people I talked to seemed to get the joke, and there was a lot of good material in those posts that would still be sitting on my hard drive if I hadn't taken that approach.

I ended up getting some questions from readers that I've answered on other Tuesdays.

Lately, I've become aware that my effort has raised fundamental concerns about the use of blogging by lawyers.

How so, you ask?

Let me try to describe the concern. Apparently I am a better writer than I thought I was, because a good number of people seem to have thought that I spent the day answering questions from my incredibly enthusiastic audience. The key clue – they studied carefully the times of my posts!

For the record, I've never paid attention to the times of anyone's posts. As most bloggers know, the time of posting and the time of writing can be hours, days or even months apart. Some bloggers even set up automatic posting at future dates and times (what I might well have done for that "all request" day if I had gotten around to learning how to do that).

So, I now find that people have taken two fundamental misapprehensions – that I was actually answering questions in real time and not publishing "old inventory" and that I was writing and publishing in real time – and jumped to the conclusions that (1) I spent the entire day blogging, (2) I spend all day every day blogging, and (3) most disturbing, they are concerned that I am not serving my legal clients. Some have even written about this without bothering to check with me.

Whoa! I hope that they put more effort into research and logic with their legal work than they did in constructing that argument.

They have gone on to raise the question whether a lawyer who blogs can devote adequate time to doing legal work.

I can't believe that I have to make the effort to explain this stuff, but here are a few things to think about. Please excuse me for taking the liberty of combining some of the questions and comments I have heard and making the kinds of generalizations people seem comfortable using when discussing bloggers. In other words, I may be using rhetorical techniques like hyperbole to make my points. As I said, I'm irritated by all of this.

1. In St. Louis, many lawyers have season tickets to Cardinals baseball games. If you factor in time spent watching away games on television, playoff games, and the like, a lawyer might well spend 800 to 1,000 hours a year in baseball-related time. Where is the vocal criticism of the devastating impact of this common activity in keeping a lawyer from servicing clients or generating enough billable hours? Writing 3 to 5 blog posts a week might take a couple of hours a week. How am I supposed to take the comments about blogging and its negative impact on lawyers seriously?

2. When you live in the world of billable hours, you put a price on your time, not a value. I'm surprised that these critics do not raise the issue of elimination of sleep – a fundamentally unproductive use of billable time.

3. It probably will come as no surprise that, as someone well-known throughout my career for meeting deadlines (and getting things done quickly and early), that the insinuation that I am ignoring clients to blog irritates me greatly. I haven't checked the ethics rules, but I do know that those kinds of unfounded and unconfirmed comments about other lawyers are corrosive and destructive to the profession in general. I can only be responsible for the way that I manage the expectations of my clients, not for the way that you manage the expectations of your clients. Believe it or not, I might not practice law, or live my life, like you do or you seem to want me to do.

4. I left my old law firm to practice law on a part-time basis and to leave the world of accounting for my life in 6-minute billable increments. If I were still in that world, I might not blog in the same way I do now. I'm still confused why people hold me to the same standards as those who are most immersed in that world. I'm trying not to be like them.

5. I'm willing to take the chance that my clients and others out there like them are more interested in finding someone with my personality, my interests and my approach than they are a totally law-focused billing machine. I've grown to believe that many of the problems we face are made more difficult to resolve because of lawyers who focus on legal issues without a consideration of broader issues.

6. So what even if I would have taken a day to concentrate on blogging all day long? Who cares? I don’t raise hell when you spend a day golfing. In fact, I'd encourage you to take a day off to get out to the links to release a little of that pressure you seem to be under lately.

7. I've said this hundreds of times: I started my blog as a writing experiment. That's what it is and what it is about. It's not an advertisement for my law practice nor is it intended to be. I know what a blog to market a law practice should be like and it's not what my blog is. No one ever believes me about my blog being an experiment in writing, but that's what it is. I woke up one day with 300 publications, decided I was a writer, and decided that to keep things interesting I wanted to write in new ways and see if I could develop a new audience. A blog was the perfect vehicle. I can't understand why people don't want to believe me about that.

8. I think that the critiques show more about the psychology of the critics than it does about anything else. I've tended to find that the people most concerned about others goofing off and not taking care of their clients are the ones with the most problems in those areas. I'm not being critical of anyone, just making a general observation – just like they did about me.

9. I don’t bother you, so why are you bothering me? Why didn’t you ask me a few questions directly before jumping in with both guns blazing on a subject you know way too little about and then painting all legal bloggers with a negative broad brush.

10. Back to work. To what client are you planning to bill the time you spent reading this post and thinking about a reply? Not implying anything – just raising an issue for discussion. As you might say to me, nothing personal.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 09:52 PM

May 19, 2005

Bert Stern, Teacher and Dennis Kennedy, Student

This post is dedicated to Evan Schaeffer.

Evan Schaeffer wrote eloquently about his teacher Walter Ong in a post unfortunately obscured by the interest generated by the change in the name of his blog.

The post helped me understand and appreciate what Evan is trying to do with his blog, his approach to writing, his immense talent as a writer, and the gift of having a great and influential teacher. Forget about the discussion of changing the name of Evan's blogs and blogs as lawyer marketing tools - the post on Walter Ong is the post from Evan that you should be paying attention to.

As I've , Bert Stern is the kind of teacher for me that Ong was for Evan. Evan's post and Bert's recent essay called Being Here prompted me to dig back through my archives and pull out an essay I wrote in 1997 on the occasion of Bert's retirement.

+++++++

Bert is fond of the Eastern saying: "When the student is ready, the teacher appears." So am I.

Twenty years ago, I was a sophomore math major who had just learned that Bert would be my professor in my second semester of the required "Cultures and Traditions" class. I received a number of vague warnings about Bert from my frat brothers, mainly about the possibility of a downward movement in my g.p.a. I was a bit wary, but never expected how the next three semesters would rock my world.

What I remember about that C&T class is how day after day Bert opened doors, finding clear connections between things that once seemed to have no connection. His classes were the most challenging and powerful presentations I'd ever experienced and every day I thanked Wabash's random number generator for assigning me to his class.

I spent many hours over the next three semesters (Bert was on sabbatical in my senior year) sitting in Bert's office, talking away the afternoons. Bert invited me to take English 97, the course for junior majors, as my very first English course. I struggled that semester with thoughts of big issues, punk rock and of the inadequacy of my math classes to give voice to what I needed to express.

I remember one afternoon when Bert and I talked at length about Yeats and, as I rose to go, Bert said, "So, when are we going to get you to be an English major?" I was one class away from meeting the math major requirement. I would have to take eight or nine English classes in the next three semesters to become an English major. I took the path to the English major.

I did most of my best work at Wabash for Bert, although usually on the second try. Bert is a great editor. He's very hard to please, but you gradually realize that he's not working to get you to please him, but to please yourself, to raise your own level of excellence.

In English 97, Bert suggested that I do a paper on Yeats and I immersed myself in the process, reading everything I could find and talking to Bert on a regular basis. I wrote a draft of the paper and gave it to Bert.

I remember his disappointment with that draft. Not that it wasn't good in its way, but that it could have been better.

I walked back to the fraternity house, mulling over his comments. I sat down in my room and then began to write. For a period of six or eight hours, I kept writing, without a pause, completely re-doing the whole paper. I typed it up and knew that I was much closer to the real paper that had been inside of me.

I gave that paper to Bert, and the smile I saw after he read it let me know that it was much closer to the paper he had seen inside me and that he saw the enormous step I had taken.

Bert and I have stayed in touch ever since Wabash and we were talking, by e-mail, before his retirement event. He has a friend who is a shaman from Central America and they had been talking about the need for ritual and ceremony at a point of transition like a retirement. Typical of Bert, the ceremony he was thinking of involved the sacrifice of a large farm animal.

But it also called for the exchange of small gifts which had special meaning. As those who attended the event know, the Department gave everyone a copy of Bert's "Little Poem" on hand-made paper. I gave Bert a bound copy of the Yeats paper.

The animals made it through the event safely.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog)]

Posted by dmk at 05:31 PM

Bert Stern, Being Here and Communities of Trust

Bert Stern is the most influential teacher in my life. So much of what I try to do flows out of what I learned from and with him as a college student and through a 25 year correspondence.

I want to share with you a recent essay by Bert that appeared in the newest issue of Wabash Magazine. It's called Being Here and captures something essential about Bert and what it takes to create a life that has meaning. It was a joy for me to read and I sincerely hope that you take the time to read it as well. Trust me on this one.

There is a phrase Bert uses in the essay, "community of trust," that captures perfectly an idea I've been working toward over the last few years. I often use the term "communities of interest," but that never felt quite right. "Communities of trust" describes it perfectly.

It won't surprise you that Bert is someone I've been trying to edge closer to the idea of blogging.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 05:13 PM

May 18, 2005

Coast to Coast and Back

Whew, I'm back from back-to-back trips to DisneyWorld (ABA Law Practice Management Section meeting) and Palm Springs for the Marcus Evans Legal Technology Summit (my favorite non-LexThink conference of the year). Reflections on those events will be forthcoming, but I had a great and quite productive time.

It was also a grand blogger tour. I got to co-present with fellow Between Lawyers blogger pal Denise Howell and spend time in board meeting and DisneyWorld rides with fellow Between Lawyers blogger pal Tom Mighell. I also got to spend time with blogging pals Fred Faulkner, Jim Calloway, Reid Trautz and Ed Poll.

My wife and daughter thought DisneyWorld was our best vacation trip yet. As I think about walking out of the Magic Kingdom after the fireworks and several rides on Space Mountain with my wife, daughter and Fred Faulkner, and seeing Mickey Mouse wishing everyone a goodnight, I have to agree.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 11:22 PM

April 25, 2005

I Fought the Allergies and the Allergies Won

St. Louis is considered one of the allergy capitals of the United States.

I've been really suffering this spring. Frankly, it's demoralizing to get into my car and have to turn on the windshield wipers to clear enough pollen off to be able to see to drive. My maroon car looks green.

Until recently, the main effect was on my eyes. Last Friday, I decided that, come hell or high water, I was going for a bike ride. I put on a mask and packed an inhaler and went out for a ride.

The ride was good. The price I paid was pretty steep - sinuses and lungs. I've been pretty knocked down for the past few days. With luck, the allergy season will end soon, but this seems to be a brutal spring allergy season in many parts of the country. If you are suffering, you definitely have my sympathy and best wishes.

But, I really want to get out on my bike soon. Biking is like blogging - once you get into the rhythm, it's difficult to break the routine, especially when it's not your choice.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

Posted by dmk at 08:33 PM

Guest Author - Sacagawea: Native American Explorer and Heroine

I've previously published some of my daughter's essays on this blog. My daughter, Grace, is a sixth grader at The College School in St. Louis. I am so impressed with their approach to teaching writing skills. If you are someone who has the ability to direct donations or funding to a school, then I strongly recommend that you consider The College School.

Earlier this year, she wrote the following research paper on Sacagawea. It's her very first research paper. Although (and I know some will find this ironic) I thought that this paper was a little long for a blog post, she said that she'd like me to post it on my blog. She was proud of the paper and she received high marks on it. Her mom and I are proud of her and the paper too.

I've taken out the footnotes and bibliography (for my convenience).

=========

Sacagawea: Native American Explorer and Heroine

Many people have probably heard of Sacagawea, one of the most well known and respected Native American women. She helped lead Lewis and Clark, and the US Corps of Discovery, on the historic journey to explore the Louisiana Territory and find a water route to the Pacific Ocean. Not as many people know that Sacagawea was pregnant and had her baby on the expedition. Her path from the wilderness of Idaho to lasting fame was as difficult, filled with adventure, and as mysterious as the Lewis and Clark expedition was.

Sacagawea was born around 1789 in eastern Idaho, as a member of the Shoshone tribe. She did not remain with her Shoshone tribe for very long. When Sacagawea was around age ten, the Minnetarees, a rival tribe, captured her, and they took her to the North Dakota border region. Before her capture, she lived with her family, her parents, two brothers, and her sisters.

At around age 14, after about four years of living as a captive of the Minnetarees,