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 (https://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]
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