Doug Cornelius .com

Andrew McAfee has joined Facebook: The Teenybopper Network. Here is his profile.

His post showed the possibility of somehow leveraging Facebook or porting over some its features into an Enterprise. There is only one way to find out how it works, so I joined: My Facebook Profile.

Now what do I do?

It seems there is a lot of networking and information sharing potential. I need to build up my network and see how some people use it.

Having been out of university life for so many years, I did not find many friends in the few minutes I spent searching. I did find a paralegal, so I am going to drop in on her and see how she uses it. Maybe I can get some of the insight that Professor McAfee got from his undergraduate guest speakers.

“A restriction in the deed reserved to the grantor’s heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns, a preemptive right to purchase the property on the same terms and conditions contained in any bona fide offer received by, and acceptable to, the grantee, his heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns. The restrictive covenant … was not limited to a term of years, but was of unlimited duration. “

The plaintiff sought to invalidate the right of first refusal as a violation of the (dreaded) Rule Against Perpetuities.

The SJC found that a right of first refusal to purchase real estate like that in this case is a mere de minimis restraint on the alienation of property. The restraint arises only “when a property owner receives, and is prepared to accept, a bona fide offer and, if the holder of the right chooses not to purchase the property, the owner remains free to sell to the third party. The right involves neither a fixed price, nor a long period during which the holder of the right can choose to purchase. Either of the latter limitations would burden the property by discouraging bona fide offers or, alternatively, making an owner unwilling to sell. Unlike an option to purchase at a fixed price, the owner is assured of receiving market value for his property (and thus will not be deterred from improving it or offering it for sale). Nor will potential buyers, knowing that the market value of the property will remain intact, be deterred from purchasing the property.”

This pulls Massachusetts in line with the ALI position that the common-law rule against perpetuities does not apply to a right of first refusal to purchase land. See Restatement (Third) of Property (Servitudes),

The court did point out that an option to purchase real estate at a fixed price falls within the common-law rule against perpetuities. See Certified Corp. v. GTE Prods. Corp. 392 Mass. 821 (1984)

Borlotti v. Hayden Supreme Judicial Court May, 2007

Some articles on the business of law:

• Explaining the Value of Transactional Lawyering. Steven L. Schwarcz.
  An academic look at trying to find how transactional lawyers add value in their role in the transactional process. I was surprised that academics thought that lawyers add value by “renting” their good reputation to clients. The results of the study behind this paper debunk that theory.
• Women Lawyers and Obstacles to Leadership. Mona Harrington and Helen Hsi, MIT Workplace Center.
  The report is based a study of the surveys that show that women and men enter law firms in essentially equal numbers but women leave firm practice at every pre-partner level at a far higher rate than men. The primary reason is the need for more time for family than the firms support. Nearly 80% women who leave the law firm environment move to workplaces that do allow the time they need, even if they are working fulltime.

Visualization. My colleague, David Hobbie, sent me this site: A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods. A great sampling of different charts and ways to show information.

Contract Drafting. Mike Dillon, the General Counsel of Sun Microsystems, had a great post on lawyers and drafting contracts: Contracts with Clarity.

RSS Readers. Simple Help .net published this review: 20 Free RSS Readers Reviewed

Ron Friedmann of Prism Consulting put together an excellent presentation on why law firms should use blogs: Blogging: Why the Fuss?

I have been trying to convince my marketing group to convert some of publications into blogs. The hang up seems to be trying to put together a blogging policy and branding (beyond the typical concerns about learning a new technology and attorney concerns).

I set up an example blog using Blogger in a few minutes and transfered over a substantial amount of content in a few minutes. Since it was Blogger it was free.

Cheap and easy is my kind of project.

Law.com reported that the 7th Circuit has launched the first federal judiciary Wiki.

It is focused around the practitioner’s handbook and started off just by transplanting the text of the handbook.

The transformation from book to wiki looks a little rough to me. It has the regimented structure of book, complete with an outline.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project released a report: A Typology of Information and Communication Technology Users [PIP_ICT_Typology.pdf]

From their press release: “Fully half of adults have a more distant or non-existent relationship to modern information technology. Some of this diffidence is driven by people’s concerns about information overload; some is related to people’s sense that their gadgets have more capacity than users can master; some is connected to people’s sense that things like blogging and creating home-brew videos for YouTube is not for them; and some is rooted in people’s inability to afford or their unwillingness to buy the gear that would bring them into the digital age.”

They Came up with 10 separate groups:

• Omnivores (8%)
• Connectors (7%)
• Lackluster Veterans (8%)
• Productivity Enhancers (8%)
• Mobile Centrics (10%)
• Connected But Hassled (10%)
• Inexperienced Experimenters (8%)
• Light But Satisfied (15%)
• Indifferents (11%)
• Off the Network (15%)

I found this more interesting as to how it applies to users in the enterprise. Who will use the knowledge management tools and technology tools?

In my earlier postings on objections to Enterprise 2.0, I mentioned the perception of not being busy and privacy.

A very prevalent obstacle is the ordinary person’s perception of what a blog is and what it can do. I was struck by this after the comment of Judge Kozinski highlighted on Abovethelaw.com. He called them “hateful” and narcissistic.

This perception of blogs will be big hurdle to overcome when introducing blogs to the enterprise.

Since everyone seems to already have a pre-conceived notion of what a “blog” is, I try not to use the word “blog.”

As used in the enterprise, a blog coupled with a RSS feed aggregator, it is simply a “communication tool” or a “website.” Post information on this website (don’t say “blog”) and those interested/subscribed to site will get an notice of the update and the text of the update without being interrupted by email.

Jack Vinson, in his Knowledge Jolt blog, used the metaphor of a “Streams of news” in describing an RSS aggregator.

Attensa has a feature called the “river of news” where they combine all of the RSS feed postings into one list to literally give you a river of news as a quick to scan headlines.

The river of news is similar to what people experience with email. It is as if someone were emailing you all of these stories for you to read. But instead of them clogging your email with more items that do not require your action, they are set to the side in the aggregator.

Below is an image of the river of news in my Attensa demo.

E-mail comes and goes. We need a place to collect and build communication.

Email has become the principal means of business communication. My theory for its widespread adoption is that is just like typing a letter or making a phone call. Therefore, it was relatively easy for users to translate their existing communication processes to email. Although email has become widespread, it took years for it to get to that place.

Blogs and wikis are still in their infancy for business communication, but we should look ahead with their potential.

I find the key to enabling them as a communication tool is to tie them to the enterprise with an enterprise RSS feed aggregator. I recently looked at the Attensa product and tied it into the next generation of our intranet using Sharepoint 2007 .

The proverbial light went on over my head. I now see the intranet as a communication tool instead of a mere content repository.

The blog becomes the way to collect communication and distribute it. But the communication is no longer a disruptive email. It moves communication that is not actionable out of the email inbox. People do not need to save the email to later recall the message. The intranet search can easily retrieve the blog posting.

The wiki combines a document with the communication of changes to the document. Instead of drafting a substantive memo and circulating the memo by email, the user creates a wiki page. Those interested in/ subscribed to the wiki topic get a notice of the new wiki page. But the notice comes through the RSS aggregator instead of email. And the reader does not need to save the email and memo to retrieve the memo. The wiki moves an email and a bulky attachment out of the email traffic flow. The intranet search can easily retrieve the wiki page.