Pensions and Investments Online put together a list of the Largest Real Estate Investment Managers. The list is ranked by total worldwide real estate assets, in millions, as of June 30, 2008.
The White House and Congressional Leaders finalized the Bailout Bill: Current draft of the Economic Emergency Stabilization Act of 2008. (from the Wall Street Journal) It will be interesting to see how it progresses through the House and Senate. I expect to see a lot of salesmanship as politicians try to weave into their current political campaigns.
What does it actually do? Read this summary from the WSJ.com: Shape of Massive Bailout Bill Starts to Develop Definition.
Carolyn Elefant recently released an e-book entitled Social Networking for Lawyers – The What, Why and How (.pdf)
Courtesy of the Avvo Blog: Treat For Avvo Blog Readers
Bruce MacEwen of Adam Smith Esq. put together a post of lessons to be learned from the demise of Heller Ehrman (1890-2008). He proposes that one of the reasons for the demise was the fragility of law firms.
“Our assets go down in the elevator every night.” Take that bromide seriously.
You must give people a persuasive reason to come back “home” every Monday morning.
Make them believe in the ongoing vision of a vibrant institution, a living firm where they can make a contribution in their own way, where they have a voice, where they can matter, where they are part of a team, where there are new mountains to conquer and new clients to be won, new legal innovations to be created with your firm’s imprimatur on them, new dimensions of professional development which you can create and with which you can inspire and energize your associates, new, heartfelt, admirable and groundbreaking commitments to pro bono, new, clear-eyed and profound commitments to client service and client relationships, new and innovative uses of technology to deliver cost-effective services clients increasingly will demand while at the same time sparing your associates scut-work. New, new, new.Those are the things that will inspire people to come back on Monday.
Take a look a your role in your firm and see if you can inspire people to come back on Monday.
I attended a breakfast meeting sponsored by Knowledge Management Associates, Inc. about all things SharePoint.
There were four presentations:
In the interest of full disclosure Knowledge Management Associates, Inc. is a client of The Firm and they did give me a copy of MS Office 2007 as a prize in the raffle.
Tara Seppa from Microsoft spent some time at the Real World SharePoint Experiences conference to give us some idea about what direction Microsoft is taking SharePoint.
. . . . Omitted at the request of Microsoft. Apparently the information was not ready for disclosure.
Lastly, Tara pitched the the SharePoint team blog as place for information on Sharepoint as it goes through the development process.
Tim Farrell and Marcel Meth of Knowledge Management Associates presented some of their notes from the recent SharePoint Best Practices Conference.
Tim and Marcel attended the SharePoint Best Practices conference in DC Sept 14-17.
Marcel is seeing a trend where extranets and intranets are collapsing. He is seeing companies deploy in a secure site outside the firewall. Internally, Microsoft’s SharePoint deployment has 14 Terabytes of data. They keep each database under 200GB.
Microsoft expects support of non-window browsers within 2 years.
There is also a new SharePoint online. You do not need to install SharePoint. Your information just lives in the cloud.
Intranet search and enterprise search are different. The intranet search of SharePoint is mature and works well, but it is not an enterprise search.
Workflow is not quite ready for prime time. There are lots of subtleties and you will need some expertise to use it.
Tim spoke about governance and taxonomy. You should have a governance team of about 10 people even for a big company. Chose a pilot program that can build grass roots support. See how it grows and emerges. Start with just the one pilot. (He seems to like the concept of emergent collaboration.)
Tim also focused on tiered levels of control. At the top, with the highest degree of control and the lowest degree of innovation and change are the enterprise wide taxonomy. At the opposite extreme are MySites that have the lowest degree of control and highest degree of innovation and change.
Tim’s best practices for document management in SharePoint:
Tim’s top ten pitfalls for a SharePoint implementation
Pam Conway, Vice President at CompuWorks gave this presentation at the Real World SharePoint Experiences seminar.
Pam talks about the purpose of training. Sure, it is about acquiring skills. But that is only one piece of the puzzle. Pam’s seven points for training:
You want to use training to inform users so they know how they should be using the tool. Training can also be used to communicate and explain why they should be using the tool. Communication is two way, trainers should be listing and bringing feedback from the users. You should use training to sell the tool. You need to sell the users on why they should be using the tool. You need to show them what is in it for them. Training can also be used to connect individuals within a group or across groups to discuss how they could use the tool. It is also time to reassure the users. You should be prepared to hold their hands to let them know that support is there for them.
Training is essential for SharePoint. If you build it, will they come? NO. You need to pull them in. There are lots of change management issues associated with SharePoint. Training can help and should be part of the change management process. You should identify the hurdles in advance so you can address them as part of the training. Training is just start of the process. You need plan for before, during and after deployment.
For before, you need to generate buy-in. The trainers should have cases ready that show how current problems can be solved by the adoption of SharePoint. The trainers should use a real use case in the training sessions. You also want to show the top-down push for SharePoint. You need to show what’s in it for me to the users. You need to show how it is going to make easier for the individual to be able to do their job.
Pam pitched focusing training on the persons role in SharePoint: are they a user, contributor, editor, administrator, etc.
There is a learning kit from Microsoft. It is an add-on from Microsoft download center. Office SharePoint Server 2007 Training
Pam pitches the use of documentation, single page quick reference cards. (I was surprised that she did not pitch having them in SharePoint, but using paper handouts).
Sadie Van Buren of Knowledge Management Associates gave this presentation at the Real World SharePoint Experiences seminar.
Sadie also blogs at A Matter of Degree, a Microsoft SharePoint / Information Architecture / Web Usability blog.
Sadie showed some client reactions and surveys on their use and adoption of SharePoint. The clients surveyed covered a broad spectrum of industries, size and revenue. It was a small sample set of only 19 companies. Sadie compares SharePoint to a Swiss Army Knife. It does lots of things but does not do them very well. There are lots of best of breed programs that do some of the things better.
Some downsides to SharePoint: it is not Blackberry-friendly, it is not a cross-platform platform, it does not produce reports, it is not good for a relational database and it is not good for transaction uses.
Most people are using SharePoint for search and for their intranet. Only one is using it for public facing web pages. Sadie was surprised that about half of the clients were using blogs and wikis. In part, because they did not ask for them. They seemed to adopt blogs and wikis just because they were part of the platform.
These are the trends she sees in customization:
Sadie moved on to some of SharePoint’s cultural challenges. Most of the challenges she presented for adoption of SharePoint are the same challenges we have in knowledge management. People resist changing ways of doing things. People are too busy to share or won’t invest time, management won’t assign ownership of content, governance and consistency are a low priority, and “my documents, not the company documents.”
Some things that Sadie found to be ingredients for success:
The International Legal Technology Association is holding a lunch presentation in Boston on Social Networking for Lawyers and Legal IT.
Please join us for this exciting presentation and learn how the lawyers and IT staff at your firm can use Facebook, LinkedIn and blogs to capture knowledge and uncover expertise.
Presenters:
Doug Cornelius is a senior attorney in Goodwin Procter’s Real Estate Group helping clients invest in real estate through a variety of investment vehicles. In addition to his real estate practice, Doug is a member of the firm’s Knowledge Management Department. In this role, he is responsible for developing and implementing tools and resources to identify, create, represent and distribute knowledge for reuse, awareness and learning. Doug is a frequent speaker and writer on the legal profession’s use of knowledge management, enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0 and social networks.
Jenn Steele is the Director of Information Technology at Morrison Mahoney LLP. She holds an MBA from the Simmons School of Management and a B.S. in Biology from MIT, with a minor in Expository Writing. Prior to Morrison Mahoney, she was the Director of Information Technology at Donovan Hatem LLP from 2002-2007, and the Senior Applications Specialist at Burns & Levinson LLP from 2000-2002. She has also held positions in the health and human services industry. She is the author of Leading Geeks, a blog focusing on best practices for leading technologists (www.leadinggeeks.blogspot.com).
Robert Ambrogi is an internationally known legal journalist and a leading authority on law and the Web. He represents clients at the intersection of law, media and technology and is also established professional in alternative dispute resolution. Robert is a Massachusetts lawyer, writer and media consultant and is author of the book, The Essential Guide to the Best (and Worst) Legal Sites on the Web. He also writes the blog Media Law, co-writes Legal Blog Watch and cohosts the legal affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer.
© 2012 Doug Cornelius .com. All Rights Reserved.
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