Doug Cornelius .com

The Urban land Institute’s  Emerging Trends in Real Estate for 2009 came out with a picture of doom and gloom, predicting that in 2009, commercial real estate will suffer its worst year since the industry’s crash of 1991-92, with a noticeable rebound unlikely until 2011 at the earliest. It also forecasts a decline of 15% to 20% in property values, on average, from their 2007 peaks, with even sharper declines coming in weaker markets.

Of the 50 markets tracked, the study found only Dallas and Houston have prospects for investment and development in 2009 that should be better than in 2008, thanks to their exposure to the energy industry. All other markets face deteriorating conditions next year, the study said.

But, the report does point out that there are opportunities to be found.

Disclaimers

I get a little enthusiastic about carving pumpkins. Here is my first victim for 2008:

Thanks to the pumpkin lady for the spider pattern.

The Human Resources group at your firm has lots information about you. They probably publish a portion of that information to your internal photo-directory. Have they just violated some privacy laws? Can a 2.0 directory avoid the violation.

The European Union has much stricter limits on privacy than the United States. [See 31995L0046 EU Directive 95/46/EC] The EU prohibits the publication of an electronic directory with any “personal data” which is broadly defined as any reference to an identification number or to one or more factors specific to his physical, physiological, mental, economic, cultural or social identity.

The big exception is when the data is published after the “data subject’s consent.” There is much thought that a request by an employer to an employee is inherently coersive. (Are you afraid of losing your job if you do not submit the information.)

It seems that a wiki-like directory could solve the consent issue. You could publish the directory with just basics, name and phone number. The employee can then add whatever information they want. There is consent, because the employee voluntarily took the time to add the information.The stored history of the wiki page can show who added the information.

There are a few prohibited areas under the EU Directive: revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade-union membership, and data concerning health or sex life. You would want those excluded from a company directory in anyhow.

Maybe you should rethink your company directory? What are your thoughts?

Greg Lambert over at the 3 Geeks and a Law Blog did a study of large law firm usage using LinkedIn Groups.

He ranked the firms by number of members in the group. Skadden, Arps came in first place with 839 members in the Skadden Alumni LinkedIn group. Goodwin Procter came in 16th place for the Goodwin Procter LinkedIn group with 40 members.

What really surprised Greg was that the majority of members were attorneys. He expected more adminstrative profiles. “[i]t is apparent that they are doing a lot of things outside the confines of the Marketing Departments.”

You can see that my LinkedIn Profile has changed recently: Doug Cornelius in LinkedIn.

I want to say that I have continued to think about knowledge management, enterprise 2.0 and social networking during my time off between The Firm and the New Company.

But I can’t.

I spent most of the week exploring the Charles River in my old yellow kayak. I did want to get a little 2.0, so I blogged about my trips at Paddling Space:

• Bellingham Meadows
• Elm Bank and the Bays Region
• Hemlock Gorge
• Stop River Confluence 

The Bellingham Meadows are part of the Natural Valley Storage Project. The Army Corps of Engineers uses stategic areas of wetlands along the Charles River to slow the progress of flood waters headed to Boston. Sensibly, the Army Corp recognized the ability of wetlands to hold back flood waters and have preserved 7800 wetland acres along the river. Bellingham Meadows is Area S of the Natural Valley Storage Project. I paddled through Area G of the project in the Stop River Confluence trip on the river.

For those of you who have only seen the Charles River lying between Cambridge and Boston, you would not recognize the river in the Bellingham Meadows, closer to the headwaters. At times the river was as narrow as the length of paddle. In several places it was even narrower. It started off as as a very peaceful and pleasant. It was a bit colder than it was earlier in the week.

I ran into the spookiest part of the entire river when I got to the Interstate 495 bridge.

1-495 Tunnel / Conduit

You can in the picture see that the bridge is very low over the water. At the water level that day, I just barely fit under the bridge. I paddled for a few hundred yards in pitch darkness as the roof of the tunnel got lower and lower. By then end of the tunnel I had to duck down in the kayak to fit through. It is not just the parallax effect in the picture, the opening at the far end of the tunnel is about two feet shorter than the opening at the entrance.

The tunnel is intentionally low as part of the Natural Valley Storage Project flood control. The I-495 bridge acts as a culvert restricting the flow of the river. During times of high water, it acts as a dam limiting the flow of water downstream and backing the water into the Bellingham Meadows.

Downstream from the I-495 bridge the Bellingham Meadows gradually give way to uplands. Throughout the Bellingham meadows the river zigs-zags back and forth with sharp S-turns. High Street in Bellingham is actually a causeway across the meadows with a narrow bridge allowing the river to pass through.

Eventually the river reaches the North Bellingham Dam. That is where the day went downhill.

The North Bellingham Dam is a low structure that is crumbling and in disrepair. Downstream from the dam, the river is low, swift and rocky. There are also a few short ledge drop offs.

North Bellingham Dam

After my swimming experience at the Cordingly Dam during my trip on the Hemlock Gorge section of the river, I was very tentative about paddling through rocky swiftwater. I portaged the kayak about 100 yards from the dam to Maple Street. There is a large industrial building on the far side of Maple Street. I walked along the parking lot scouting for a place to get back in the river. The rocky fast water continued for several hundred more yards. This was a bad omen. Then the foliage between the parking lot and the river grew impenetrable. this was a bad omen. The other side of the river was wooded put looked passable so I portaged the kayak for half a mile through the woods, vines and thorns along the river bank. It was nasty hike. I should have noticed the lack of portage route as a bad omen.

I should have taken all of these omens to heart and not continued. I ignored the omens. I was halfway between my bike and the truck in an unfamiliar section of Massachusetts. I thought it would be better to continue downstream than to turn around and back upstream.

I thought wrong.

The section of the river downstream from the North Bellingham Dam is a miserable stretch of the river. It is narrow and over grown. It is full of debris and fallen branches. It is rocky and shallow. It is barely passable. I spent as much time using my hands to push the kayak off obstacles as I did using the paddle. I needed a saw more than I needed a paddle. At one point there was picnic table blocking the river. The only redeeming thing was the sudden appearance and disappearance of an eight point buck along the river.

Caryville Dam

I was happy to finally come to the small pond at the Caryville Dam. Even the takeout was miserable. The sides of the pond were overgrown and impenetrable. The only way out that I could find was a climb up a three foot high concrete wall next the dam. That means I had to pull myself and the kayak three feet straight up. Across the street from the dam is an abandoned factory. An ominous end to my week.

Caryville Factory

You can the rest of my paddling trips laid out on a map: Paddling Trips.

After reading WordPress for Dummies and reading about using WordPress as a content management system, I decided to convert the website into a WordPress blog. If you had visited my website in the past, you knew it was terrible.

I picked the Tarski theme largely because of how nicely it prints pages. Go ahead and print the page. It looks nice. You can read more about the Tarski theme on its website. Thanks to Ben Eastaugh and Chris Sternal-Johnson for putting the theme together.

It was another beautifully warm and sunny October day, so I went back to the Charles River. I put in just downstream from the South Natick Dam.

South Natick Dam

A little way downstream, I came across the beautiful Cheney Bridge spanning the river.

Cheney Bridge to Elm Bank

The Cheney bridge provides access to Elm Bank, a state-owned property with two miles of frontage on the river. The 182 acres of woodlands, fields, and old estate property is surrounded on three sides by the Charles River. Elm Bank was given its name in 1740, when Colonel John Jones acquired the land and planted elms along the banks of the Charles River. The site was later occupied by the Loring, Broad, and Otis families before being sold in 1874 to Benjamin Pierce Cheney. At the time of Cheney’s death in 1895, the property contained over 200 acres (80 hectares), and passed to his eldest daughter Alice in 1905. In 1907, Alice and her husband, Dr. William Hewson Baltzell, engaged an architectural firm to build a neo-Georgian manor house, and the most prominent landscapers of the day, the Olmsted Brothers, were hired to design and improve the gardens.  The entire site was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987 and is currently owned by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and leased to the Massachusetts Horticultural Society.

Waban Arches

When I came to the confluence with Waban Brook, I paddled upstream to the Waban Arches. These support the Sudbury Aqueduct which carried water from a reservoir in Framingham to Chestnut Hill Reservoir in Boston.

The Bays Region Stretches three miles from Charles River Street to the Cochrane Dam. These backwaters are abandoned channels formed as the river changed course as it flooded and re-formed in the flat-bottomed valley between Needham and Dover. The river is broad and flat through this section, meandering back and forth. There were numerous bays to duck into.

I ran into a few swans and a blue heron grazing in the marshy sides of the river.

Also along this stretch of the river was a diverse assortment of houses. There were simple houses and there were mansions, and everything in between. In particular, there was a striking contemporary with floor to ceiling walls of windows in every room.

A common theme for all the houses was their connection to the river. Almost every house had steps down to the river and many had boats visible in their yard.

The section of the river ended at the Cochrane Dam. Then I had a bike ride up the beautiful Claybrook Road through Dover to fetch the truck.

Cochrane Dam

You can the rest of my paddling trips laid out on a map: Paddling Trips.

It’s never been more important for lawyers and law firms to be able to organize and access all their knowledge. And thanks to the emergence of Web 2.0 tools like blogs and wikis, it’s also never been easier. Welcome to the next generation of KM.

That is the lead-in for my latest article, published in National, the magazine of the Canadian Bar Association: Knowledge Management in a 2.0 World.(.pdf)

I take no credit for the French translation of the article. My French is not that good.

Given my recent departure from The Firm, I have canceled an upcoming speaking engagement in London on November 12. Let me know if you are interested in taking my place as the speaker. Here is the blurb on my presentation:

• Examining and reviewing new techniques and tools:
  • Social software, wikis and blogs
  • Document management platforms and collaborative workspaces
  • Automatic RSS feeds
  • Live meetings
• Connecting with the “Facebook generation” and understanding how communication, expectations and attitudes are changing
• How will these tools change the law, legal practice and how we manage knowledge?

The session is part of the ARK Group‘s Knowledge Capture and Retention in Law Firms conference. Of course you get to attend the entire conference if you speak. [Brochure for the conference]

There is some limited financial support for travel expenses.

Contact me at doug.cornelius@gmail.com if you are  interested in taking my place.