I ran across this beautiful time-lapsed video of the continuing eruptions:

Iceland, Eyjafjallajökull – May 1st and 2nd, 2010

from Sean Stiegemeier on Vimeo:

“So I saw all of these mediocre pictures of that volcano in Iceland nobody can pronounce the name of, so I figured I should go and do better. But the flights to get over took forever as expected (somewhat). 4 days after leaving I finally made it, but the weather was terrible for another 4. Just before leaving it got pretty good for about a day and a half and this is what I managed to get.

Wish I had more time. I missed all the cool Lightning and the Lava of the first eruption. But I figure this will just be a trial run for another day.”

© Sean Stiegemeier
www.in-perfidia.com
twitter.com/sstieg

As long as Blogger is free, KM Space will still stay on line.

On February 17, 2009, Securities Docket is sponsoring a webcast that will look at the numerous ways that securities and compliance counsel and professionals can now use web 2.0 to promote, market, and network themselves, their practices and their firms as never before.

Please join Bruce Carton, Editor of Securities Docket, and me for a webcast that will discuss the best new tools and strategies available to securities and compliance counsel and professionals, including:

• RSS;
• Social Media, such as Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook;
• Blogs;
• and much more.

To attend this webcast scheduled for February 17, at 2 pm Eastern, please sign up on the Securities Docket website.

They interviewed 229 professionals within organizations across the Asia-Pacific region. The report addresses the use of wikis, blogs, social networks, and RSS in Australia, New Zealand and Asia. The respondents consisted of professionals in tax & accounting, legal, HR and business. Most of them were employed by orgainzation with over 200 employees. the report indicates taht web 2.0 is becoming a way for you to start research and keep up with developments in your industry.

Web 2.0 is rapidly changing the landscape of professional information, with 43.7% of professionals using Web 2.0 tools at least once a week. While results show there is some reluctance for many organisations to adopt Web 2.0 before value can be established, a high percentage of ad-hoc use (at least 25.8%) is occurring due to the accessibility and functionality of the tools. This suggests Web 2.0 applications have gained a significant share of time spent online. We are increasingly using these tools to search, communicate and contribute to the web in both a personal and professional context.

Some highlights from the report:

• 33% of the respondents in the legal field said they used a wiki for professional purposes at least once a week.
• 35% of the respondents in the legal field use a blog for professional use at least once a week.
• 20% of the respondents in the legal field use a social network for professional use at least once a week.

Sure, you can look at the numbers and say that they have not reached early adoption. But, two years ago these numbers would probably be close to zero. I predict we will see these numbers crossing into the majority within two years.

Thanks to James Mullan of the Running Librarian for pointing out the report.

I had the pleasure of meeting Heather back in October and heard her presentation on the selection and adoption of wikis at her law firm.

Since our successful launch, 768 pages, 384 links and 530 internal shortcuts have been added by individual users. The most surprising statistic is that 1,445 documents have been added as attachments. This illustrates the wiki’s overall appeal including its use as a mini Document Management system. ThoughtFarmer has become an effective replacement for the cumbersome Shared Drive. The statistics highlight how easy it is for users, including lawyers, to add pages and content. The automatic navigational structure, search engine and ‘browse by tags’ functionality makes it easier and faster to find information resulting in a substantial drop in the number of email queries. The Intranet has also become a Personal Knowledge Management enabler with many lawyers using their profiles to store personal precedent collections, articles, presentations, speaking notes, etc.

Jurafide.com is a networking and marketing site that facilitates communication between U.S. clients and non-U.S. lawyers.

Lawyrs.net looks like a social networking platform for lawyers with some group discussions and legal news. 

Omar signed up on Lawyrs but finds that it is missing the ability to pull in your contacts and see who you know is in the site. A fatal flaw.

I did not bother signing up for either one. Legal OnRamp seems to be the dominant site in the world of social networking in the legal field. I previously wrote about my bad experiences with LawLink and ABA’s LegallyMinded. I still hold out some hope for Martindale Hubbell Connected. So, I am skeptical that either of these two companies with no apparent connection to the US legal market can provide an interesting online networking platform.

I assumed that you could not use Google Analytics for your intranet. Apparently I was wrong.

Sadalit Van Buren takes you through the steps on her A Matter of Degree blog: How to Use Google Analytics with Sharepoint (MOSS 2007).

Google Analytics is not the most robust tools for measuring traffic. But these are tight economic times and it is good to have a free tool.

I use Google Analytics to view trends on this blog and some other sites I control. It does a great job of showing trends and the most viewed pages.

If you are interested in writing a detailed report for a very good publishing house, let me know. kmspace@dougcornelius.com.

Here is the request:

Below is a brief synopsis which highlights some of the areas that I would expect the report to cover, although I’m very happy to receive input from you, of course. I’m also open to different suggestions for the most effective title. With the reports, we normally look at a printed product of at least 70-80 pages (which equates to around 40,000-45,000 words). This should include case study material or practical examples, which the author can write himself or ask a third party to write.

As we approach experts working within the industry, who are in the best position to provide accurate, well-informed content, we do understand that they will be taking on such projects alongside their day-to-day roles. For that reason we seek to offer a fair remuneration package, which would include a fee plus a royalty share of sales.

As this seems to be an issue of particularly topical interest, we would ideally like to publish this report in April 2009 so would need to receive copy by early April. Both deadline and fees are negotiable. The report will obviously be marketed extensively to our law firm database in the US and UK so there is additional value for you from the profile-raising point of view.

Synopsis:

Social networking for lawyers

Social networking and Web 2.0 collaborative tools have enjoyed an exponential increase in popularity in recent years. However, whilst such tools have been embraced by many businesses in a variety of sectors, law firms – and lawyers in particular – have been slower to appreciate the value that they can create in a professional context.

This report will review the substantial benefits that social networking and Web 2.0 can bring to law firms, in particular in the current economic climate (e.g. cost-conscious marketing; maximizing lawyer downtime to develop know-how). The report will also look at how potential pitfalls – such as damage to brand and reputation – can be avoided.

Target readership

Lawyers wishing to gain a more thorough understanding of the application of Web 2.0 in the business context; marketing, business development and HR professionals looking to exploit a new channel

Proposed contents

A brief introduction to some key concepts and how they might be used in law firms

Why use social media in law firms?
• Reputation management
• Marketing
• Recruitment
• Offering value-adding legal services
• Encouraging press contact

Using blogs to raise your and your practice group’s profile

Using wikis as a tool for knowledge sharing and collaboration in the organization

Using LinkedIn, Facebook, Legal OnRamp, LawLink, Second Life – and getting the maximum value from them

Mitigating the risks of social media

Ensuring workers are properly briefed on appropriate/inappropriate usage

Case studies

The report should include a number of case studies illustrating how firms and lawyers use social media for a variety of purposes – to share know-how, recruit, develop new business, communicate with clients and strengthen relationships. Could include some examples from other kinds of businesses too.

Avvo put together a great list of the Top Legal Blogs.

Rather than using the voodoo used by the ABA, Avvo used the blogs Alexa ranking. Alexa computes traffic rankings by analyzing the Web usage of millions of Alexa Toolbar users and data obtained from other, diverse traffic data sources. The Alexa information may be off because it relies on information from its toolbar users. I wonder how many lawyers have the toolbar installed. (I did not install it until I saw the blog list.) So there are a few oddballs in the list. But there is a great transparency to the list that I have not seen in other legal blog listings.

Sadly KM space does not make the top 100 with an Alexa ranking of only 1,319,459.

Update:
You can certainly argue that Alexa is not a useful tool for measuring traffic and ranking site (as I pointed out). The ranking shows the popularity of these blogs to Alexa users. You can interpret whether this carries over to a different population of lawyers and those in the legal field.

As Brian Leiter argues on his Law School reports blog, even site visitors and page views do not capture the best statistic. He points out that average site visit time should be factored into the number site visits to measure impact.

You also should look at the number of subscribers and incoming links to a site. I have yet to see an effective way to mash this all together in a meaningful way.