Legal Research

Larkfield 10k

Posted on May 20, 2013
A couple of weekends ago I took part in the Larkfield 10k. This was my first race since the Brighton Marathon so I wasn't expecting to set any PB's. I had in my mind a time of under 50 minutes and would have been happy if I'd have run 49:59. As it was I ran a bit faster then that, but before I tell you my time a bit about the race itself...

PLC Knowledge Management Forum 2013

Posted on May 09, 2013
Last year I was lucky enough to attend the PLC Knowledge Management forum for free, this year my firm was happy to pay for me to attend as there were some useful sounding sessions. I found the event last year really interesting and was looking forward to a similar event this year especially as they had retained the services of Katharine Ward of Vodafone as Chair of the event...

The curse of intranet quick links

Posted on May 07, 2013
I'm a big fan of the the work the Intranet Benchmarking Forum (IBF) does, although sadly the organisation I work for isn't large enough to become a member. Anyway the latest posting on their blog is about something very close to my heart, which is the very tricky subject of intranet quick links and the best way to do them...

Pros and Cons of SharePoint 2013

Posted on April 22, 2013
I think we're going to hear a lot about the new version of SharePoint now that more organisations are looking at SharePoint 2013. So I was intrigued to find out more about some of the new features and whether they're actually that good. If you're wondering what I used to find out more about the Pros & Cons of SharePoint 2013, then look no further then the slides I've linked below from Toby Ward of Prescient Digital Media and Tamer El Shazli of Social Business Interactive...

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Shorne Woods Parkrun the 4th

Posted on April 20, 2013
So I know it has been a while, but I've got lots of exciting things to talk about, however if you're expecting me to talk about intranets and social media I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed. At least for a short while. First up is the latest in the series of Shorne Woods Parkruns...

Brighton Marathon 2013

Posted on April 20, 2013
A medal well worth the 26. 2 miles Well it was the moment I'd been in training for months for and at the end of the day it didn't disappoint. Last Sunday the 14th of April I completed my first Marathon in 4:19:56 :-) What to say about the day, aside from it was an emotional, exhausting, but ultimately amazing experience! I thing the first thing to say is that the support on the day was amazing from the Alzheimer's Society that I was running for to the thousands of individuals lining the route shouting my name the encouragement was fantastic and it certainly helped towards the end of the race...

Driving business value with enteprise social

Posted on March 21, 2013
The next webinar I was lucky enough to listen in to was from Yammer and was called "Driving business value with enterprise social" and included presentations from Charlene Li of Altimeter and Roland Hulme of Tyco. Charlene began by looking at the evolution of collaboration from Knowledge Management to Collaboration Platforms to where we are now with Enterprise social networks...

Creating value with social collaboration platforms

Posted on March 20, 2013
I've been lucky enough to be able to listen to a couple of webinars recently on collaboration using different enterprise social networking tools. The first of these was "Creating value with social collaboration platforms" which was hosted by Jive. The webinar started with Larry Cannell, Research Director at Gartner outlining the evolution of social (software) business platforms...

My Marathon journey

Posted on March 17, 2013
In case you weren't aware I'm running the Brighton Marathon on the 14th of April with two of my work colleagues. We're running for the Alzheimer's Society, which we think is a very worthy cause to run for. This is my first Marathon and to be honest the training hasn't gone particularly well, or rather it hasn't been going very well in the last month...

Yammer on Tour (London baby!)

Posted on March 07, 2013
Last week I was lucky enough to snag an invitation to the Yammer on Tour event in London. The event held at the Old Billingsgate market was an opportunity to see some of the features of Yammer and hear from organisations that were using Yammer successfully...

SharePoint 2013 for intranets and the digital workplace

Posted on February 18, 2013
The new SharePoint logo! Last week I was lucky enough to secure a place on a webinar hosted by Step Two Designs and Dynamic Owl Consulting. The webinar was called "SharePoint 2013 for intranets and the digital workplace", so you wont be surprised to learn it looked in detail at some of the new functionality within SharePoint 2013 and the potential impact on intranets and the digital workplace...

Reasons to use LinkedIn

Posted on February 16, 2013
A very short post here on some tips and tricks I picked up from listening to a webinar on Monday about LinkedIn. Sadly the webinar wasn't great and didn't really tell me much I didn't know but there were a few useful tips. First off if you haven't yet joined LinkedIn then you might want to consider the following reasons why you might want to: LinkedIn is great if you want to raise your profile...

Going social - word of mouse

Posted on February 14, 2013
No mice were harmed in the writing of this blog post Earlier this week I listened to a recording of a very good webinar from the team at Interact Intranet and specifically Nigel Williams and Sara Burgess.I haven't linked to the webinar here because I don't believe it's publicly available unless you registered to attend the webinar...

The know-way

Posted on February 05, 2013
If you haven't seen it already the Lawyer has published a lengthy article on how Law Firms are providing Knowledge Management to internal and external clients. Someone pointed the article out to me via Facebook and I felt compelled to write a blog post, highlighting the article and commenting on some of the points made in it...

How to sell an intranet redesign to your boss!

Posted on January 31, 2013
A few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to listen to a webinar from the team at Prescient on how to "sell" an intranet resdesign to your boss or management team. Toby started out by saying that the intranet business case should be about more then just ROI...

It's all about social at the moment!

Posted on January 26, 2013
Social media it would seem has still got a long course to run. This was evidenced by two posts I read this week, which relate specifically to how law firms and fee-earners can use social media. The first is from the Real Lawyers have blogs blog and sets out "Five tips for law firms using social media" this is actually a response to "Five tips for corporate social media" with some annotation from Kevin...

SCL Event: Using social media

Posted on January 24, 2013
Last night I was fortunate to be invited to attend an SCL organised event called "Use of social media for collaborating and sharing knowledge internally". The speaker (Euan Semple) was someone I've followed on Twitter for a while and who last year published a book called "Organisations don't tweet, people do" set out his stall by saying he had issues with a number of terms used in today's society...

How is social media affecting law firms?

Posted on January 22, 2013
My first post of 2013 and it's fitting that it's a post about social media and how it's affecting law firms. As it happens this is less about social media inside a law firm and more about how social media is affecting the activities of marketing departments and fee-earners outside the law firm...

Two from Step Two!

Posted on December 20, 2012
Two excellent posts here from the team at Step Two Designs, from their blog "Column Two" The first "How is a digital workplace team different from an intranet team?" looks at how with the increased use of new technologies within organisations what was traditionally called an intranet team is now shifting towards being called a digital workplace team...

Help! I need an intranet but IT want SharePoint!

Posted on December 11, 2012
Earlier this month I was lucky enough to be sent a link to an Interact Intranet webinar recording about SharePoint as an intranet. The webinar was designed to be for communication specialists who are faced with an increasing "problem" within organisations...

10 ways to completely ruin your intranet

Posted on December 10, 2012
Whilst you might not deliberate set about to create a rubbish intranet, sometimes it just happens. So a blog post on the Jostle.me blog made me giggle with some suggestions on how you could completely ruin your intranet! So how can you ruin your intranet - well these are the suggestions from the team at Jostle...

Ark Group Conference: Managing Your Law Firm Library

Posted on December 07, 2012
On the 29 of November I was delighted to attend the Managing Your Law Firm Library conference organised by the ARK Group. I'd been invited to talk on a panel with the very lovely Laura Woods and Loyita Worley and as such was able to attend the entire conference, despite not working in a Library setting anymore! The Conference itself was organised into several themes the first of these was Resource Management and the first of the speakers was Sarah Brittan from Baker & McKenzie...

Thanet 10

Posted on December 07, 2012
It was a bit chilly Last Sunday I took part in the Thanet coastal 10, this was a 10 mile road race organised by Thanet Road Runners. The route was described as flat with PB potential (dependant on the weather). This would be my first race in a long time having concentrated on racking up miles rather the actually taking part in races...

Traditional vs Social intranets, the war is over!

Posted on November 23, 2012
The Column Two blog is a great source for guidance and tips relating to intranet management and this week saw them produce another really interesting post on Traditional vs Social intranets. In the post called "Traditional vs Social intranets: the war is over without a shot being fired" James Robertson looks at how there has been a widely held perception that these two types of intranets are at war with one another...

Why is new technology not adopted?

Posted on November 20, 2012
A short but really interesting post from the Plantronics Blogcentral which lists five reasons why new technologies aren't adopted within organistions. In the introduction to the post "Why is New Technology Not Adopted?" the author starts by saying it's important to try and understand why previous implementations of technology have failed before listing his top 5 reasons why new technology implementations fail...

Intranet task based testing (TBT) - Thoughtfarmer webinar

Posted on November 16, 2012
Where would you find the toilets? Earlier this month I listened in on a very interesting webinar hosted by ThoughtFarmer on Intranet task based testing. This was the second in a series of webinars, following on from their previous session on card sorting...

Rethinking the intranets!

Posted on November 16, 2012
When is good enough...good enough? Anyone that knows me, will know that I haven't always been an Knowledge Manager. In a previous life/role I was an Information Officer in a Law Firm. This was a much more traditional role when I joined the firm and it morphed into a much more technical role as I was seconded on to various projects at various stages in my career...

5x50 summary!

Posted on October 29, 2012
For the last 50 days I've been undertaking a rather interesting challenge. Called 5x50 the challenge asks participants to undertake a least 5km of exercise everyday for 50 days. There is a £5 entry fee with all money raised via the entry fee and any sponsorship going to Sport Relief...

Making the case for collaboration: Content and Code seminar

Posted on October 25, 2012
Earlier today I attended a Content and Code event at the Microsoft UK Customer Service centre called "Making the case for collaboration". The morning seminar was designed to help attendees understand the value of collaboration within an organisation and how SharePoint can help individuals collaborate with each other...

Become a change agent or be miserable!

Posted on October 20, 2012
Scary...sort of :-) This is an interesting article which I recommend you read, it's not long so you wont have wasted too much time reading it, if you don't  like it. Anyway at first glance you might think this article is targeted at fee-earners, the title is a bit confusing as I think it should say "Knowledge Lawyers" or "Professional support lawyers" rather then just lawyers...

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