Now you can cleanly browse SLLP’s blog from Apple iPhone / iPod touch, Google Android and other touch-based smart phones. No more excuses for not quoting Tony at all the fashionable parties!
The annual conference for ILTA has begun. I’ve seen two sessions so far.
The first was Greening the Law Office: Why It Makes Cents, presented by Joan Krajewski of Microsoft. Joan had some interesting statistics regarding the costs of business behaviors, and ways to reduce the corporate carbon footprint. Her slides (pdf) have some good resource material for your green initiatives.
On a much different note was Blogs: A Discussion of Current Trends, Benefits and Pitfalls. Panelists brought opposing views (polar opposite on some points), but the end result was a lively, divergent conversation from some leaders in the legal blogosphere.
Today’s keynote by Tom Koulopoulos was also quite interesting. My favorite line dealt with innovators and their target audience. “Ask them what they want, and they will only tell you about what they have.” Innovators create products that people didn’t know they needed. Going to have to mull over that one for awhile, but I think there’s application for legal learning professionals.
The User Support Peer Group track is Tuesday. I’m particularly looking forward to the afternoon sessions: Training on the Cheap, and Engaging Your Audience: Creating Persuasive Training and Presentations.
A colleage referred me to a recent article in CFO Magazine titled, Live and Learn – Companies get better at using technology to use training dollars more efficiently.
The short article highlights that while training budgets are decreasing in most businesses, learning opportunities do not have to be sacrificed. In fact, because online content development has gotten cheaper to produce in recent years, your firm can get a bigger bang for your training buck.
Content developers have to work smarter though, targeting specific user needs instead of generalized instruction.
Good Stuff.
This isn’t related to legal learning, but there’s an important lesson here.
Last week I joined a team from my office to migrate one of our remote offices to new systems. As we left the restaurant after dinner one night, a team member noticed that her Blackberry was missing. “I just had it at the table,” she said as returned to retrieve it. She didn’t find it. It was already gone. So she contacted her provider to suspend service.
She called the restaurant a little later, and sure enough, someone had turned in her Blackberry.
When she picked it up, she noticed that someone had attempted to use it, but since it was password protected, they couldn’t and left it.
My colleague wisely set a password on her Blackberry, and that probably assisted her in retrieving it. At the very least, it kept an unwanted party from accessing her firm email account, plus all of her personal information.
So here’s the lesson: password protect your handheld devices. Our firm requires a login for any access to it’s resources — I’ll bet your firm does, too — but not for handhelds. We allow firm personell to carry a device that can be easily lost or stolen. All the “finder” has to do is turn the device on, and access your firm email.
Does your firm require passwords for handheld devices?
Whether or not your firm is an ILTA member, you really should take advantage of the materials they offer. Of particular value are the webinar recordings. You’ll find them on the archives page of their site.
I’ll highlight a couple of recent recordings. First, Jenn Steele presented on ILTA Social Networking: Twitter & Facebook & Blog. It’s a great overview of social networking tools used by legal professionals. Jenn has a great easy-going style, but is a sharp, insightful presence in our field. Check out her blog, Leading Geeks.
The second is a webinar that I presented, E-Learning Creation with Adobe Captivate. If your firm is still on the fence elearning initiatives, this webinar is an introductions to the basics of recording online content. Other than the shameless self promotion, that’s not why I mention my webinar. Instead, I want to highlight one of the points I made early in the presentation. It’s a recurring theme in SLLP posts, but it’s still the most important for legal learning professionals.
Here it is: It’s the content, stupid.
It doesn’t matter how “cool” your technology is, or the delivery mechanism. Bells and whistles, dog and pony, anything “shiny” is secondary to the content you are presenting. You must always start with WHAT you are going to say before you get to HOW you’re going to say it.
Enjoy the webinar recordings. And thanks to ILTA for sharing these resources.
ILTA’s latest issue of Peer to Peer Magazine is out (and online). The issue theme is Green Initiatives, and includes a great article called The New Classroom, written by Gina Buser of Traveling Coaches.
Gina reiterates what we’ve said here as well, that good training product is already green.
“One option is to create a ‘Green Learning Plan’ – online, of course – with content on how to modify print options for draft printing, steps for double-sided printing, how to create digital documents, advanced search techniques to more easily find documents digitally and remote-access skills for efficient telecommuting.”
She also has tips for for responsible resource use while in the traditional classroom setting. Definitely worth a read.
SLLP’s very own Tony Hartsfield, Char LaMaire, and Donna Payne all appeared in the survey and white paper from the ILTA User Support Peer Group. There’s a few things to ponder, but for now, go read them. Tony’s article on alternative learning strategies is on page 5 of the white paper, by the way. You can find Donna on page 11 and Char on page 18. That’s right kids….half of the articles are written by SLLP members.
User Support White Paper: Beyond the Classroom
content management, learning strategies, professional development, technology
Ted Banks, former chief counsel for global compliance at Kraft Foods, vented his spleen in a recent Law.com article, What Steams Me About Technology. I like to hear what lawyers think about legal IT. I don’t know Mr. Banks, but I hear echoes of his pet peeves in comments by other lawyers in my environment.
Below I’ll review his list, and as a trainer, grade them.
Mr. Banks starts with a good one. IT sometimes forgets that what they do needs to be useful outside of our cubes. We support a community that is using technology to perform non-technical tasks. Even trainers, who are supposed to be advocates for users, can get lost in the features of the software. We want to show them everything, and every way to use everything, instead of focusing on what they need and how they can best do it.
Grade: B. The reason this doesn’t get an A is that sometimes lawyers don’t know what they truly “need,” or make decisions based upon bad habits. IT folks may have insights into helping them accomplish tasks more effectively or efficiently, but many lawyers are not interested in exploring those avenues. It’s not enough to focus on the task that needs to be done today. Some time has to be spent on how can the task be done better the next time.
Mr. Banks is ranting against cloud computing. He doesn’t like the lack of local control in an Enterprise 2.0 world. He then dismisses “debates about reliability and security” as if those subjects are inconsequential.
Grade: C (and I’m probably being kind here). Unreliable and insecure are risky, costly business behaviors. They can ruin careers and bankrupt firms. IT folks harp on these subjects because they are, in fact, important. I once heard from a lawyer (in a weaker moment, apparently) that his profession likes to talk about security, but isn’t interested in doing anything about it until it hurts them. It’s why the message of E-discovery is so difficult to convey to law firms prior to a damaging suit against them.
In the same way that we should focus support on the lawyer’s tasks, lawyers should attempt to align themselves with the core “tasks” of IT.
This was probably part of the previous pet peeve, but I think it stands on its own. I love when technology is intuitive, seamless, magical. Users should not have to be programmers to do their jobs.
Grade: A. But bear in mind that magical does not mean effortless. IT can’t remove all the burden of performing tasks.
IT does seem to suffer from ADD, but it’s not always their fault. Lots if IT initiatives take place because lawyers see a shiny new toy (iPhones) and assume that it has an immediate use in the office. Mr. Banks rightly encourages appropriate due diligence before jumping into a fad, but I’m not sure who he thinks should perform it.
Grade: Incomplete. I think there’s enough blame to share by lawyers and IT on this one.
When Mr. Banks is finished with his pet peeves, he highlights the root problem:
Lawyers can’t ignore technology. Legal IT folks don’t have jobs without lawyers. It only makes sense that we communicate with each other on what defines success for the firm.
Overall Grade: B.
I joined the Twitter ranks last summer. The micro-blog site experienced explosive growth in 2008, which continues today.
As a legal learning professional, I’ve discovered colleagues in my field, as well as several other legal experts who inform me about the industry. Do they all relate to my training role? No, but they help me understand some of the people that I provide training to.
And I’ll be honest, it’s fun. My teammates tease me about “emphatically twittering,” but I think they’re just jealous.
Some of the people I follow on Twitter have hundreds, thousands of followers, while I have a few dozen. Some that I follow are huge influencers. Some Twitter as a marketing tool for their services or products. In 140 characters, they can present ideas and opportunities to a previously unreached audience.
But I’m not a marketer. I don’t need to sell where I work to the world. That responsibility belongs to others in my firm. If required to, I could walk away from Twitter and my job would not change. So for me, it’s an added benefit to network with the larger legal industry, learn a few things, and hopefully, provide some of my own insights that might help others.
In other words, it’s a micro version of what we try to do here at the SLLP.
Do you tweet? Feel free to connect with me there. twitter.com/tlhartsfield
A partner called, asking for assistance setting up a web conference with a client. It was Thursday, and his meeting was the next Tuesday. I know what you’re thinking: A partner called 4 business days before a meeting to set it up? Really?
But it’s true, and we commended him for his foresight.
And it turns out we needed those days to work out the details for the web conference. What computer or laptop will we use in the conference room? Does it have the hosting software installed? Does the partner know his account info for setting up and hosting the meeting? Are there any issues with internet access in the conference room?
I’ll lessen the drama by stating that meeting went without a hitch, but not without some trouble-shooting beforehand. The story could have been ugly had the partner requested assistance an hour before the event.
So what are the lessons from the experience?