How do you know that?

This is driving me nuts! On two of my windows 2000 servers, the performance monitor is missing performance objects and is also displaying numbers where the performance object name should be. No info anywhere in the MS Knowledge base about this one. HELP!

posted by Christopher @ 5:18 PM

Did you know you can buy a beutiful home in St. Thomas for less than 700K? Check out this property for only 495K. Maybe I've lived in NYC too long. These prices look modest.

posted by Christopher @ 6:12 AM

Should I wonder why everyone's marvelling at how relaxed I look? Someone even asked what happened to the circles under my eyes. I guess I needed the vacation.

The first day back at 'Big Law' was pleasantly mondane. Nothing blew up while I was gone. This is a wonderful thing. It may be not be obvious, but the job is fairly stressful. As an indication, I was out of the office for 6 work days and I had 1000 unread emails in my inbox on my return. I got through most of them yesterday. Yechh. It's amazing what a week on the water can do to your sense of perspective.

Americans work too hard.

I was told that the people in the islands were exceptionally polite. Say "Good Morning" or "Good Afternoon" and a they instantly become friendly. Of course I'm skepticle but it is absolutely the truth. I was killing a little time before getting on the Dreamwalker last week and took the time to say good morning to a youngish man who wasl walking in my general direction. Instantly he returned the greeting and asked how I was doing. The odd thing was, he actually seemed to want to know! I'm hooked. This is such a cool phenomenon.

Lou, Denise and I were walking around Charlotte Amolie shortly after arrival and one of these pleasant islanders asked us to help him push his battered old Chevy pickup. Lou and I quickly obliged and pushed him forward to get him out of the street where he was blocking traffic. He then wanted us to push him back into a marginal parking spot.
We did so, but this guy wasn't steering too well and he almost clipped the shutter off of one of the shops. So we edged him forward and took another shot at getting the massive hulk parked. He finally stopped witht the bed of the pickup completely blocking the entrance to a store. The driver seemed happy, but the shop keeper was non plussed. A vehement discussion broke out, and our New Yorker genes kicked in - we beat a hasty retrtreat down a side street as the discussion escalated. I was amused.

posted by Christopher @ 7:17 PM

Off to St. Thomas in 5:00 hours. It's about time to start packing.... More on the trip on our return.

posted by Christopher @ 12:29 AM

Just a few thoughts on yesterday's article in the NYTimes about Leonard Melfi. Leonard gave me my first role in a play in New York. I'll always remember him as a vibrant alive if troubled man. "Last Call Forever" was the first play of his that he had actually seen sober. (he had been intervened on several months earlier)

Alcholism is a tradgedy. Everyone knew it was going to kill him, he knew it was going to kill him. Yet the diseas had him.

Leonard, Thank you for the play. I'm sorry the disease took you. I hope you finally at rest.

posted by Christopher @ 7:42 AM

Yesterday we released the KM Portal as the intranet default page. it's 13 hours since doing so and I've received no extra phone calls or emails. That's a succesful launch.

Tech: Cool link check out this source of code for the new google api.

posted by Christopher @ 6:27 AM

Friday we leave for St. Thomas to spend a week on the Dreamwalker with our good friends. I'm so psyched. I think that my staff is ready for me to get away to. I've been just a bit too intense lately.
Captain Jack called on Friday night - he seems way cool very accommodating and nice. I'm wondering if he has a parrot? Read more about the Dreamwalker

posted by Christopher @ 11:16 PM

KM More on 'Knowledge Generation': Can we capture this knowledge that associates are walking out the door with? Well yes and no. ON the yes front we have the documents that they wrote, we have their assistance in filling out questionnaires regarding the transactions they work on. This is the easy part of KM. The hard part is the social network that deteriates a little when a team member. leaves.

An aside about the questionnaire application: This is one of those long and embarrissing development efforts that has been a classic example of scope creep. The 'Questionnaire Developer' allows the practice information group to create questionnaires virtually on the fly. The 'questionnaire completer' is a web based application that will allow a user to complete a questionnaire for a given client/matter combination. The nature of the questionnaire is a set of detailed discrete data about each transaction that the firm takes on. It's designed to be completed by a senior associate on the deal with the assistance of a knowledge engineer.

The potential use for this is huge since it will allow us to capture this information in the data warehouse where it can be linked with personnel, billing and external data as well as full text searching of documents.

This piece fits into the groups effort to map the entire business of the firm in data/business objects that are accessible by many applications.

posted by Christopher @ 10:42 AM

KM Knowledge Generation as an abstract topic. Interesting concept in it's abstraction. Davenport & Prusak dedicate a chapter to it and stress the need to either acquire (through corporate purchase), rent (consulting) or grow your own. In any case it needs to be acknowledged by upper management that independent of profit generating activity, Knowledge Generation has value.

Here at 'Big Law' the associate development process can be looked on as just such a process. First and second year associates are cycled through a series of engagements in different practice areas. Managing partners monitor the practice areas hit by a given associated and attempt to balance the experience. Associates have an opportunity to request different types of assignments and different offices.

Associates are reviewed twice a year and given feedback regarding their performance. Partners and senior associates are solicited to evaluate associate performance on any matter that the associate spends significant time on. These evaluations are used as the basis for the associate performance review.

Typically an associate will be given some indication of their chances of making partner, those that are will persist, and some may make partner, typically 5 to ten a year. The rest either leave or become special counsel.

The end result is that a great deal of knowledge has been transferred to the associate of the span of employement. A large amount of that leaves with the associate.

From this perspective their are essentially two questions to ask 'Is there a way of transferring/generating knowledge earlier in the cycle?' and 'Is there a way of retaining more of the knowledge that generally walks out the door with the associate?'

posted by Christopher @ 8:59 AM

Fell asleep last night watching the local news (NY1) re-cap mayor Bloomburg's first 100 days. The most controversal thing appearst to be his personality. It's not flamboyant enough. I tend to agree, but I don't mind the low key attitude as long as he delivers some reasonable leadership. That said, I'm sure it's only a matter of time before he does something I truelly disagree with and then you'll see a rant here.

Today I'll be working on the color scheme's for our new Knowledge portal. It's pretty tedious work, but I can see where it needs it. At the moment it looks something like a 1999 'Excite' or 'Yahoo', we're going for something closer to the current 'MSN' look. It's all asp and cascading style sheets, so it's not that bad. More results later.

posted by Christopher @ 9:33 AM

KM

New York There have never been so many street cleaners. Every day the streets are completely soaked from these trucks spraying water and brushing. Yet, it's always dusty down here. Out, out damn spot....

"What isn't broke..." The fact is that 'Big Law' has been around for 100 years before a formal 'Knowledge Mangement' program. They've been doing the right things without thinking of it. Weekly partner lunches, monthly group meetings, close collaboration are all things the KM gurus try to co-opt and make their own. But 'Big Law' has been doing them for a century.

My first question is 'IS it broken?' And the answer to this is 'not really'. Many of the Partner's think they are doing just fine. The caveat's come in when you start talking to the associates who don' t have the benefit of the years of partner lunches, hallway conversations and deal rooms to fall back on. They simply are left to pick up by osmosis what the old white haired guys know.

But associates have always been in this position and survived, why is this a problem? Now, there are many more associates than their used to be. It's a scaling issue. The effective size of an organization where everyone knows what everybody else more or less does is about 200 people (forgot where I read that, so don't quote me). If we're sitting at more than 100 partners and more than 600 associates, the math doesn't add up.

Now add to the mix the flow of associates through the machine and you see the problem starting to emerge. At any one time there are several hundred people who don't have a good grasp on whom to speak with to address a particular group of issues.

The associates are very much in the roll of Knowledge Buyers in this scnerio, it's assumed that the Partners and senior associates are Knowledge Sellers. It's also observed that this is a fairly open market based on history. The evidence I'm basing this on is the presence of these manditory lunches and meetings as well as personal experience with several partners who've frequently used the 'you should talk to xxxx' in order to assist me in gathering concensus for a problem. IT's actually a surprisingly open attitude from what I've perceived, but I'm interested on gathering some opinions from the associates.

Are there Knowledge Brokers? Yes certainly, the librarian staff seems to be fairly busy, the practice information group is very active and the Billing department fields many requests for information. An element to be identified is the presence of true knowledge brokers of legal information. I know they're out there but who are they?

posted by Christopher @ 8:17 AM

A second hand quote from a lawyer who recently made partner here at 'Big Law': "I feel like I just won a pie eating contest and the prize is a lifetime supply of pie".

posted by Christopher @ 9:04 AM

We're contemplating buying this painting by Peter Illig at Paintings Direct. It's way cool, but we're not completely decided yet, there are a few other candidates. Interestingly enough the artist is categorized as 'Up and Coming' comparied to established, locally established and best kept secrets. Who determines these things? Is it the market? Some 'Expert' looking at jpegs in demoine? We definitely liked those that were 'lower' on the scale.

Anyway, it's a cool site check them out Paintings Direct

posted by Christopher @ 9:50 PM

More KM... "Working Knowledge's" chapter on the economics of Knowledge Markets. Very interesting stuff. There are Knowledge Buyers, Sellers and Brokers. In this economy, knowledge has a value and it's traded. Of course the trick is to identify the involved parties and come up with drivers in this economy. I think.

At Big Law I'm not exactly sure who are the players in the economy are. I know who they are in terms of running the firm, but I'm not sure who they are in terms of the production of work product. Interesting way of phrasing the problem though.

posted by Christopher @ 9:03 PM

The AT&T telemarketing battle continues... Today 'Kevin' called to offer me a free cell phone.... I asked to speak to a supervisor to complain about the calls. He said he was a supervisor. I asked who I should name in the legal action I was going to take against AT&T for harrassment. He hung up... good. Now we're on the line with AT&T trying to get in touch with the marketing department to blast them...

posted by Christopher @ 12:12 PM

Unknown New Yorker Law: If a group of tourists occupies more than half the sidewalk at a given time. Any native New Yorker has the right to eat the smallest member of the group.

posted by Christopher @ 1:08 AM

Had a meeting of the Law Firm Knowledge Management Group today here at "BIG LAW". This is a group of roughly 20 senior KM managers and CIO's that have an interest in this nebulous field. A really good group of brains sitting around a conference eating the 'Special Cold' buffet lunch.

Discussion centered around the two big problems of KM - Searching and Collaboration. People were blathering on about taxonomies and document classification. My opinion is that most lawyers won't put any time into classifying documents - they wouldn't mind having it done for them... but they won't.
The story about collaboration was similar to what I've heard before - mixed results depending on the personalities involved. Which led me to ask how address the hard question - How do we foster a culture that will use these tools well? Training, compensation, brainwashing? What is it?

posted by Christopher @ 5:26 PM

Reading "Working Knowledge" by Thomas Davenport. Pretty good book. Many anecdotal examples of KM initiatives and success. The book supports my drivel so far - goes about it in a much more methodical and academic way. I'm all for that. It's actually quite good.

posted by Christopher @ 6:09 AM

One of the cool thing about this blog is that you can see what you were going about at other points in time relatively easily. I just noticed that on February 26 we heard that disaster relief was going to pay part of our mortgage/maintenance in the next two years. Haven't heard anything real on this yet. i've got a note to call FEMA tomorrow to ask them about it.

We're planning to move anyway. We've given it the good fight. We love NY and will probably move to another area of the city. But hell, another country would be fun too. It's just to much to live here and know what happened down the street. It's not the same.

Anyway - property values have recovered, and it's a huge and beutiful apartment check out my home site if you doubt....

posted by Christopher @ 1:15 AM

In the curent issue of CIO there's a decent article about implementing there CRM initiative. There wer a few key points

Personal evangelism - a manager personally met with constituants to customize training an coach them on how to use the system. This often included the need to analyze existing renegade business processes and explain how the new centralized CRM initiative would help.

'PAYOFF' good word. One of the testimonials included the statement that the CRM system was a good place to point people to answer a question rather than have to field the question in real time. Good point. If it's in a KM system - the query can be handled without killing bandwidth.

posted by Christopher @ 8:42 AM