I've developed good software and I've purchased it. The buy or build decision has been based upon economies and standards. I figure it's like building a house. When I need to get water to and from a dozen people, I don't even consider designing my own plumbing. There are nearly universal standards for pipes and fixtures that simply work. There are also cost advantages to buying when fabrication costs would surpass the best Italian supplier. So I buy the components of my plumbing infrastructure.

I similarly attempt to buy the components of information infrastructure (II), i.e. the plumbing that enables you to get information to and from everyone in an organization. II is available for purchase, but be prepared for dissapointment. Today's II lacks both standards and economies. You will end up carrying the pail to the well a few times a day.

The ii lab is about building better ii.

fiction writing

"I write when I when I am not reading. Sometimes I do both at the same time."

"Calling it fiction makes it easier to write."

I write about life, and I am only an expert on my own. The names may be different, but you'll see a bit of me in every character.

Title / Author / Date Started Reading / Rating / Review (if any)

The Making of Modern Economics (Unabridged)
Mark Skousen
December 10, 2005


The Journey of Crazy Horse (Unabridged)
Joseph M. Marshall III
December 10, 2005


The Adventure of English (Unabridged)
Melvyn Bragg
December 02, 2005


The Civil War: A Narrative, Volume III (Unabridged)
Shelby Foote
November 20, 2005


The Google Story (Unabridged)
David A. Vise and Mark Malseed
November 20, 2005


The Civil War: A Narrative, Volume II (Unabridged)
Shelby Foote
November 15, 2005


The Civil War: A Narrative, Volume I (Unabridged)
Shelby Foote
October 26, 2005


Marker (Unabridged)
Robin Cook
October 26, 2005


Founding Brothers (Unabridged)
Joseph J. Ellis
October 26, 2005


Washington's Crossing (Unabridged)
David Hackett Fischer
October 17, 2005


His Excellency (Unabridged)
Joseph J. Ellis
October 03, 2005


Leonardo da Vinci (Unabridged)
Sherwin Nuland
October 03, 2005


Pimsleur Quick & Simple Spanish 2nd Revised Edition
Dr. Paul Pimsleur
October 03, 2005

This document provides an analysis of knowledge management at law firms and describes our approach to implementing KM Best Practices at Pillsbury.
This document attempts to answer the following questions:

• Can we create a culture that promotes knowledge management across the firm?
• Can we stop the leakage of knowledge capital?
• Can we leverage knowledge capital to improve the efficiency and quality of legal services?
• Can we provide technology that facilitates knowledge management on-line and off-line?
• Can we integrate KM with Outlook and other collaboration tools?

see full PDF
More...

Tags: Information Infrastructure, Knowledge Management

Here is the list of must have applications on my desktop:
MS Office productivity suite - I have to be compatible with the world... Word, Excel and PowerPoint are always one click away.

Novamind mindmapping tool - the first application I open when I get a new idea. Novamind, like its Windows competitor, MindJet, Novamind let's me quickly organize a cloud of thoughts. With the latest version, those thoughts can be used to easily generate a presentation (via Keynote), a project document (via Merlin), a formatted outline (via OmniOutliner Pro), or even a website.


Merlin project management software - there are lots of things I love about Merlin: 1) it is a great project management tool that does all that MS Project can do and more, 2) it is stable, 3) it can be operated via keyboard, and 4) It plays nicely with other tools. I can import an outline or mindmap directly from Novamind. Since Novamind can read .opml files (as generated by Omni Outliner) and can output presentation documents, I can now move between mindmap, outlining, project management and presentation tools, without loosing my outline structure. Try that on windows. Microsoft doesn't seem to know opml exists.

Rapidweaver - I use Rapidweaver to create and edit this blog. I know that you can create a blog with any text editing tool, but ... WHY? For just a few dollars, you can create richly formatted content that supports both RSS and Podcast extensions. With Rapidweaver, you can create rich sites that would take much more time to develop with Dreamweaver (which I also use). While there are other tools that are great for creating websites, developing RSS feeds or publishing podcasts, I credit the people at Realmacsoftware for being the first to combine the three in one elegant package. I just showed a Rapidweaver site to our Director responsible for client web technologies. If only our enterprise web systems could do what Rapidweaver does.

Tags: Macintosh

We spent several years at Pillsbury creating a pure electronic files and knowledge management capability. While you will see other material from me talking about the long road to e-files, this document is a sign at the end of the road. It shows in six simple steps how a new employee performs the mundane tasks of opening an electronic record and saving documents to it.
see Full Report
Adobe Acrobat
XML version readable by Visio 2003 and OmniGraffle

Tags: Knowledge Management

The tools used to develop software grow with every enterprise system we put into production. This is a layout of the tools and respective expertise areas of our development team.
Adobe Acrobat PDF OmniGraffle Chart

Back in 1999 I had a new idea for a news site. The concept was that rather than generate news, the site would:
1. Summarize top headlines, and
2. Provide an index to multiple news sites with content related to current headlines.



I called the site IJNews.com, and introduced it in 1999. Here is a link to a saved archive of the site (provided by archive.org). You will note that the site's layout was crude by today's standards (including an automatically updated current date display where the actual 1999 date should appear). Isn't it wonderful that our best and worst is preserved equally by this Library of Congress funded project!!!

The hackworthy contribution of this site was the layout of the layout of the news site. There were two new things I did here:

1. I wrote my own headlines. This enabled me to spotlight stories without creating Intellectual Property issues.
2. Below each headline I provided clearly identified links to various news providers with related stories.

Most web news fans will notice the similarities between my format and the format re-invented a few years later by the Google people. Since we all know Google is the best, I deem anything like it (in even the smallest way) hackworthy.

Tags: Internet

I spoke at a Customer Advisory Forum gathering hosted by Autonomy Software at the Ritz Carlton in South Central Park, Manhattan Thursday and Friday morning. Autonomy is a company based in Cambridge, UK and San Francisco, USA that provides some amazing tools for finding and managing information. They support search in just about any language and any type of information including text, audio and video. As can be the case with these events, there was more energy spent converting the converted than needed. But overall, the event was well planned and executed. I heard a some good presentations and learned a few things.

I've made heavy use of Autonomy technology when building PWSP's information infrastructure. Autonomy offered a powerful search platform that includes every conceivable search related facility. Autonomy's search links our enterprise systems and enables employees to simultaneously search expertise, best practice documents, contacts, clients, prior work, docket (calendars), intranet and internet content. The PWSP LLP infrastructure includes millions of pages of documents and other media types, each requiring some level of security. Autonomy's security is rock solid.

My presentation provided an overview of the development of Information Infrastructure at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP. I showed our first and second generation systems and described our lessons learned with each. I also gave a glimpse at the next generation, currently under development. Presentation in Acrobat PDF format.

At the seminar, there were a dozen attendees from the U.S., U.K., and Austrailia. Media and healthcare companies were well represented. The most interesting presentation was presented by Joseph Britto, MD of Isabel Healthcare who was motivated to develop a medical diagnostic KM system after the loss of a patient. Dr. Britto provides a good demonstration of the potential of KM software in the medical profession and also a great human interest story.

Tags: Knowledge Management

Title / Author / Date Started Reading / Rating / Review (if any)

DisneyWar (Unabridged)
James B. Stewart
September 11, 2005


The 11th Element (Unabridged)
Robert Scheinfeld
September 11, 2005


China, Inc. (Unabridged)
Ted C. Fishman
August 13, 2005


Magic Street (Unabridged)
Orson Scott Card
August 13, 2005


Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? (Unabridged)
Louis V. Gerstner, Jr.
July 24, 2005


Perfect Enough (Unabridged)
George Anders
July 24, 2005


Objectivism (Unabridged)
Leonard Peikoff
July 16, 2005
A comprehensive treatise on Objectivism. Readers know I am a fan of the subject. Unfortunately, Peikoff made the mistake that Ayn Rand fortunately did not. You have to communicate to educate and Ayn knew she would have to tell a story (and well at that) to communicate the concepts of Objectivism with more than a few academics. Leonard's work is far too ponderous to be read by anyone but the most devoted. As a member of the devoted, I can say that this could have been far less work to read.


The Fountainhead (Unabridged)
Ayn Rand
July 16, 2005

Title / Author / Date Started Reading / Rating / Review (if any)

Atlas Shrugged (Unabridged), Volume 3
Ayn Rand
June 29, 2005


Atlas Shrugged (Unabridged), Volume 1
Ayn Rand
June 29, 2005


Atlas Shrugged (Unabridged), Volume 2
Ayn Rand
June 29, 2005


Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (Unabridged)
Ayn Rand
June 13, 2005


All Marketers Are Liars (Unabridged)
Seth Godin
June 13, 2005


The World Is Flat (Unabridged)
Thomas L. Friedman
May 30, 2005


The Closers (Unabridged)
Michael Connelly
May 30, 2005


Winning (Unabridged)
Jack Welch with Suzy Welch
May 14, 2005


The Secret (Unabridged)
Ken Blanchard and Mark Miller
May 14, 2005


Gut Reaction
Richard Paul
May 10, 2005


Art of War (Unabridged)
Sun-Tzu, translation by John Minford
May 10, 2005


The Worthing Saga (Unabridged)
Orson Scott Card
April 30, 2005


Assassination Vacation
Sarah Vowell
April 26, 2005


Shadow of the Giant (Unabridged)
Orson Scott Card
April 08, 2005


Leadership and Self-Deception (Unabridged)
The Arbinger Institute
April 08, 2005

Title / Author / Date Started Reading / Rating / Review (if any)

On Intelligence (Unabridged)
Jeff Hawkins and Sandra Blakeslee
March 20, 2005


The Success Principles
Jack Canfield with Janet Switzer
March 10, 2005


Chatter (Unabridged)
Patrick Radden Keefe
February 25, 2005


The Narrows (Unabridged)
Michael Connelly
February 25, 2005


What Clients Love
Harry Beckwith
February 19, 2005


Executive Briefing: The Power of Persuasion
Dr. Robert Cialdini
February 19, 2005


Interview with Jack Canfield
Jack Canfield
February 19, 2005


1984 (Unabridged)
George Orwell
January 27, 2005


Whiteout (Unabridged)
Ken Follett
January 27, 2005

The Governance Model was the first of three experimental models for next generation legal services I worked to develop between 2002 and 2005. After the Knowledge Folders initiative proved successful at answering the technical question of how to manage knowledge, these new models sought to answer the next question, "How do you apply information infrastructure to maximize the utility of client service?". The basic conclusion of the governance model was that law firms should cease allocating resources for marketing activities other than brand awareness. Instead, law firms should concentrate resources on assuring the delivery of precise and timely information for each and every client.... Said otherwise, law firms should focus systems on enabling lawyers to be an indispensable source of information on the client's governance team.
One reason driving the development of the Governance model was the high cost of servicing Client Teams. Most large law-firms have been unable to service more than a few dozen teams although many have more than 1,000 active clients. This is due to that manpower intensive nature of current client team organization. By sitting ten people at a table each month with an average bill rate of $500, a single team can annually cost more than sixty thousand dollars. Consider additional administrative expenses and you have clarity on this issue.
The goal of client teams was to address the new reality that specialization necessitates collaboration among lawyers when serving a client. This does not just apply to the client as a company, but to each individual in within a client company. As a CIO with more than a dozen years with law firms, I can write my own contracts. Yet I still will need the services of both a corporate and labor lawyer on any given year. My legal service needs are completely independent of peers such as the CFO or our General Counsel.
When we count the individuals served, the average top 100 law firm may have as many as 100,000 clients that need multi-counsel service. Obviously the Client Teams model cannot meet this need and another model is required.
To ensure information delivery would indeed be precise and timely, the governance model requires that a risk profile be established for each client (person) at the start of each engagement based upon his or her roles and responsibilities with the client company. Setting up a profile would be no more complicated than creating an account at Yahoo. Technology would then be used to automatically route knowledge and enterprise information related to the profile to his or her lawyers. Lawyers would in-turn quickly forward relevant risk information using the same technology.
Sources for risk information would include content created expressly for the client (i.e. Docket dates, documents) and general content that could be applicable to any client (i.e. news, written Alerts regarding changes in the law, invites to training events hosted by the firm). Since the provision of general content and invitations to clients is typically the purview of marketing, re-assigning those resources seemed a natural fit. Companies requesting legal services almost without exception request more of law firms.

Tags: Knowledge Management