The older I get, the more I appreciate the effort it takes to get the important things done right.  Blogging is no exception.  Lots of blogs (and their bloggers) start out with a bright burst of energy and enthusiasm, only to falter when they come face to face with the realities of regular blogging.  As I have learned, it is very hard to maintain a schedule of regular blogging.  So I  remain impressed by those who do.  Equally impressive are the folks who have been blogging for years, but still find a reason to blog regularly and, more importantly, still find something interesting to say to their readers.

Accordingly, on this occasion of the the nominations for the 2011 ClawBies Awards, I thought I should pay tribute to Canadian bloggers who are relative “old-timers” in terms of their length of service in the blogging field.  Their longevity is a testament to their creativity, mastery of the art, and stick-with-itness:

• Connie Crosby.  Let me start by nominating “Info Diva” and consultant, Connie Crosby.  Blogging since 2004, Connie consistently provides her readers with the latest information and guidance in the areas of information management, social media and legal libraries.  In addition to her own blog, Connie is a contributor to the phenomenal slaw.ca blog. Active on Twitter and in several professional groups that meet face-to-face, Connie is a blogging leader.
• Garry J. Wise. The Wise Law Blog casts its net widely, covering legal, political and technology topics.  Garry started the blog in 2005 and has been joined over the years by contributors from his firm and by the occasional guest blogger.  In addition, he and his colleagues provide legal news updates via Wise Law on Twitter. The “140Law” headlines give readers a quick way to track legal developments in their Twitter feed.
• Allison Wolf.  Blogging since 2006, Allison provides timely and thoughtful advice in The Lawyer Coach Blog.  If you take a moment to read some of her posts, you’ll soon discover that her coaching advice is not limited to the world of lawyers and law firms.  Rather, it has broader application across a variety of workplaces.  In addition to her blog, Allison is a columnist on slaw.ca.

There is an old proverb that claims that “old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill.”  While I know little about the chronological ages of the bloggers nominated here, the quality of their blogging suggests that they have cornered the market on skill.  On behalf of their readers past, present and future, I wish them many more years of continued blogging success.

[Photo Credit: Hugh Bell]

It was an honor to learn that Above and Beyond KM has been nominated for The 2011 ABA Journal Blawg 100. In this fifth anniversary of their annual contest, the editors of the ABA Journal sought recommendations from readers and then selected the final 100.  Now, the hard part begins.  The ABA Journal would like our readers to vote for the blogs that they believe should win in each category.  Because of past “voting irregularities,” each voter must register before voting. You’re allowed 12 votes, so you can vote several times in each category that interests you. May I request that one of your votes in the Legal Tech category go to this blog? (Just click the icon at the top of the right-hand column of this page or at the bottom of this post to vote.)

One of the challenges of this process is that not every reader will be sufficiently motivated to take the time to vote.  So, if you don’t wish to end up as the blogger with no votes, you have to get down on bended knee and beg your friends and family to visit the ABA Journal site just for you. I’m exceedingly grateful to my friends and family who have done this in the past for me, but I’ve been conscious of the fact that we solo bloggers have a tough battle when we’re in the same category as group blogs.  For example, my good friends the great geeks (3 Geeks and a Law Blog) are also in the Legal Tech category.  If all of us get down on bended knee to beg for the support, then on straight numbers alone I’m out of the running since the great geeks combined have many more friends and family than little ol’ me.  (Thankfully, the ability to vote for more than one blog in a category could level the playing field — you can vote for both of us!)

Rather than prematurely exiting the field, however, I thought it might be helpful to remind myself and my readers of some of the blog posts you’ve told me you’ve enjoyed this year:

• A Better Way for Lexis and Westlaw — why their approach to legal research doesn’t make sense for lawyers
• Is KM a Real Force Multiplier? — determining which KM activities really add value and which ones don’t
• The Purpose-Driven Organization — this posts asks if you know the WHY of your organization
• Fighting the Knowledge Hiding Epidemic — why we are so bad at knowledge sharing, and what to do about it
• What Makes Lawyers So Challenging — how the special personality traits of lawyers make it hard for them to collaborate
• The SharePoint Swiss Army Knife — what we love and hate about the platform Microsoft has insisted we use
• Tier 1 Law Firm: Know Thyself — why even Tier 1 firms need to understand their business model and explain their value proposition
• Law Firm Investment Portfolio — why law firms should manage their practices like an investment portfolio
• Seyfarth’s Success Story — how Seyfarth Shaw has won acclaim through its adoption of Lean Six Sigma
• Steve Jobs and Legal KM — what law firm knowledge management personnel can learn from Steve Jobs
• Cleopatra and Law Librarians — about the shocking pay inequities suffered by female law firm librarians

As you can see, it’s been an interesting year.  So please excuse this shameless self-promotion. I’d be grateful for your vote if you are so moved.  But regardless, please know that I am always grateful that you read my blog and even comment on it or tweet it from time to time. You definitely make it worth my time.

Cheers!

- Mary

Please click the Vote for this Blog picture below to support this blog:

“America Borders on the Magnificent” was the tag line of a brilliant series of posters promoting travel to Canada in the 1980s.  I proudly displayed these posters on my dorm walls and loved the look on the faces of my US classmates when the meaning of that tag line finally dawned on them.  I was reminded of the truth of that tag line as I carried out my annual review of the magnificent Canadian legal blogging scene in preparation for this post nominating blogs for the 2010 Canadian Law Blog Awards (the CLawBies). Started in 2006, these awards recognize bloggers relevant to the Canadian legal blogosphere.  The nominees ran the gamut from well-established blogging icons to newbies in need of an encouraging word.  In each case, the nominations and awards have been handled in a typically Canadian fashion — with warmth, generosity and modesty.

Since I have readers on both side of the border, I’m hopeful that this post will remind my readers in more southernly  climes that casting their reading nets up north can yield some rich results.  There truly are some fantastic bloggers between the 49th parallel and Alaska. To get a sense of the full range of Canadian blogs available, take a look at the Canadian Law Blogs List maintained by Stem Legal.  For a quick sample, here are my nominations for the 2010 CLawBies:

• David Ma offers a nice blend of legal insights and practical technology advice on Techblawg.  While the black letter law he discusses may not be as helpful south of the border, lawyers and non-lawyers alike will be grateful for his guidance on common technical challenges such as handling the fall-out of the end of Delicious.
• The writers at Blogosaurus Lex aim high. Sponsored by Alberta’s Legal Resource Centre, their goal is to speed public education about the law.  Their posts are practical and written in plain English.  This is entirely in keeping with what they call their Guiding Ideal:  ”Law plays an essential role in the maintenance of a democracy. It is a bulwark against tyranny and a mechanism for advancing the cause of justice. Public legal education is, therefore, fundamentally, citizenship education that ensures that the public understands and supports the rule of law, makes effective use of the justice system, and engages effectively in ensuring the system meets the changing needs of society.”
• Samantha Collier is a marketing professional with the patience necessary to work with lawyers.  And, she’s willing to tackle a subject regarding which many lawyers are skeptical or scared:  social media.  Her Social Media for Law Firms blog covers a range of issues that lawyers and law firms on the cutting edge should be considering such as building a social media strategy, optimizing your use of popular social media platforms (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.), and how to handle online criticism.  It’s topical and it’s practical.

No review of Canadian legal blogging would be complete without recognition of the continued excellence exhibited by Connie Crosby, Jordan Furlong and the entire blogging team at Slaw.  When I referred to “blogging icons” at the beginning of the post, these were the folks I had in mind.  They set an impressively high standard for the rest of us.

[Photo Credit: vtgard]

If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know that I haven’t been a regular writer lately. In fact, last month I published the fewest number of posts of any full month since I started blogging in 2008. Please don’t take this as a sign of my disinterest. Radio silence can occur for a variety of reasons.  The reality is that I’ve had some other projects on my plate that have demanded an enormous amount of time, leaving me little time for blogging.

While it may seem casual to some, I’ve discovered that blogging requires a fair amount of time and thought.  Over the last two years, I’ve blogged in the early morning and very late at night.  In addition, I’ve had to set aside time to do the reading that makes it possible for me to write.  And then, there’s the thinking time.  While I’m not always successful, I do try to process information before committing it to writing.  While there are many helpful blogs that focus on being primarily a conduit to the work of others, I’ve tried to balance some original writing with simply sharing information with my readers.  Lately I haven’t had the time to do any of this so you and I haven’t had these posts.

What I’ve learned through this forced hiatus is that I miss the stimulation and discipline of regular blogging. Above all, I’ve missed having opportunities to be in conversation with you.

They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder.  In my case, at least, I can say that’s true.  I do hope it’s true for you as well.

[Photo Credit:  YivaS]

December is the month for nominations for the Canadian Law Blog Awards (or CLawBies). In typically understated Canadian fashion, bloggers are asked to nominate other blogs and bloggers of note, and to modestly refrain from plugging their own work. In the spirit of the season (and of these generous awards), here are my nominations:

• What smart person would fail to read a blog entitled Wise Law Blog?  Not this one!  Great writing covering a range of legal and political topics is the highlight of this blog.  As an added bonus, Gerry Wise includes news from both sides of the 49th parallel.
• To be honest, “style” is not a word I regularly associate with the law.  However, I’m prepared to believe that lawyers can be stylish when I read Precedent.  News, comments, gossip and amusement – that’s the bill of fare the writers at Precedent offer.  And, it’s fun to boot.
• Connie Crosby is a self-professed “Info Diva” who covers a broad range of topics stretching from social media to classic librarian issues.  In the process, she leverages her deep knowledge of lawyers and law firms to keep her posts relevant for those of us in the legal industry.

Finally, how can a blog post discussing Canadian legal blogs fail to recognize the category-busting blog that is astonishing in its range and depth.  I’m speaking, of course, of Slaw.ca.  It is an amazing resource for lawyers and other folks interested in all things legal.  To the marvelous team of bloggers at Slaw, all I can say is thanks for another terrific year of entertaining and educational posts.

What a wonderful surprise!  Today the ABA Journal released its Third Annual Blawg 100 List and I’m delighted to report that Above and Beyond KM has been included in that list along with some truly remarkable law blogs.  The list was compiled by the Journal’s editors, who this year asked readers of legal blogs to recommend their favorite blogs.  Those recommendations are like gold to any blogger, and I am truly grateful to all of you who suggested this blog.

Now that the list has been published, the next step is for readers to vote for the blogs  that they like the best in each of the 10 categories.  This blog is in the “Legal Tech” category along with the following impressive blawgs:

• DennisKennedy.com
• e-Lessons Learned
• Eric Goldman: Technology & Marketing Law Blog
• FutureLawyer
• Inter Alia
• iPhone J.D.
• Real Lawyers Have Blogs
• Robert Ambrogi’s LawSites
• Social Media Law Student
• Strategic Legal Technology
• TechnoLawyer Blog
• 3 Geeks and a Law Blog
• 22 Tweets

The voting has begun and the results will be reported in February.  If you are so inclined, I’d be grateful for your support.  All you have to do is cast your vote before December 31.  Regardless of whether you vote or not, please do check out the blogs on the list.  They are a terrific entry point to the riches of the legal blogosphere.

Before I sign off, I do want to thank all my readers.  As I’ve learned over nearly two years of blogging, you are an extraordinarily generous group of people.  Some of you leave comments when you read something of interest.  Others of you tweet a blog post that has caught your fancy.  Still others send me e-mails from time to time just to let me know that something in the blog has resonated with you.  And then, there are those of you who don’t contact me, but are kind enough to recommend Above and Beyond KM to your colleagues and, in this case, to the ABA Journal.

Please accept my deepest appreciation.  It’s a great pleasure to write for and with you.

I’ve been staring at WordPress themes for hours on end and am going cross-eyed.  There are just too many choices.  The problem is that I’ve been laboring under the foolish notion that somewhere out there is the perfect WordPress theme for me.  Dumb!

The reality is that in blogging (as with many* things), all we need is a good enough choice.  The hunt for the perfect choice is just another way of delaying the need to make a commitment.  No matter what you’ve heard, we now know that there is really no guarantee that if you hunt longer you’ll find perfection.  In fact, Barry Schwartz tells us in the Paradox of Choice that most of the time the only reward for the painstaking weighing of too many choices is  — too much stress.

Now think about how we approach knowledge management projects.  If we listen to the siren song of vendors, we all too often choose projects with big budgets and big expectations.  As a result, every decision is fraught because the price of failure is high.  After all, how do you tell the partners in your law firm that you’ve spent thousands of their dollars on a “good enough” (but definitely not perfect, and possibly not great) solution?

Somehow we have to change our mode of operating, moving away from big productions worthy of Cecil B. DeMille, and closer to an indy film created with a camcorder.  When the stakes are lower, we are less likely to succumb to the paralysis of choice.  And then, a solution that is “good enough” suddenly becomes … perfect.

* Just for the record, nothing I’ve written here should be construed to apply to the choice of a significant other — especially if that person is reading this  blog!

[Photo credit:  Gregor Rohrig, Creative Commons License]

It’s amazing how long a person can agonize about making a change — stumbling around in the dark, trying to find the path forward.  For me, it literally took months.  Finally, a couple of weeks ago, I tried polling my friends on  Twitter.  The question was simple:  Should I stay or should I go?  Within minutes, the answers came flying back and they were nearly unanimous — Go!

Go where?  To WordPress.  (And you thought I was agonizing over something truly earth shattering, right?  But think about it for a minute.  My question is just a proxy for a lot of tough decisions we face daily.  It’s the process of working through the question that I want to focus on here.)  The reality is that when you’ve made an investment in something, it’s hard to turn your back on your sunk costs and start over again.  In fact, the real question for me was:  Do I stay where I’m comfortable or do I take a risk and move?

As you can see, I’ve moved.  But the thing that tipped the balance for me was identifying the issues that were holding me back:  fear of the unknown and fear of failure.  Once I named them, I literally was blinded by the light.  I’ve been writing for some time about the importance of change and, especially, about the importance of feeling free to fail in order to learn and grow.  In fact, I’m on record for saying that failure is a critical prerequisite of innovation.  So now, having seen the light, I have to put on my sunglasses and walk the walk.

I’m up to my eyebrows in change and just a hair’s breadth away from disaster.  But as I work through this particular set of experiments and changes, I’ll be documenting my lessons as they become clear to me.  After all, as long as we’re learning,  we can’t call the experience a loss.  And, we certainly can’t call it failure.

(Photo Credit:  Little Ricky, Creative Commons License)

Growing up in Canada, we were the “beneficiaries” of Canadian Content, a government policy designed to ensure we had enough exposure to homegrown culture that we didn’t succumb to the allure of those cultural hegemonists south of the 49th parallel. When I first moved south of the 49th, it was hard to find overtly Canadian content (although media watchers will know that there are a surprisingly large number of Canadians active in US media.) Today, however, we have access to lots of great Canadian content — not because of government regulation, but because of the excellence of the content and the open nature of the internet.

To celebrate that excellence, our blogging colleagues in Canada have instituted the Canadian Law Blog Awards, or CLawBies. The creator of the CLawBies, Steve Matthews (the terrific Vancouver Law Librarian and founder of Stem Legal), has implemented an innovative nomination process this year with the goal of fostering “some audience sharing & link-based infrastructure between members of the Canadian law blog community.”

In deciding which blogs I would nominate, I was interested to discover that in every case I read these blogs because they are consistently good rather than because they are Canadian. (The fact that they are Canadian is a bonus as far as I’m concerned.) Here are the Canadian blogs I’ve enjoyed in the past year:

Connie Crosby — I read Connie’s blog regularly and follow her on Twitter. Her background in law libraries and social networking gives her insight into those knowledge management issues that keep me occupied. Above all, how can you not pay attention to a great “Info Diva”?

Law21 — Jordan Furlong’s blog is a must-read for anyone thinking hard about intelligent ways to practice law. And, even if you’re not, he’s such a good writer that I’d recommend you read him anyhow!

Slaw — This is a category-busting blog: a community effort that covers a wide range of legal and cultural topics. There’s always something of interest and, due to the number of contributors, there is always something new.

Finally, I do want to thank Steve Matthews personally. He has been a terrific supporter of legal blogging on either side of the 49th parallel. Steve’s efforts to promote individual bloggers and legal blogging generally are marked with the kind of personal generosity that makes the blawgosphere such a rewarding place for those of us interested in good conversation and community. Thanks, Steve!

Our family has a strict rule (guaranteed to drive children crazy): first send the thank you note and then enjoy the gift. In this case, however, the gift arrived electronically and put an immediate smile on my face. In fact, I’ve been enjoying Dennis Kennedy’s gift for hours and this note of thanks is a little tardy.

And what was the gift? Dennis Kennedy was kind enough to include Above and Beyond KM on his 2008 list of notable blogs, also known as Dennis Kennedy’s 2008 Law-related Blogging Awards (The Blawggies). I was surprised and delighted to find myself in the company of some terrific bloggers. I invite you to spend a little time with the blawgs and blawggers Dennis called out for recognition. The list covers a wide range of law-related subjects and provides lots of thought-provoking reading.

All of this starts with Dennis, one of the pioneers of legal blogging. I was reading his writing before I even realized what a blog was. He has set a high standard not only for great content and longevity in this business but, most of all, for generosity.

So, thank you Dennis Kennedy!

With best wishes for the Holidays,
Mary

***********

And, because I couldn’t resist, here’s an excerpt from my post on April 15 in which I quote Dennis Kennedy:

In the inimitable words of Dennis Kennedy: “I have no doubt that Tom Mighell has mentioned many more new legal blogs than the number of blogs that have links back to his blog. He’s a saint – I’m not quite that saintly.” Dennis makes this observation in the course of a post entitled “What are the Most Common Mistakes a New Legal Blogger Makes,” in which he reminds bloggers who are lucky enough to be mentioned by a more established blogger that they should not be delinquent in thanking the experienced blogger.