HUMAN LAW MEDIATION

More on the potency of internal blogs

Yesterday I posted about how internal blogs can save your organisation a great deal of money.

With this in mind, consider this post which was written at least a year ago by Corporate Blogging which highlights what the firm, IBM has been doing.

Alex Barnett had a useful post about the issue at around this time as well.

As he writes "What makes the internal blogs really useful is RSS - it isn't like subscribing to an internal distribution email alias - the thoughts, links and comments become an archive of knowledge and conversations, captured in the blogs - filtered and distributed by the magic of RSS in a spam-free method. All potentially discoverable through search applications.  Internal blogs can also an effective venting and ranting platform, pointing out the good and the bad of the internal workings of a business and the competition in a safe, behind-the-firewall, environment.......Given their potential I'm quite sure internal blogs will soon become a default feature of the internal communication / KM landscape for businesses large and small."

Would you like to save yourself $1 million?

Debbie Weil in her book "The Corporate Blogging Book" writes about internal blogs acting as an email killer: "In addition to a dramatic reduction in email volume, Ziff Davis figured costs savings to be more than $1 million(computed on an annual basis). What was projected to be a four-month project was finished in three."

"We used to have over 100 group e-mails per day. Now it's rarely one per week, we've saved a month in a four month software project, and everyone is on the same page."  - Tom Jessiman, Ziff Davis General Manager.        

75% of all internet connections in the UK are broadband

I have read this post on the OPEN blog written by Antony Mayfield which links to the Office of National Statistics report for September 2006 showing that 75% of all internet connections in the UK are now broadband. 

As Anthony writes "It means that when considering the average UK web user we now presume that they have an always-on, fast connection....Amazing"

Freedom To Differ hosts Blawg Review

Australia is not only 1-0 up in the Ashes Cricket; it is also this week's host of Blawg Review.

The honours go to Freedom To Differ which is written by Peter Black. His Blawg Review can be found here.

It is a very thorough review of what has happening in the legal blogosphere in the past week and takes a global approach.

Very welcome indeed.

Next week the host of Blawg Review is Colin Samuels of Infamy or Praise. No pressure on Colin but this should be a good one as well.

How blogs can lift companies and individuals

Simon McDermott is CEO of Attentio™ which provides European companies with market monitoring and analysis tools that continuously track a broad range of media for market intelligence about their brands, products or fiercest competitors.

He is clearly on the ball with respect to social media and in this post, he gives some observations that there is an over emphasis on how if companies engage with social media they can prevent the negatives happening such as Dell Hell, L’Oreal Flog, and Kryptonite debacles.

As Simon writes "The message seems to be if you monitor and measure this area or generally get involved bad things won’t happen quite as much…"

What I like about Simon's post is that he explores the benefits of blogging.

He writes about them saying "I think perhaps it is just not as “selling” to talk to companies about how Microsoft have softened their image and increased customer advocacy by engaging with bloggers. Loic LeMeur was pretty much unknown before becoming a commentator on blogs and actually creating content for the blogosphere, this benefits him but also his employer, Six Apart. Would Youtube have been as successful without the millions of conversations on the web? Personally, (obviously) I am sold on this and the examples impact not only key individuals but companies too."

Recently Simon's company recorded an eMarketing webinar with ZN and Bulldog solutions. It looks worth a view.

CEOs - What is your approach to technology?

There was an article in the Telegraph's business section on Friday about the online market.

"Businesses are bumping up the amount they spend on web technology to make the workplace more efficient and improve communications, according to a survey by Google and the CBI.

UK companies spend around £10.6bn on internet technology. They are expected to spend almost £13bn by 2009.

Almost three quarters of the 500 companies surveyed said they provide staff with the technology to work from home. Of these, 84pc said it improved internal communications and 75pc said it increased productivity.

Just over half of the businesses said the internet had had a "revolutionary or substantial" impact.

Peter Matthews, head of Ernst & Young's technology, communications and entertainment unit, said: "It's surprising how few businesses think the internet has had a revolutionary impact.

"It may indicate that British business is not yet opened up to the full use of the internet either in terms of the way they relate to customers or using internet-based technologies."

My observations:

1 The mentality of CEOs is probably the main barrier to organisations embracing the changing environment. I would recommend that any CEO reads the World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman and then they will understand some of the factors involved. Fundamentally we live in an era when anyone can be the competitor of the other

2 I think there are 2 kinds of people. Very technically savvy/willing people who have a clear understanding of the forces of the technology revolution or at the least a willingness to learn. On the other hand there those who really have no understanding that the world is changing and frankly do not have much willingness to do so. My experience is that it really is that black and white. It is not to say that technology is a panacea bit it is to say that you have to be willing to consider what is going on.

Law Society Gazette article on defamation

A significant article appears in this week's Law Society Gazette related to defamation.

As the Gazette writes "Serious and responsible investigative journalism has been freed from the shackles of a defence intended to free it from the shackles of UK defamation law.

The liberalising defence of public interest, colloquially known as the Reynolds privilege defence after Reynolds v Times Newspapers Ltd (see [1999] Gazette, 17 November, 38) has been given a new lease of life.

Reynolds qualified privilege protects defamatory publications on a matter of public interest published responsibly. However, while intended to give greater protection to free speech, it has been construed strictly, leading to criticism that in effect it was nothing more than a series of high hurdles over which the media must clamber towards the distant defence of privilege.

The decision by the House of Lords in Jameel has effectively torn down those hurdles, so that the route to success is no longer an obstacle course, but a potential venue in which the media may showcase the extent of its responsible journalism. According to one of the Law Lords hearing the case, Baroness Hale, ‘we need more such serious journalism in this country and our defamation law should encourage rather than discourage it’."

Organisations have not come to terms with the content revolution

There is an article in the Telegraph today by Richard Tyler which covers some of the issues which this blog has been dealing with.

Web content specialist Gerry McGovern points out in his new book Killer Web Content that the web has become a global memory bank. McGovern says that "Before the web came along, denial was a reasonably strong strategy, but that is no longer a case. The web is rolling 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and so much information is being recorded that can later turn up on Google or YouTube."

The Telegraph goes on:

"He cited the recent US mid-term elections as an example of how information caught on tape or camera came be rapidly disseminated via the web. "Emails, instant messages, voice mails and video clips all contributed to the embarrassment or downfall of several US political figures," Mr McGovern said.

"Senate candidate George Allen was caught on camera making a remark that was branded racist. Democrat John Kerry's alleged slur on US troops in Iraq was also filmed. And [former Representative] Mark Foley and [New Life Church] preacher Ted Haggard were trapped by instant messages and voice mails."

Mr McGovern said most individuals and organisations "have simply not come to terms with the content revolution that has swept through our world over the past 20 years. There have never been as many people reading and writing, and videoing and viewing. It's almost like a rite of passage today for young people to do a blog or make a video.""

Should lawyers become mediators in the blogosphere?

Last week Andrew from IMPACT, Victoria Pynchon and myself all covered to greater or lesser degrees the extent to which litigation is changing and the way that individuals can fight back on the blogosphere.

It is in my view evidence of the shifting in power from the organisation(say the law firm) to the individual(the recipient of a letter before action letter from a lawyer). 

Simon Collister(whom I spoke to on the telephone) also provides a perspective which I have edited for convenience below:      

"We all pretty much know that the best to deal with a potentially confrontational situation in the blogosphere isn't to slap a big ol' lawsuit on the other party. Engage with them; reason with them; try to find a mutually agreeable solution where both parties are winners in the eyes of the online community.

This is why it is called social media.

Ian Delaney's post is relevant because he highlights the actions taken by socially savvy MySpace to attempt to resolve key issues, such as copyright infringement, before the music and video giants get pissed off.

Meanwhile the traditional media behemoths such as Universal - which arguably doesn't get social media - go straight for the legal jugular.

Rather than issuing cease and desist orders wllly-nilly perhaps lawyers should embark on a process of mediation to try to resolve the problem without recoursing to dead-end legal action.

It makes sense. The media is becoming socialised. Business is becoming socialised (see social search). Politics and public policy making is starting to become socialised. So is it not right that our legal systems - which help shape and frame how the above function - should also become socialised?"

Here are some PowerPoint slides of the Legal HR Forum

Yesterday I gave a workshop to the Law Management Section Legal HR Forum at the Hilton Hotel, Paddington, London.

Here are the slides that I used which I hope may be of interest.

Download hr_forum.ppt