Justice Rothstein Materials Released by Slaw

Slaw has released an in-depth information package regarding Supreme Court of Canada nominee Justice Marshall Rothstein.

Check out:
http://www.slaw.ca/marshall-rothstein-pages

Slaw has assembled a comprehensive set of links to key news, commentary, government websites, and extensive court decisions by Mr. Justice Rothstein. The materials also include a list of ten qualities the nominee brings to the Supreme Court and a break-down of how some of his decisions at the Federal Court level fared later at the Supreme Court level, whether upheld or overturned.

A lot of work was put into this project by the members of Slaw, with Simon Fodden and Simon Chester leading the way. Yet another tribute to the collaborative power of this group.

BCCLS 'What's New?' Now RSS Enabled!

A hidden gem of the BC legal market is now available for your RSS feed reader!

I just received an email from Mandy Ostick, Virtual Library Manager at the BCCLS, announcing that the What's New blog (& the source for items on the BCCLS homepage) is now available via RSS. While the feed is becoming less and less of the story here (see also UBC's recent announcement), what's more important is the source of this quality content.

Here's the official description: "What's New is a current awareness service from the BC Courthouse Library Society that covers notable cases, BC and federal legislation, recent reports, websites of interest to legal researchers, and our own news, including recent library acquisitions."

And now here's the unofficial scoop: Librarians & Techs at the BCCLS are on the ball, and spend their time watching what most Lawyers in BC wish they had time for. I've blogged a number of items in the past that were found first by the gang over at the BCCLS. Simply put, if you're RSS enabled in the BC legal community, this is a must have. (Subscribed!)

UBC RSS Feeds Now Live

Looks like the University of British Columbia has gone live with their RSS Feeds!

Fire up your aggregator for the latest UBC announcements, here are the feeds :

• UBC Media Releases
  (Latest media releases from The University of British Columbia.)
  
• UBC Reports
  (Monthly Publication)
  
• UBC This Week
  (A weekly summary of UBC people in the news, recent media releases and upcoming event highlights from The University of British Columbia.)

Add this onto the recent UBC Podcast announcement, and it's looking like Rob Wilson and his team are firing on all cylinders. Nice work UBC!

Moose Camp 2006

A belated post on my attendance at last Friday's Moose Camp at the Canadian blogging conference Northern Voice, held on February 10th & 11th here in Vancouver.

Since the actual Northern Voice conference fell on my daughter's birthday, I was limited to attending the Moose Camp pre-conference. By a number of accounts, it was regarded it as the lesser event of the two day conference. But I have to tell you, perhaps ignorance is bliss, because I would not have known it! I found Moose Camp to be everything it was packaged as, and much more. Let me also say, I paid $30 Canadian for the day. Now I'm even more disappointed at missing last year's event.

So here's the scoop - first of all, the caliber of the event was fantastic. The organizers of this event obviously have some serious web-credibility to draw out the A-list bloggers like they did, and the support of many Seattle bloggers was evident from the moment I arrived. The attendees were like a bloggers who's who, including Robert Scoble (Microsoft), David Sifry (Technorati), Chris Pirillo (brand him), Matt Mullenweg (Wordpress), and a host of others.

The session I enjoyed the most was the EdubloggerHootenanny. Am I an Edublogger? Nope :-), but my KM intuition told me to attend, and that my interest in 'the learning organization' would be fulfilled. Oh boy was it! Brian Lamb & friends blew me away. Not only did they know their stuff, but the conversation was very open with a variety of people jumping in, and the group was very in-tune with delivering a learning enhanced environment via the blog.

I also attended sessions on:

• Structured Blogging led by Bryan Rieger;
• a session called We're All Journalists Now led by Mark Hamilton on the intersection of blogs and the media;
• Community Building with Blogs led by Dethe Elza and non-profit blogging champion Nancy White (very impressed by her work);
• a product preview of dabble db (thumbs up);
• and a session on 'Leadership Hacks' led by Technorati founder David Sifry - who is a one man quote machine.

There was little to no effort by the organizers to hit the mainstream local media. That aside, how this event went so completely under the radar is beyond me. Someone missed the boat.

$30 Canadian! think I got my money's worth?

National Magazine Article on KM

The CBA's National Magazine has published an article on Knowledge Management in their latest edition titled Knowledge Uprising. (Warning, it's a large PDF)

Patti Ryan has put together an informative article, with a very unified vision of KM practices. I'm obviously not completely impartial here (my smiling face is front & centre), but as a reader, I thought it was concise and well written. I also thought fellow legal KM blogger and consultant Ron Friedmann, along with Peter Nagy and Karen Bell, provided some great advice. If firms are looking to get KM started, this article is a worthy read.

And finally, a big thank-you to Jordan Furlong for giving me a chance to contribute.

RSS Feeds Article by CBA Practice Link

I have a few quotes in the new CBA Practice Link article on RSS Feeds by Janet Ellen Raasch, part 2 in the CBA-PL's 3 part series on new media marketing.

After a couple of reads, I think I like the article. It goes beyond online marketing, and discusses the use of RSS for both internal communications and current awareness. The push-pull theme is also very appropriate, and needs to be part of the discussion. For RSS to really strike a cord, many Lawyers will also need to become RSS consumers.

It's also worth noting the excellent quote from Feedburner's Rick Klau - "Remember that Web site designers are not always content strategists". Isn't that the truth! Having a content strategy can be the biggest difference between having a 'URL enabled business card' and a website that actually connects with clients and potential clients.

Finally, one of the privileges of having a blog is the ability to clarify. Near the end of the article, the point is made that "most legislation, regulation, case law and journal information is now available with an RSS feed". This isn't entirely true (yet). Alberta QP has feeds, and I know QP LegalEze here in BC will be following shortly. Slaw also has a great list of Canadian legal journals. Case law wise? we're still waiting... I do believe that these resources will be RSS enabled in the near future, and am hopeful for 2006. It's these primary core sources that, if we can filter them properly to our lawyer's desktops, will allow RSS to make a difference to their daily practice.

Presenting at the 2006 BC Library Conference

I'm going to be presenting at the 2006 BC Library Conference - Sharing a Vision: The Power of Collaboration, taking place on April 20-22, 2006 at the Hilton Vancouver Metrotown in Burnaby, BC. For local readers, the Metrotown location should make attendance (via Skytrain) an easy process.

The title of this talk is: The RSS Revolution: Surf, Search, Subscribe!, and I'm really going to try to cover all the bases of RSS as a current awareness tool. I'll be expanding on the VALL presentation I gave last September, dropping the discussion on blogging, and delving deeper into how Librarians can help users 'seed' or fast track their personal collection efforts.

The convenor for this session is my VALL colleague Emma Wood, who is also actively involved in the session's sponsor LTAIG. Emma is quite the web 2.0 tech savvy person herself, and I tried ever so hard to get her to co-present, but no dice (at least not this time). :-)