tfpl blog

The Growth of Social Media

by Denise Harmer, Recruitment Consultant

I attended my first NetikX event on Tuesday where Steve Dale and Geoff McCaleb (social media mobile consultant) shared some interesting statistics about social media which is undoubtedly here to stay given that staggeringly two thirds of the population visit a social network site once a month and Facebook has 800 million users...

The future of social media is clearly growth, Facebook’s strategy for example is to encourage users to spend more time on the site, this will soon be a a possibility as they are about to launch Timeline which will encourage the user to spend more time uploading and sharing information. Another major focus of social media will be its mobility -  by 2013, it is predicted that mobile devices will provide more people with their online experiences than desktops.

A few facts – 1 in 3 companies now use some form of social media to recruit (eg LinkedIn), 47% of journalists used twitter as a source in 2010, 50% of the population uses Facebook.
Its official – social media is here to stay and who knows, in ten years time email may be replaced and we could be operating in a Skype based in environment conversing face to face via a mobile platform.

The Annual SLA Winter Warmer Pub Quiz

by Helen Trudgeon, Contracts Recruitment Consultant

 

Last week saw SLA Europe’s Annual Winter Warmer Pub Quiz event take place, once again hosted by professional QuizMaster, AskTony and kindly sponsored by Swets and the Financial Times.

SLA President and TFPL Managing Director Darron Chapman welcomed the 16 teams, made up of SLA members and friends, all eager to be crowned Quiz Champions 2012.  So keen were staff at TFPL, that we were able to field 2 full teams – the IDOX Idles and TFPL & Back - competing not only for the main prize, but also to take home the honour of being TFPL’s own internal champion. Purely in the spirit of friendly rivalry, of course.

The quiz kicked off with an investigation of our knowledge of recent current affairs, which perhaps left a little to be desired, but the room soon warmed up as we were asked, amongst other things, to identify obscure television adverts, to get inside the heads of Sun readers  and to spot price an eyewateringly obscure range of commodities.  Smartphones were sadly banned, but our team nonetheless managed to achieve modest success, based on a sound knowledge of Asda pricing and at least one mathematical genius who knew the current price of Brent Crude.

The final round remains memorable, if only for the noise of over 80 people singing along to Chas n’ Dave and the Rocky soundtrack.  Possibly with more enthusiasm than any inherent musical ability. Or perhaps that was just me.

The eventual and well deserved winners were the Film Club, captained by Mark Haines, whilst both of TFPL’s teams managed a respectable mid-table ranking, with IDOX Idles pipping TFPL & Back by just 1 point.  We are already anticipating next year’s re-match.

Ultimate winners the Film Club https://picasaweb.google.com/asktony.co.uk/Sla2012?authkey=Gv1sRgCJrUv8Dvu5285AE#5698928439449238770

https://picasaweb.google.com/asktony.co.uk/Sla2012?authkey=Gv1sRgCJrUv8Dvu5285AE#5698928397971520194

Recruitment Update: Agency Worker Regulations, by Tracey South, Recruitment Manager

The regulations came into force on 1 October 2011 and give agency workers the entitlement to:

-  the same basic employment and working conditions as if they had been recruited directly;
-  if and when they complete a qualifying period of 12 weeks in the same job.

We have taken immediate action to ensure compliance with this new legislation:

-  Updated all of our contracts and procedures in line with Recruitment and Employment Confederation guidelines;
-  Updated our recruitment system;
-  Worked closely with current contractors and clients to ensure that they are aware of these changes and how they will be affected;
-  Trained our team and have been out to various AWR conferences and events;
-  Ensured all new vacancies are dealt with in accordance with the AWR regulations.
It has been a challenging couple of months for the team but we're confident that we are well prepared and fully briefed.

For more information about AWR, you can go to the information page on our website. For information about contract opportunities, please contact Tracey South - tracey.south@tfpl.com.

Which world do we live in?

Author: Vivienne Winterman, Senior Consultant

Physical or virtual?

Tangible or indefinable?

Real or imaginary?

The list is endless. These are the worlds the information professional (IP) has to deal with. Skill requirements are changing. Paradoxically the world is getting bigger yet smaller at the same time in information terms. As the rate of information creation continues to increase at an exponential rate, its retrieval is still ever challenging. Digitisation is in to bring the world of archives into our homes and businesses.

When will it stop?

How do you contain it?

Is it necessary?

Does it benefit us?

To answer the questions. Never. You can’t. Yes/no (glass half full/empty syndrome). It should do.

To take the last question first. It should benefit us. We should learn from good practice, stories and events that ought not to be repeated. But do we?

Is it necessary? Absolutely. All information should be transparent and there if you need it. It does of course need to be well managed, structured and retrievable.

How do you contain it? Well the cloud concept is doing a good job, but I dread to think what will happen when there is a cloud burst! I’ll leave that to your imagination.

Will it stop? No way. There is so much to learn. With the world population rising to 7 billion more and more information will be created just to manage daily living requirements.

What an opportunity for the IP. TFPL’s recent report ‘Connecting information with innovation’ (TFPL’s 2011 survey of skills and roles) http://www.tfpl.com/resources/index.cfm shows that investment in knowledge and information management (KIM) is seen as an essential component contributing to business success. KIM skills are being embedded in the workforce to bring about a new way of working, so that KIM is ‘not another initiative’ but the ‘way we do things around here’. IPs rapidly need to increase their range of skills. They need to be IT proficient, provide e-learning as a means of communicating with the virtual, global, workforce, be metadata and taxonomy advisors, maintain information governance, be concerned about managing risk, aligned to the business supporting the goals and objectives, and many more as detailed in the report. Over 350 individuals have downloaded the report, available in English, French and German.  Have you?

The Cloud: Sharing information....redefined (Not nebulous, but grounded)

Author: Julia Hordle, Director of Recruitment

Let’s be honest, it isn’t often these days, that you go to an conference event expecting to interested in every topic and speaker on the schedule.

Yesterday, we heard about the principles, potential and applications of cloud technology in a way that even a lay person (me) without a technological bone in their body, could not fail to be impressed by.

I consider myself to be a lay person because, whilst I am interested in (now fascinated by) the possibility of doing so much more with the information we hold, there is always just the promise of doing wonderful work with information, and I am always reliant on others to make the magic work.

In practice, making progress with legacy systems, written in older eras, is painfully slow and there is a high dependency on IT partners who may not share or fully understand the business purpose behind the work.

We had here a group of experts, from many different perspectives, who spoke about a new era in Information; we are at a point where we can optimise value from the content we have already invested in by designing our domains so we can share, inside and outside our own organisations.

The key points driven home were:

• That given the rate of increase of the volume of data held, a cloud solution is the safest and most economical way to store information which is not security sensitive
• The way forward for most large organisations is to use a combination of private and public clouds, infrastructure and content clouds
• That in the use of the cloud, businesses perform better by encouraging self service for customer/users, thus creating the capacity to do much more
• Through social and dispersed media, the cloud can be an excellent mechanism for due diligence, through the smart use of links
•  Economies of scale and better community working are easily enabled through a cloud
• To make clouds work, thought must be given to classification, taxonomy and linkage, if they are to work across border, cultures and languages
• There are clear cost savings via reduction in classical IT expenditure
• But the ownership, value and “curation” of data needs to be carefully thought through, or we may lose information, valuable in years and decades to come
• Who pays for content, provision and/or usage? Authors, owners, users or society? How do we pay?
• Little wastage of storage or data utility in the cloud
• Need to get into good meta data habits to be fit for the cloud

Caution: we were advised that in this ”free-for-all” stage of Cloud uptake, the current wisdom is to be cautious in your commitment to cloud service providers;

Pay detailed attention to contracts. Have an exit strategy.

Who owns the data once you hand it over, what are the rights issues, will you cede power over your own IP if you are not careful?

Make sure you are prepared to have your data back, if contract terminates. Will this undo your cost reduction?

Do providers have the right to keep and use a copy of your data?

• Understand implications for compliance and for QM systems and accreditation requirements
• Independent audit  is essential. Don’t rely on service and solutions providers
• Think carefully about security and encryption versus utility
• If encryption bars algorithms for analysis, will this prevent the cloud as a useful solution to data storage and analysis?

TFPL Events did a wonderful job of bringing together a group of speakers and participative delegates who gave The Cloud a rigorous 360 degree, public scrutiny. The event discussed the Cloud as a positive, adventurous mechanism for collaborative working and for engagement with external customers for interest groups. The event worked, because the vendors did not oversell, and the users and the sceptics came to learn but not to deride.

The sentiment in the room was of an event that delighted in its effectiveness, to raise awareness and expand our perspective on the Cloud, through real experience. There was a call for more – perhaps a follow up event to share more about inventive applications of Cloud, to inspire innovation. There is also a clear demand for CIOs –intrepid strategic information and IT professionals able to lead organisations on adventures to a promised land of cost reduction, shared information and easy information living.

One of the delegates talked about a “race for adoption” and how important it is for growth, to take up new technology ahead of the curve for optimum performance. This seminar made us all want to race.

A word from our newest member of the team

Author: Tom Green, Sales Executive Training and Events

As a new member of the training team at TFPL I thought I’d note down a few points gleaned from my work to date.   In particular, Cloud technology and its future impact on organizations has become a regular topic of client conversations. The information, knowledge and records management sector is talking about this revolutionary hosted service and the effects that implementing it will have for their future. What it can provide to their current systems and what it has potential to  has created an excited hype around its revolutionary infrastructure. However, with this air of potential does come challenge. A stigma of unreliability around how connective, compliant and secure it really is still holds prominence within the minds of information professionals faced with the future potential of having to use it.

However, not all information management professionals hold similar speculations or concerns. Some see the Cloud as only a technological change so are not yet focussing on how they will manage information services within it in the future. In fairness, if the intercompany talk which surrounds them only revolves around its impact as a technology, why would they think otherwise. This is however, what we have learned to try to avoid. We are trying to encourage our community to think about its impact and, in turn, fully prepare themselves and their information service for the future. As a recent example, SharePoint had a big impact on information services that were not completely prepared for what it could do and how it should be managed. Like Cloud it was optimistically seen as a revolutionary way to host organisational information yet, through lack of preparation, could not be properly used and in turn became recognised as disruptive. From my own experiences of perspectives toward Cloud this has the potential to happen again.

This is why I feel our future event by discussing Cloud specifically in terms of its impact on information, knowledge and records management professionals is important. By creating a space for organisations to learn, share and discuss about their future in Cloud it will help lay a foundation for it to be efficiently used in the future. Take your opportunity to join the discussion and start thinking about how it will affect you at ‘Sharing Information...re-defined’ on 20^th October

 

BIALL Conference: Gateshead

Anne Ashdown, Consultant, TFPL

What do you get when you cross a group of legal information officers with a long weekend in Newcastle?  Well, thankfully not the latest showing of Geordie Shores but in fact BIALL’s 42nd Annual Study Conference & Exhibition. Conference this year was both informative and a great networking opportunity; chance to catch up with professional colleagues and the opportunity to meet new faces.

It was held in the very modern environment of the SAGE at Gateshead. This is a spectacular venue in a wonderful setting, overlooking the Tyne and the Millenium Bridge. 

This year’s conference was on the topic of “Sharing Experience; building value in legal information”. We learned about the importance of measuring the effectiveness of your service, retaining a focus on customer insight and satisfaction and making sure you understand your clients’ specific needs. Once you have the right mechanisms in place you can ensure your service focuses on meeting business objectives and improving performance of your function. There were many more sessions that I was unable to attend but the general “buzz” of comments all indicated a very worthwhile conference agenda.

Public Access to Information Conference- 14 April 2011, UCL

Author:  Matt Woods, Contract Recruiter, TFPL

Members of the International Society for Knowledge Organisation (ISKO) met at University College London to hear about the challenges facing people managing, using and requesting information in and from the public sector.

On the panel were the Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham, Prof Charles Oppenheim, Carol Tullo of the National Archives and Paul Davidson, Chief Information Officer for Sedgemoor District Council and Director of Standards for the Local e-Government Standards Body.

Previous events at the London Information and Knowledge Exchange and other discussions, have touched on the theme that the boundaries of information sharing and access are now less technological and more likely to be related to human ability and human-imposed legislation.  The ISKO forum developed this idea very well, in terms of the effects and future direction of Data Protection and Freedom of Information legislation. 

While many recent headlines have focussed on the expectation that local councils publish their spending, the panel all took this idea to the next logical step by imagining the possibilities of “innovator” in communities using the released data to present it to others in a useful way.  This could be information on schools, extensions of current initiatives on crime mapping or variations on some of the spending trackers produced by newspapers.

Obstacles to the effective use of this slew of information identified by the panel ranged from Conflicts between Data Protection and Freedom of Information requirements (discussed with great insight by Christopher Graham), practical considerations of handling these requests (Carol Tullo), the pressures of legislation, particularly the Freedom Bill on government bodies to open up their information to the taxpaying public (Prof Oppenheim) and, probably most interestingly of all from a Data Management and Information Processing point of view, a theme developed by Paul Davidson that following an initial focus on releasing financial information, government will move towards not only publishing other information, but setting all information in a context.  Paul Davidson expanded on the potential for using linked data to greatly increase the potential for “innovators” (individuals, businesses, interest groups) to create a plethora of applications and arguments.

A lively panel discussion followed, with ISKO members and guests pressing the panel on issues from DPA/FoI conflicts to the potential uptake of information among different parts of the population.  These issues appear to be changing all the time, with all information and knowledge professionals now looking forward to keeping a keen eye on legislative and industry developments.

BIALL : Cheese & Wine

Author: Anne Ashdown, Consultant
TFPL Intelligent Resources

A pleasant evening was had at the BIALL Cheese & Wine event on Friday, 25^th February, held in the beautiful Old Hall at Lincoln’s Inn. This annual event has become a longstanding date in the BIALL networking calendar and consistently attracts a good attendance of information professionals from all levels of seniority across the legal sector.  It is an informal and very enjoyable gathering and a real opportunity to network: refreshing relationships with old acquaintances and making new contacts.

It came as no surprise that most people I spoke to had opinions on the increasing rise of Outsourcing to affect the legal information industry.  What struck me is the wide ranging difference of opinion with regard to Outsourcing: some people were very worried about their individual future; some concerned about the overall future of the legal information profession; whilst others could forecast positive advantages. Clearly the whole Outsourcing debate is very current in peoples’ minds and a theme which will rightly appear on the agendas at other industry events over the coming months.

Unlocking the value of you

Author: Shooresh Golzari

Last night we hosted our third Connect event of the year at the Radisson Edwardian hotel, close to Tottenham Court Road. The theme of the evening, kindly chaired by Gwenda Sippings of Linklaters, focused on how KIM professionals could demonstrate the value of their function and themselves as individuals to the business in times where cost cutting may put them at the fore of management scrutiny.

The first presentation was that of Rosemary Nunn, who demonstrated how she has championed the value of KIM as a critical function of business at EC Harris.  Rosemary highlighted the problem as largely being a lack of understanding in the business around what KIM is all about.

She stressed that this problem is often compounded by the obscure language of KIM, which people outside the discipline struggle to link with business objectives.  This very much resonates with what other speakers at previous Connect meetings have posited and echoes our own Vivienne Winterman's blog on plain speak.

Where I feel Rosemary's piece was particularly powerful was in the solution she proposed: let's not only use plain speak, but let's also demonstrate how intrinsically linked what we do is to the business cycle.  Let's look at the business, identify where we add value and be ready to demonstrate it. If we do this effectively, by showing what we do, what it enables and what would happen without it, then we will not make for such easy targets in lean times.

Dave Tullett of Heidrick and Struggles added to Rosemary's angle by bringing an introspective turn to our attention with his presentation, building the case for you.  The crux of Dave's point was that you, as in you personally, have to know what your value to the business is and be ready to present it in a way that is resounding to the places that matter and authentic to yourself; because it's not anyone else's job to monitor and promote your value.

To illustrate with one of Dave's examples, it is not very useful to answer, when asked who you are and what you do, with "I'm a knowledge manager" - what's a knowledge manager?  On the other hand, what would be useful is to demonstrate quickly and effectively how you make things happen for those you're there to support. An "elevator pitch" for yourself.

Dave recommended you do this by firstly measuring your actual impact (how you are perceived) with how you intend to be perceived.  Then by following a three step process of self discovery, expression and evolution begin to build for yourself a case, a set of stories and a brand that demonstrates your skills, attributes and ultimately, your value.

Finally, for those of you who are members of TFPL Connect, we'll be making Rosemary and Dave's slides available online in the members' area.