SharePoint Tech Con 2012-First Day Thoughts

by Cary J. Calderone, Esq.

My mission for this conference (link) was to find experts with hands-on experience implementing RIM and governance (i.e., records and file management, legal hold and DRED) via SharePoint 2010.  Could it really work?  Or, would this be Mission Impossible?  Cue the music.  Records Center and legal hold  management were highly touted feature upgrades to SP 2010 but my research found very little documentation for admins to learn how to effectively implement these features.  Further research found that those who did RIM in SP used third party applications to accomplish it.  Fortunately, I found a couple of great experts:  Amanda Perran and Scott Jamison.

Judge John Facciola Says Discovery Practice Becomes Crucial

by Cary J. Calderone, Esq.

Judge Facciola

For those of you legal professionals and information managers who are avoiding learning more about the technology aspects of electronic information and how it applies to litigation and compliance, you need to listen to the interview Judge John Facciola gave to law.com (link here) on e-discovery training.  In his words, "discovery practice becomes crucial."  Or, you can read an older post recapping our enjoyable visit with Judge Facciola in 2009, at the RSA Conference (link).

Cloud Connect 2012-Quick Overview and A Few Lessons On The Side

by Cary J. Calderone, Esq.

This was a terrific show with excellent presentations.  Here are a few notable comments:

From Steve Wylie

• The past was about defining the Cloud.  Now it is about the Cloud in action.

From Jesse Robbins of Opscode

• Everything breaks at scale.
• Train for disaster. Start small, then add large scale fault injection across critical systems. 
• Failure is multiplicative 99.9 x 99.9 x 99.9 = 99.7% reliability.
• Cloud failure has stages like death:  Denial, Anger, More Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and finally, Acceptance.

Cloud Connect 2012-Why I Think The Cloud Will Rule Your Future

by Cary J. Calderone

The keynotes on Tuesday and Wednesday, the official full days of Cloud Connect 2012, were both interesting and entertaining.  My comment from last year still stands.  Short and to the point 15 minute speeches by many industry influencers beats the heck out of one long keynote.   This format means that speakers do not have to worry about filling time for an hour or more.   Instead, they make their most important points fast.    I'll list a few of my favorites later, but to me, the energy and focus of the show lead me to one conclusion.  The Cloud is important because it offers a rare combination of the aspirin and the vitamin in the same pill.   Silicon Valley lives and breaths by startups coming along with aspirin, to solve headaches, and vitamins to boost your revenue.   Cloud solutions offer you both.   At last year's Industry Summit, John Hagel quipped that with all the hype, we were still underestimating the impact of the Cloud.   After this year's show, I think I can fully appreciate his forecast.

Cloud Connect 2012-Five Things You Need To Do Now

by Cary J. Calderone, Esq.

One of the advantages I have being based here in San Francisco is I can report on technology innovations as they happen in Silicon Valley,  long before lawyers get information at legal shows and can consider how these technologies may affect work at their firms.  The Cloud Industry Summit was the original focus for what has grown into the Cloud Connect show.  Attending last year I felt I had advanced knowledge of what was going on with the Cloud and this year is no different.  Kamesh Pemmaraju of Sand Hill spoke of major announcements about new Cloud services that will keep your data for you, behind your firewall.  In other words, there is another major security road block that has been cleared for many companies wishing to take advantage of Cloud services.   One of the most important best-practice takeaways came from Jim Stikeleather, Chief Innovations Officer, Dell, inc., who kicked off the Industry Summit.  He talked about the evolution of the Cloud and gave 5 Things To Do Now!

Churchill Club-Online Privacy Rules Revisited

by Cary J. Calderone

It has been one year since I covered a terrific Churchill Club event on this subject (Location and Privacy).  I was anxious to see what we have learned and what was new on the subject of online data privacy.   Unfortunately, the short answer is, "not much."  I really enjoy the Churchill Club events, but while this panel had members from various stages across the privacy spectrum, from the ACLU, to private companies like Microsoft (panel information below), it seemed like the discussion covered the same issues, with no new takeaways.   It was the first time I have ever been a little bit disappointed by a Chuchill Club event.   I was expecting a few new best practices for businesses but there really were none.  That said, if this was your first event about online privacy, you would have learned the major issues the government regulators, companies, and consumers, need to consider.