Rich's Random Thoughts

Here a few work related things I’ve done recently that I think are interesting:

• I presented at the CALI 2010 Conference at Rutgers Camden Law School on the Greening of Law School IT. You can see a video of the presentation, or the slides I used if you are interested.
• I led an interesting discussion on the iPad and mobile computing at UVic’s McPherson Library as part of the Library’s Emerging Technology Committee.
• I spoke to a local computer club on “Backing Up to Avoid Disaster”.  For the talk, I converted my Keynote slides into a Prezi presentation.  It worked out very well.
• We implemented changes in the UVic Law Library computer lab to reduce electrical consumption from 65 Kilowatt hours per day, down to 23 Kilowatt hours. See our spreadsheet for details.
• I spoke to a local Rotary club on Google vs. the Library: Research & Collaboration in the 21st Century. A couple interesting factoids from the presentation: Number of articles in the Encyclopedia Britanica – 100,000. Number of articles in Wikipedia – 3,000,000.
• I spoke to a Kins club on Backing up Your Computer to Avoid Disaster. I discuss the best ways to backup your data in an inexpensive manner, while ensuring that your data is not lost if your computer/laptop is stolen, your hard drive fails, or if there is a fire or natural disaster.  In 2007, Francis Ford Coppola’s computer and hard drive backup was stolen, just as he was finishing a new script… You really need to have an off site backup – DropBox or Mozy.
• CALI Conference 2009 – I presented on, The iPhone: a Research Tool for Law Professor and Students? Here is the related paper, slides and video of the presentation.
• CALI Conference 2006 – I talked about Personal Knowledge Management & Collaboration Strategies for Legal Research and IT Staff.
• I led a discussion on Outsourcing Student Email at the Vancouver Island Higher Education Technology Day.  Here are my speaking notes and my Presentation. Here are notes taken from the discussion.
• An in house training session at the McPherson Library called, “Google tools for Collaborative Document Editing and Research”. Here is my handout on Google Documents and Spreadsheets.
• Incoming Computer Survey for 1st Year UVic Law Students for 2006.
• An in house training session at the McPherson Library called, “PodCasting 101″. My handout in PDF format. Podcasting doesn’t have to be that difficult.
• Here my paper and recent presentation to Law faculty and Librarians on Personal Knowledge Management.
• An in house training session at the McPherson Library called, “ScreenCasting 101″. My handout and the presentation in PDF format.
• I attended and presented at the Access 2005 Conference at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. It is an Higher Education Library IT conference – Here’s my presentation on Recycling old PC’s as Open Source Thin Client public access terminals. Here is the Audio of my presentation.
• Incoming Computer Survey for 1st Year UVic Law Students for 2005.
• I just spent 2 weeks in Serbia (July 2005) working on the Rule of Law Project for the USAID. Here is the start of my blog entries for the trip, and here is a PDF of the same material. I also took a bunch of pictures.
• CALI 2005, Chicago Kent Law School – Here’s my presentation on Open Source Thin Clients in. Here is a video of my presentation.
• Where should public and academic libraries be headed? – Some of my thoughts.
• CALI 2004, Seattle, WA – Here’s my presentation on Open Source Expert Systems in Legal Clinics. Here is a video of the presentation.
• CALI 2003, Durham, NC – I presented on Open Source Thin Clients.
• Anthrax, Digital Signatures & Our Mail

Law School, Law Library & Education IT Links:

• OpenExpert.org – An open source expert system for legal clinics. We are hosting and leading the development for this at the Unversity of Victoria Faculty of Law in conjunction with the UVic Law Centre.
• CALI.org – Computer Aided Legal Instruction.
• Educause.edu – advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology.