Dennis Kennedy is an award-winning leader in applying the Internet and technology to law practice. A published...
Tom Mighell has been at the front lines of technology development since joining Cowles & Thompson, P.C....
Published: | January 13, 2017 |
Podcast: | Kennedy-Mighell Report |
Category: | Legal Technology |
Resolutions can either herald a new, better you or remind you about all the goals you forgot you had last year. Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell address their 2016 and 2017 resolutions in this episode of The Kennedy-Mighell Report. Along with advice to lawyers and legal professionals about keeping their professional resolutions, Dennis and Tom share their approach to making and keeping attainable goals. As usual, they revolve their goals, both tech-related and personal, around three key words; Tom’s words are experiment, master, and learn and Dennis’ are prune, master, and learn. While expanding on what these words mean to them, they also share advice on making and keeping your own resolutions for 2017. However, the new year isn’t just about the future, it’s about looking back. From Sunrise, Meerkat, and the New York Times Now app, Dennis and Tom look back at the technology trends that breathed their last in 2016.
Special thanks to our sponsor, ServeNow.
The Kennedy-Mighell Report
A Time to Learn: 2017 Goals and Tech Resolutions
01/13/2017
[Music]
Intro: Web 2.0, Innovation, Trend, Collaboration, Software, Metadata… Got the world turning as fast as it can, hear how technology can help, legally speaking with two of the top legal technology experts, authors and lawyers, Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell. Welcome to The Kennedy-Mighell Report here on the Legal Talk Network.
Dennis Kennedy: And welcome to Episode 183 of The Kennedy-Mighell Report. I am Dennis Kennedy in St. Louis.
Tom Mighell: And I am Tom Mighell in Dallas.
Dennis Kennedy: In our last episode we wrapped up 2016 with our version of the ESPN ‘Pardon the Interruption’ show format. It’s a fast-paced and fun show, at least I think so, and I recommend it to you, if you haven’t already listened to it.
Another tradition we have on this podcast is launching each New Year with our own technology resolutions for the year.
Tom, what’s all on our agenda for this episode?
Tom Mighell: Well, Dennis, in this edition of The Kennedy-Mighell Report we will indeed be sharing our 2017 technology resolutions and giving listeners some advice about selecting and following through on their own resolutions.
In our second segment we are going to discuss some technologies that either disappeared or died out in 2016, and as usual, we will finish up with our Parting Shots, that one tip, website, or observation that you can start to use the second that this podcast is over.
But first up, tech resolutions for 2017, around this time of year we usually see all measure of articles on setting goals and resolutions for the coming year, and I think almost the same number of articles about how trying to do that is a waste of time. When it comes to lawyers and technology however, I think Dennis and I, we have always believed that there is a benefit to improving our relationship with technology and therefore there is merit to setting at least a few goals for the coming year.
So in this episode we are going to share our own resolutions for 2017 and I think give some tips on how you can set your own.
Dennis, you are already on record with your 2017 tech resolutions in a roundtable article on the Law Technology Today blog. So I will ask, are you planning to stick with those resolutions or are you already hedging your bets or maybe shifting to different ones?
Dennis Kennedy: I was thinking about this, and because I wrote those resolutions at the beginning of December, so it sort of gives me the opportunity to back away from them, and I might modify them slightly, but I think I am going to go with them for a number of reasons, because I do think the approach I took is one that’s interesting to me, and I think that everything that I mentioned in that article will still work for me. So I think by picking those, I think it’s good, I think it’s sort of like an 80/20 thing, because I think you can — one of the ways you fail at resolutions is to keep tweaking them to find the perfect ones.
So I think that article has me down for three things and I think that will actually work for me and so I think I am going to stick with them, Tom. Does that surprise you?
Tom Mighell: No, it doesn’t surprise me. I think that those, and we will talk about them in a minute, the resolutions that you gave there, and we will put a link to the resolutions in there, because it wasn’t just you giving your technology resolutions, but a number of others from the Legal Technology Resource Center giving some of theirs too, and I think it always makes for good reading.
Now, I think one thing that we also see at this time of year are lawyers trying to predict what’s going to happen in legal technology over the coming year and to predict the future of technology, and I think that we tend to focus on resolutions rather than predictions, and I think that the simple answer for me is that I am lousy at predictions. I am lousy at trying to figure out what’s going to happen, and so that’s why I am sort of relieved Dennis that you at least agree to the resolutions.
But I think that the better reason why we do that and why we are going to talk about that today is I really don’t think that predictions are very helpful; I think that they are interesting and I think that they provide some entertainment, but I really don’t think that they are helpful. I think resolutions are designed to help us be better, and so when it comes to technology, helping us be better with the technology we use can hopefully provide a tangible result at the end of the year. So I think that’s why I prefer to do the resolutions over the predictions.
Dennis Kennedy: Yeah. I mean, I did predictions for a long time and what I liked about them was that you are totally unaccountable for them, and there’s like no guilt about them. You just sort of throw them out there and then if you were right on some, you might mention it the next year, but you just sort of moved on.
So I think the resolution thing is really good, because it gives you that sense of accountability and to say, okay, here’s something tangible I want to do and how do I think it through.
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And for me, Tom, as we have done these resolutions over the years, and I don’t know that we — and we have certainly not been 100% successful ourselves on these, but it’s helped me learn a lot about setting goals and approaches and other things like that, that have really been helpful, as well as having me achieve some things. I think achievability is probably the key to resolutions.
I think that 2017, technology and lawyers, I think — I just keep coming back to good old Comment 8, that Competence Rule and the Model Rules, and there’s an ethics requirements that we understand and keep abreast with technology, and so rather than try to predict everything that’s going to be out there and then say, I am not sure exactly what to do about it, I think the resolutions approach says, hey, I could pick a couple of things where I actually do keep abreast of technology and improve my competence.
Tom Mighell: Well, I agree. I think my approach to resolutions is I think selfish and self-centered. I agree that achievability has got to be the key to that. I tend to go for resolutions that are going to help me achieve specific things that I want to happen during the year. I am not going to say something like — for me, it’s not helpful to say, I am going to strive to be better at doing this during the year if it’s not something that is presenting pain for me at this moment.
Just like I have a perennial lose weight and get in better shape goal, all of my tech goals are designed to address something I know or expect is going to happen during the year, which really helps me better, because it’s something that I know I need to do and I need to get done, and it’s not this kind of amorphous, get better at something that really, while it’s a good thing, it’s not very specific or helpful to me.
Dennis Kennedy: Yeah. So I think there are a lot of different approaches to resolution. I am sort of intrigued this year by either the one word or the three word approach that’s sort of become a little bit popular this year, where the idea is that you say, I am going to pick one word, that’s my word for the year, and then I sort of do a lot of things designed around that word, and to help me kind of put that into effect.
And so for example, last year I think my word really ended up being prune, because I like the idea of saying how can I cut back on things in a good way, and sort of take away some of the things that aren’t so good and then to kind of form and shape what I am doing going forward so I can grow things in the right way.
And so I have a few ideas — I haven’t settled on the word for 2017 yet, but I have a couple of good ideas. So that’s one approach.
In the roundtable article I sort of took the three word approach and did three themes. There’s that approach.
And the other thing I think can be useful in resolutions is this simple, just copying other people. So I did want to mention, in ‘The New York Times’ Personal Tech section Brian Chen wrote an article called ‘Five Resolutions to Simplify Your Tech Life’, things like clean up your password, hygiene, maintain your devices, few other things like that. And so I think that you could go to that article, any lawyer, any listener and probably pick out a couple of those and you would be in darn good shape on resolutions for this year.
Tom Mighell: I agree, and I think that that article is a good article. I think that the only reason that that article doesn’t really fit with what you and I may be talking about is that some of those resolutions really are broad, like mind your infrastructure, or be less wasteful, or be a smarter shopper, those are three of the resolutions. And I agree, those are all great goals to have in mind, those are all great things to have, but how do you go about doing that. And I think it’s so broad.
I just think the more specific the goal, the more achievable it becomes. And so maybe it might make sense to talk about some of our resolutions. You said a minute ago that one of the ways to do it is to copy other people. Well, I am going to copy you Dennis and I am going to use the three word approach that you used in the roundtable article and we will look at that and I think you are going to tell us what your three words are hopefully in a minute.
I will say that my three themes this year are slightly different from yours. I am going to say that they are experiment and share and then, like you, learn. Learning is usually the focus that I have on technology, but if we are keeping with this theme, then that’s just one branch of the themes and the goals that I want to have this year.
Dennis Kennedy: Yeah, as people know, I love the rule of threes these days. So in the article you will see, my words for my resolutions are prune, again, because I love that concept, master and learn.
(00:09:57)
So let me just start with number one, which was pruned. So I kind of sketch out what I mean by prune and so in the article, what I really focused on is to say I have a lot of information that arrives automatically to me. And that can be email, email newsletters, RSS feeds, podcasts, all kinds of things that just come to me.
I try to stay up with that but it can be overwhelming, it can be daunting, so one of the things I wanted to do is to take a look at that and say, and there’s a number of approaches I could take, but first to kind of call it and knock down just the sheer number and then maybe take an approach that says, hey, if I add something, I need to take something out.
So that’s one way to do that and then also say, if I’m doing prune, then I can grab some other things that to me would seem to be easy to do. And so, Tom I think this is something that you’ve done and recommended me before but there are services like Gazelle, where you say, hey look, I’m sitting here and I see like old smartphones and other stuff around the house that we thought we were going to donate but maybe I can just ship them off to these places and turn them into cash.
So that’s how I play with the notion of prune, where I think it really is to reduce information overload in the sense of the automatic stuff, but I’m going to use that prune idea in other ways with what I’m doing with technology this year.
Tom Mighell: My first resolution is experiment and I will admit freely that it is my one kind of a cheat, because it’s something that I — actually I’m going to do anyway because I do it all the time and that is that I am always trying out new technologies. And I think that for any lawyer trying a new gadget or something that’s new, no matter whether it’s a new phone or a new computer or even something small and manageable, just a $30 little tiny gadget to use; trying out something new is a good way to make yourself comfortable with technology.
And so, I’ll make the announcement here, I think I have decided to go back to a Windows desktop for my home computer. I’ve used an iMac now for the past three years, and I love it. I love working on an Apple computer, but I also will say that Apple hasn’t really done much to update its desktops and we’ll talk a little bit more about that in the B-segment.
They are kind of not doing a lot with their whole desktop, they are focusing on laptops and so I’m going to actually go out and get one of the surface studio desktops and play around with that this year. I now have both an Alexa — excuse me an Echo and a Google Home and I’m going to play with both of those and figure out about voice commands and which does a better job of dealing with them and how they are different and how they’re the same.
I am hoping that some new iPads come out this year to look at those. I typically get a new phone each year because I like what android is doing, and I want to see what’s going on. And then I’m going to be playing a lot with one of the nice things that I got as part of buying my Google phone this year, was I got one of the Google Daydream headsets for virtual reality. And I want to learn more about that and try more of it and so I’m going to be experimenting with that a little bit more this year.
So that’s my first resolution.
Dennis Kennedy: Okay, so my second falls into the word I want to use is master or mastery. And so this is the notion that I want to pick something this year where I go deep in. So this is something I am already pretty familiar with but I want to really feel like I’m beyond the surface and go really deep and have some kind of expertise here.
And so the things I think about and they fall into two categories. So one is Slack, which I’m really fascinated by and Tom and I use and that’s a collaboration tool. I think it’s so popular, I think it’d be great to really understand the features and to use them and to become sort of a master at it and to have real depth in what I know. So that’s the sort of tool mastery.
The other thing I think about is an area of technology, which I know actually a lot about, but would like to really feel that I’ve got it and can explain it well to people and that’s Blockchain, which is one of the hot technologies out there. So those are the two things.
The other thing I think potentially really interesting to me is as I work I think I’m going to be getting the Surface Pro 4 kind of edging into Tom’s world a little bit and one thing that excites me is that, that may give me the opportunity to use OneNote, as the place that I decide to target for mastery. With that, the idea is to pick one thing, maybe two things, where I really have some depth, where I feel like wow, I am really strong on this category.
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Tom Mighell: So for me, my second resolution is share. And I guess that’s probably another just my one word way to say that I’m going to – I guess be more social. In the past when I learned something about technology, I love to share with other people, that’s why initially I really enjoyed and like using social media to share that. I haven’t been as good at it as I have in the past and I want to change that in the coming year.
So my share goal is really, really three or four pronged approach, which is one, well, I will say first, the first way that we’re going to share is that Dennis and I are working on a new edition of collaboration tools book that we hope to have out in 2017, at some point. So we’ll be sharing with you kind of our updates on collaboration tools.
I say this now and I hope that I’m not saying this in an unserious way, but I need to ramp the blog back up again. I need to do more posts than I have been doing and I need to get back in a good habit of doing that, not where it’s taking over my life but where I’m sharing information in a way that feels comfortable and right for me and that also means sharing information on social media as well, kind of as the outposts to my blog.
And then I think finally, the last way that I’m really excited about and not sure if Dennis, you’re going to be involved in this or not, but I know something that I definitely want to do during this year is to put together some type of tech news roundup that we do, whether it’s on our own, whether it’s with our friends at Legal Talk Network or however that winds up happening, I definitely want to go out there and do something more, a different kind of a podcast that’s a shorter form, something that gives us slightly different set of information than we give on this podcast but it still is sharing things that lawyers need to hear about technology.
Dennis Kennedy: So the last point is interesting to me Tom, because one of the things I am considering doing as part of my non-tech resolution is I really sort of got to like this notion of personal quarterly off-site. And so I’m going to do another one at the beginning of the year and I’m also intrigued by the start, continue, stop exercise.
So Tom, you’ll be pleased to know that that new little podcast is on my chart of the start projects. So it’s definitely something that that I’m willing to go forward with. So we’ll just have to see how that’s going to work. But my third resolution area, the word is learn and so as opposed to master, learn is something where I feel like I don’t know much of anything but I want to learn something new.
This year I just want to do something technical, so I have two ideas here. So one is to actually there’s a lot to talk about whether lawyers need to learn to code and as I look into things, I see that sort of like the — maybe not the easiest, but sort of the most popular and maybe the easiest way to learn is using a language called Python, which is also a scripting language and there are some things that I’d like to play around with just kind of automating on my own and to learn a language.
So looking at Python and maybe doing a little learning of it and I have some resources already. One of the things I do Tom, I can’t remember whether you also do this is I have the great courses plus from the Teaching Company and there’s a whole class or course on Python. And so that’s in my queue to do that. So that’s one thing.
The other thing is a machine learning program or application called TensorFlow; that Tom and I have talked about in the past. This is sort of in the Google family of apps. I’m really intrigued by that because it seems like it’s something I can learn and I also have some people who are willing to give me access to some data that I can actually work with to try those stuff in a very simple way.
So those would be the two things when I say learn, and then obviously, if I get the Surface Pro 4, that will also fall into learn category, because I haven’t used a Windows tablet I guess ever. Well, and in the sense of the Surface, I have not used the Windows tablet. So that will get me kind of firmly back into the new Windows world and in the tablet area and it makes me excited as I said about OneNote again.
Tom Mighell: And my third resolution, like I said before is also learn, but I actually sort of think of my learn category more as Dennis thinks of his master category or at least somewhere in between, because I tend to choose things that I’m actually going to use in my job and do it more than something that I may or may not use, where I think that that coding I think is useful, but probably something I would not be doing on a regular basis.
(00:19:47)
So what I’ve chosen, one of them is more by necessity and it’s for work purposes at work and we had a podcast on this a couple of weeks ago, last month on change management. And for our change management projects, we do a lot of training content, and many corporations have some sort of learning management system that trains their employees, and because of that just creating PowerPoint slides or Keynote slides isn’t going to cut it. They need something that’s going to be compatible with their learning management system and there are a couple of content creation tools that help to do that.
So I have used one in the past called Articulate and now I am going to spend time looking at Adobe’s tool, which is called Captivate, and I am going to look at that starting really right now, because we are working with a company that uses it and wants to use that for their training content.
The thing that both for work purposes and for personal reasons I really want to learn to use better are the kind of ancillary tools that Microsoft offers as part of its Office 365. So I am thinking of Planner, which I think we have talked about before on the podcast; Sway, which is a different way of presenting information; the new Microsoft Teams, which is Microsoft’s version of Slack. I am intrigued by that primarily because it offers a lot of the same functionality, but all of its features are free to use for people who are on the same Office 365 account. So it’s designed for offices that have it, and I don’t have to — that’s my one complaint about Slack is that we can’t use it for free with larger teams outside of work.
The best thing really is that Microsoft is I think always updating and improving these tools, so there’s always going to be something new to learn. So I am really looking forward to doing that over the year, is kind of keeping up with what they are doing and hopefully becoming a lot more fluent with what these tools can do.
Dennis Kennedy: Yeah. So I think this is a good stopping point in a way Tom to say, these are what’s out there. It sounds like we are both being pretty ambitious, and I know that we have other things that we do as a matter of course, I think that we are both doing like the 52 Books in 52 Week Challenge, and there’s some other things that it seems like I just do as a matter of course every year.
So resolutions, as you say, some people think they are ridiculous, some people think they are really worthwhile. I study it, and so part of what I do at the beginning of the year is to see different approaches and what might work, which is why the one word, three word type things have started to make sense to me, but I think the thing is, what can you do to increase the achievability, and so I think partially it’s good selection.
And then you touched on this earlier, Tom, which I really feel is important, and when I use the learning examples, I think you have to have either a problem that you are trying to solve, or a project that you want to do. And my two examples there are I think perfect, because if I want to learn how to do like a little bit of coding, if I don’t have a project or I don’t have something I am going to do, it’s so theoretical that I am never going to get around to doing that.
TensorFlow on a simple machine learning, once I found somebody who was offering up a dataset that I actually could play with a little bit, then that sort of seems — I don’t know whether I will get the time to do it or that sort of thing, but at least it makes it doable, because I can say, oh, I can see a project, because given what’s in that dataset, I can think of something that I could try to pull out of that and then in that way learn it.
So I think that increasing the odds that you will achieve it is good, and then it really does come down to how do you make it happen, what gives you accountability, how are you going to bother yourself to do that, can you do it on your own, do you need reminders from people, do you need to do what Tom and I do, which is — or we tried to do this year, is halfway through the year, public on the podcast, kind of check in on how well we were doing on our resolutions, so look at a number of strategies along those lines.
Tom Mighell: I think that making your goal something that addresses a big pain in your life or in your practice is a good way to kind of help with achievability, but I think in terms of getting started, I think that having a goal that’s small, taking small steps and using the momentum to move on to others is a really good way. Don’t try to tackle a big problem. Have a resolution or a goal that’s small and take the satisfaction of achieving something to help move on to other things.
But if your goal is a big one, then just break it down into smaller steps. Big goals I think can seem overwhelming, which is I think why a lot of New Year’s resolutions fail from the get-go. So break it down into smaller steps. I don’t know that we are the best people to advice on motivation or that sort of thing, but I think that that’s one way to get things done is to start small and build on those achievements.
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Dennis Kennedy: Yeah. I think you need to learn what motivates you and to what you find yourself accountable to. And so for me, what I found is — so I use OmniFocus as my sort of global to-do list, and so what I do on the resolution type things or goals is I have them come up once a week or once a month. I have broken them into different pieces, and I have them recur, so I get reminded of that.
So even a thing where — which I actually achieved my weight goal this year, but part of the thing was that every week in OmniFocus it came up as a reminder what my target was. So I think that that can be a good way to do it.
I know there’s people who write things on their bathroom mirror, there are people who carry around their resolutions or goals in their wallet, but I think it’s sort of, once you start to look at the research that’s been done on habits and goals and those sorts of things, then I think it can give you some ideas to really help you follow through on all of these things.
Tom Mighell: And we look forward to hearing what your resolutions are. If you want to share your resolutions with us, we might talk about it in a B segment or follow up at some point during the year. Just shoot us an email at HYPERLINK “mailto:[email protected]” [email protected] or send us a tweet, we will talk about that at the end of the show.
Before we move on to our next segment, let’s take a quick break for a message from our sponsor.
[Music]
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[Music]
Tom Mighell: And now let’s get back to The Kennedy-Mighell Report. I am Tom Mighell.
Dennis Kennedy: And I am Dennis Kennedy. So Tom forwarded an email from Productathon to mention technologies that died or disappeared in 2016. At the end of 2016, believe me, my social media feeds were full of people lamenting what they felt was a massive wave of celebrity deaths in 2016.
I guess that people probably didn’t feel the same way about technologies that died in 2016 as they did about celebrities. And I did notice that email was not on the list of technologies that died, unfortunately. But we thought we might take a few minutes to reflect on the passing of some technology that once seemed to hold a lot of promise to people.
I have to admit that I now can’t get the Jim Carroll song, ‘People Who Died’ out of my head, so Tom, do you want to get us started on tech that died in 2016?
Tom Mighell: Sure. Well, some of these are familiar and some of them are less familiar, so I wanted to really focus on the ones that some of you may have heard of. I think one of the tools that I know I wanted to use and tried to use before it died was Sunrise, which is a smart calendar app that was for both iOS and Android. But I think the Sunrise users’ loss is Outlook’s gain.
Outlook purchased Sunrise. They retired it. They have been slowly rolling out functionality that was in Sunrise, and so I think Outlook has become a much better product as a mobile email and calendaring app because of Sunrise. So I am pleased about that.
We talked about the app Meerkat a couple of years ago as being one of the first new live stream video tools, where you could live stream to people where you happened to be, at a concert or a speech or anywhere in public that you wanted to live stream. Live streaming has really taken off since then and Meerkat has died a slow, unfortunate death. I am sad about that.
I am also sad to see that the Pebble Smartwatch is something that actually also died this year. That’s one of the first Smartwatches to come out. For many people it was their favorite and sad to see that go.
A number of Apple products died this year. I think that the MacBook Air, the 11-inch MacBook Air died this year and I am waiting for the 13-inch to go. I tend to think that Apple is doing away with its MacBook Air product.
They did away with their whole wireless router division, so they are not doing that anymore. When they introduced the new MacBook Pro this year, they don’t have the MagSafe power connectors anymore although there are some tools that can help you get around that. And like I mentioned before, I will be really interested to see what they do with their desktop updates this year, because they just don’t seem to be as interested in doing that.
Last two things that died are really more personal to me. Two apps that either died or stopped being supported this year were two of my favorites. One was the Breaking News App that NBC purchased a while back. Actually, despite the fact that it was purchased by a news network, it was completely independent and it really just reported breaking news from all over the world that people put up on news sites or that were headlines.
(00:30:10)
There was no fake news there. It was just a straightforward reporting of all sorts of breaking news all over the world. It was really what I used everyday to keep up with what was going on. If I wanted to dive deep I could go and look at the article, but otherwise, I just had the headlines. I am sad to see that go. Apparently, they couldn’t keep up with it without advertising and they decided not to go with the advertising.
The last thing that I am really sad about is that my RSS Reader of choice for the iPad, Mr. Reader stopped being supported. The developer this year decided it just wasn’t worth keeping up with and he stopped developing it. I have made the slow, painful decision to move on to another RSS Reader. I thought it was one of the best out there. I am sad that it’s gone, but change happens and we move on from that.
Dennis, I have been talking a lot, anything on the list that died that you want to talk about?
Dennis Kennedy: Yeah, there are a couple of things. So one was ‘The New York Times’ Now, which was probably the only technology or software or app that I have heard my wife like lament when it disappeared this year. So she really liked that, and I think that a lot of people liked that approach that app from ‘The New York Times’.
There’s another one I thought was one of the sad case, so we have seen a lot of bad behavior on social media, but I think what happened to Microsoft’s Tay Project is probably one of the worst cases. So it was a chatbot, it was based on artificial intelligence, clearly this is technology that’s coming, and it gets put on, on social media and people just abuse the heck out of it, and just turned it into a bad experiment in a lot of ways.
I mean we will learn from it. Sort of the death of these technologies sort of points to new things, but the Tay story was a little bit of a sad one, because we humans, we were a little bit tough on the AI chatbot there.
The other one I think is really interesting that we talked about Tom is the potential death of the headphone jack, because I am really liking Bluetooth headphones, and I have got to admit, I don’t have the AirPods yet, but I think I have got to have them. So again, something may die, but some new things come along.
And I think this is an interesting topic is how fast the cycle is becoming, so it seems like as we move through these technologies, we can move through them really quickly. And so you have to be alert, you have to be able to move quickly, land on your feet when something that you are used to goes away, because it can happen.
So now it’s time for our Parting Shots, that one tip, website, or observation you can use the second this podcast ends. Tom, take it away.
Tom Mighell: So there have been a number of stories and articles about whether or not the iPad can actually — the new iPad Pro can actually serve as a laptop replacement. And I have always been a firm believer that it probably can’t, or at least it can’t for me.
David Sparks and Katie Floyd at the Mac Power Users Podcast did a great episode in December on the iPad as a laptop replacement, and I think they really go through all of the main issues that if you really want to move to the iPad as a laptop replacement, they are the issues you really need to think about to see, does it matter to you, do these things matter to you.
And I think that’s really the answer is it really depends on what use you make of a laptop in general. I couldn’t get away from certain types of software that just aren’t available or aren’t available the same way in an iPad, but I think that they do a great job of laying out the pros and cons and the different things you need to think about if that’s ever something you want to do.
Dennis Kennedy: And I want to return to the topic of bots for my Parting Shots. So I think there’s consensus out there as people predict what is going to be hot this year and certainly what became hot at the end of last year, that bots, so chatbots and the relationship with AI, and these bots inside other programs, like Slack, have become really important.
So O’Reilly has a number of podcasts and one of them is about bots, and so, there’s a terrific episode that’s called 2016 Bots Year in Review that I think really brings you up to speed on what’s happening in the world of bots, so totally worthwhile podcast.
And one of the things that I would also mention because it was mentioned in that podcast is a communication or messaging app called Kik, which also uses bots in an interesting approach, and in this podcast, the people on the podcast were recommending that everybody get on Kik, and I have got to say they convinced me. So that’s something else I am going to try this year.
Tom Mighell: Well, you and all the cool kids Dennis, that’s definitely a millennial tool that people are using.
So that wraps it up for this edition of The Kennedy-Mighell Report. Thanks for joining us on the podcast. You can find Show Notes for this episode at HYPERLINK “mailto:[email protected]” tkmreport.com.
If you like what you hear, please subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or on the Legal Talk Network site, where you can find archives of all of our previous podcasts.
If you would like to get in touch with us, please email us at HYPERLINK “mailto:[email protected]” [email protected], or send us a tweet. I am @TomMighell and Dennis is @denniskennedy. So until the next podcast, I am Tom Mighell.
Dennis Kennedy: And I am Dennis Kennedy, and you have been listening to The Kennedy-Mighell Report, a podcast on legal technology with an Internet focus. Help us out by telling a couple of your friends and colleagues about the podcast.
Outro Thanks for listening to The Kennedy-Mighell Report. Check out Dennis and Tom’s book, ‘The Lawyer’s Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together’ from ABA Books or Amazon, and join us every other week for another edition of The Kennedy-Mighell Report, only on the Legal Talk Network.
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Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell talk the latest technology to improve services, client interactions, and workflow.