Legalcomplex

  • Raymond Blyd

What is Perc? A Way To Outsmart Robots
What is Perc? A Way To Outsmart Robots 1920 800 Raymond Blyd

This might sound crazy but what if we could outsmart robots?

We depend on them for a majority of our daily tasks and it is increasingly harder to make decisions without the assistance of an algorithm. Meanwhile, machines are learning at a faster pace and making most of our skills obsolete. But robots have weaknesses, and if we want to stay ahead we will need to exploit them.

Premise

One of the good traits of the legal profession is its demand of Continued Legal Education (CLE). Many countries have a similar system in place to assure legal professionals are qualified to perform their duties. While the current CLE requirements are skewed towards traditional skills, the premise is sound: you need to keep training to stay fit. The survival of any professional will ultimately depend on their ability to adapt and learn…continuously.

There are Two parts to training: first is the type of skill and second is the effort involve to acquire it. Once you join the workforce, your freedom to learn evaporates. Simply because your time gets limited. Training resources are growing in abundance and getting cheaper all the time. Some offer clever ways to help you learn complicated stuff by first assessing your level. I believe this is key: Measurement precedes any Improvement.

Basically, there are Three types of skills actively being solicited: Hard skills, Soft skills and Vapor skills. The first 2 are measurable with numerous tests like teasers, IQ, personality etc. I suspect vapor skills are a bit trickier to capture and measure because we so little understand these skills. Yet they are the most valuable skills according to the brightest minds. Albert Einstein called it: the father of new knowledge and Steve Jobs encourage everyone to follow it above all else. I’m talking about Intuition.

Promise

The past 2 years I have been quietly tinkering on this thing called: Perc. Perc started as legal technology but quickly evolved into something else. I started with studying quantitive and qualitative characteristics and designing companion visualizations. While exploring these graphs, I stumbled on something: not only could I measure and display knowledge, experience, and personality based on data, I could also use metrics to capture my intuition. And when I became aware of it, it increased my confidence in trusting my intuition.

While MIT claims it can beat human intuition with big data analysis, some believe humans beat robots by handling big decisions with little data. With Perc I intend to prove it could also boost your intuition.

Project

Perc is a project to create an iOS app with a companion watch app which helps to educate the user and spread acquired knowledge with everyone. I feel I have a few good years left before my skills and my entire profession become obsolete. That’s why I like to put them to some good use and create Perc to help us stay ahead of robots.

Meanwhile, feel free to connect, follow or sign up to be the first to know by clicking the 3 dots.

  • Raymond Blyd

3 Epic Insights From Hunting Legal Apps on Product Hunt
3 Epic Insights From Hunting Legal Apps on Product Hunt 2560 1600 Raymond Blyd

In “Who will beat Law Firms?” I mention that Product Hunt had just 22 legal apps. That number seemed a bit low, so I went back to see if I could find more. And what I found was Epic. Here are my 3 main insights while collecting legal apps on Product Hunt.

Product Hunting

Product Hunt (PH) is a site were new products get submitted and Product Hunters can upvote them. This creates a daily list of most popular products. The main difference between startups syndicates, crowdfunding or other marketplaces is:

a) PH primairily hosts  real products you can start using right away;

b) And this makes the PH experience, one grounded in practice rather than promise,

First, I did a couple of searches with keywords like “legal” or “law” but my results missed some valid products. I then expanded my keywords and browsed other collections, which is another cool feature of PH. These collections broaden my horizons and boosted serendipity. This resulted in a tangible “Legal Tech Hunt” collection with 65+ apps which nicely offsets my fantasy “Legal Visualizations & Designs” board on Pinterest.

My Cool is Cold

What struck me was the fact that cool products had little upvotes. Premonition uses AI to find the best lawyers, how cool is that! It had only 1 vote ?…so I gave it one more.  ROSS, an AI powered Attorney, did ok so I guess AI may only be suitable for judging the law but not the lawyers. But it’s not just me, legal industry darlings like Ravellaw or Casetext got relatively little love from Product Hunters. I initially found 22 apps because I was looking for particular legal characteristics. Eventually, I  found more legal apps when I stopped looking for legal apps.

Insight: I view products from the perspective of a Practitioner of Law and not as a Consumer of Law. Therefore, I subconsciously love the things that would only work for me.

epic 2

Practical is Popular

Topping the collection are straightforward legal apps for entrepreneurs. The top 3 are products which basically replace lawyers and empower consumers of law. Actually, 2 of them look similar to a well-known Legal Unicorn. The rest of the list is sprinkle with simple tools that help you avoid lawyers and court battles e.g. Clear helps you find and clear potentially damaging social media posts. Or Clerky which makes startup legal paperwork painless. These products make legal complexity invisible and anybody can use them right away.

Insight: Product hunters like practical, simple and fast. Their psychology towards legal services has evolved and so have their product preferences.

epic 3
Blockchain is Epic

I’ll be honest, I’m no expert on Bitcoin nor Blockchain but I think it’s awesome. I’m not the only one getting all warm and giddy ? at the promise this technology embodies for the legal market. Examples like Ascribe or Bitproof help protect Intellectual Property with Blockchain. Any Intellectual Property Attorney, with enough alcohol running through their veins, will admit that copyright law in a digital space can actually not exist. Computers copy, it’s how they operate on every level. So if the law states it’s illegal to copy then we would never be able to use the Internet. No lawyer nor contract can protect you from actual digital theft, but cryptography can. It’s Epic.

Insight: Technology is not only making legal protocols invisible, it’s making them redundant in a digital space.

epic 4

Summary: Legal professionals may not be the best at picking the hottest apps. Hunters (and future CEO’s) prefer the most practical apps to accomplish business goals and personal fulfillment. In the end, technology will make the need for legal protocols obsolete. Now before these exquisite specimens get sued into extinction…Come hunt with me…

? Legal Tech Hunt

[icon name=”pinterest-square” class=”” unprefixed_class=””] Legal Visualizations & Designs

  • Raymond Blyd

Corrected: Do Legal Unicorns Exist? Yes, They Will
Corrected: Do Legal Unicorns Exist? Yes, They Will 698 393 Raymond Blyd

Sometimes we make bold statements just to challenge our own assumptions. Dare ourselves to look closer and see if our reality is just a lie. While charting 912+ legal startups I wrote: “I did not spot a unicorn…yet“. How would I know what a legal startup unicorn looks like? What is a unicorn anyway and could these ever roam in a legal startup landscape?

What is a Unicorn?

A unicorn is a venture-backed private company worth more than a billion dollars…on paper. For argument’s sake, let’s pick the top unicorn valuation ($47+ Billion) and benchmark this amount against the market value of the #1 rank company in the world ($270+ Billion)*. A unicorn would be about 17 % the value of the industry pinnacle. With this number we can now measure a unicorn in any industry. So when a startup valuation ventures into the 15-17%  bracket of the industry leader in revenue or market value, it becomes a Unicorn.

An additional observation: the name Startup implies that it’s a young company. Meaning we’ll need to set a time constraint so we’ll state that they shouldn’t be older than 5 years.

unicorn2

*Note: Apple has the biggest market cap however its numbers are just too crazy to use as a benchmark.

What is a Legal Unicorn?

Looking at the list of the biggest players in the legal service market, the #1 Law Firm has a reported $2.5 Billion in revenue. So according to my scientific ratio a legal startup with a $45.9 Million $459 Million  valuation would be a Legal Unicorn. You can also do this exercise on neighboring industries such as legal information providers. However, this would raise the bar to $214.2 million $2.142 Billion but I shall not dwell on this track. For this exercise, we’ll stick with looking at companies trying to displace the Practice of Law e.g. Law Firms not the Business of Law e.g. Legal Information Providers.

Do Legal Unicorns Exist?

When I said: I did not spot any unicorns, my reasoning was clouded by ego devoid of data…and this happens often ?. I believed I would know it when I see it, even when camouflaged and hidden in the 912+ legal startups on Angel.co or anywhere else. Now that I devised this yardstick, I can more accurately assess if my intuition was correct. So between 40-50 million dollars valuation a legal startup would reach Unicorn status. Do we currently have legal startups with valuations in this range?

To answer this question, I needed to descent into this absurd world of venture capital, fundraising,  Pre-money or Post-Money Convertible Notes etc. In short, there seems to be no limit on valuations, yet there is a sanity on the willingness to fund. And the logic reveals itself in so-called rounds. Herein lies the key to my argument: funding usually starts with seeding after which follows a series A, B rounds and so forth. I stated that there are few rules on limits but it appears that each round of funding has a virtual ceiling e.g. 100k-$1million usually is considered Seeding. And between $1 million- $5+ million is considered to be Series A. Now stay with me: when you are entering in Series funding than investors expect at least a 10x return on investment. Example: a successful $2 million series A round will put a company at a minimum $20 million valuation.

However, companies aren’t bound by this limit and they can set their valuations much higher e.g. Buffer raised $3.5 million at a valuation of $60 million post-money. By this reasoning, if a legal startup receives $2+ million or more in VC money, it’s roaming Legal Unicorn meadow. And if they are able to get between $500k – $1+ million then we can call them Legal Centaurs.

Yes, eventually we will have Legal Unicorns [icon name=”trophy” class=”” unprefixed_class=””]. One example: Shake raised a total of $4 million before it got acquired. This would put its valuation between $40 – $70 million, according to our Buffer Theorem.

There is one more thing: above I briefly mentioned age but did not elaborate on how it equates to the value of startups. Looking back at my previous post, I was searching for a correlation between the creation of legal startups vs economic events. I may have been looking at it all wrong…bold statement ?.

[updated: July 8, 2015. Thanks to Ron Friedman for pointing the error of my ways ?]

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  • Raymond Blyd

Who will beat Law Firms? An Interactive Chart
Who will beat Law Firms? An Interactive Chart 1920 1080 Raymond Blyd

Updated: Dec, 2015

In my previous post I wondered: If the increased demand for legal services is shifting away from law firms, where is it heading?

Some believe it’s mostly heading back to corporate counsels and law departments. But that’s basically rebuilding a law firm within a company. Moreover, it seems wasteful to me to produce expensive legal solutions for a single company and not reuse it for others. There may be another option and I’m curious to see if it could replace Law Firms?

Legal Startups

Venture Capitalist are rolling dice in a global casino in search for unicorns, centaurs and sacrificing dinosaurs. I listen to them explain why incumbent businesses will go extinct and be replaced by startups. So I went charting the landscape of legal startups and across databases such as CrunchBase, Kickstarter and Wefunder. I even checked out Dutch crowd funders such as Symbid to see if I could find a category “Legal”. While CrunchBase seems to have the largest database (2,191), it also includes DLA Piper which I hardly consider a startup. So I settle on Angel.co [icon name=”angellist” class=””] and thus began a journey with unexpected turns but rewarding discoveries*.

Numbers

The question which initially fired my legal Producthunt (22) was: Did the 2009 crash or any other event influenced legal startup activity? I’m undecided, but it has been a steady growth of new startups on Angel.co from 2010 (2) through 2014 (337).

[chart id=”1935″]

There are approximately 900+ registered startups and in the last couple of months we’re averaging one startup every day. The most popular month is February (Average: 27) and but if the chart below is any indication, we have a nice streak (July, August, September) ahead of us.

[chart id=”712″]

Note that Angel.co has two categories: Legal  and a newer one: Legal Tech. Startups can register multiple tags so there was overlap between the two categories. In the above chart, both categories are included.

I questioned if this division of tech vs traditional is normal or unique among ‘dinosaurs’ such as finance. It seems the 80/20 rule is more pervasive than we think. [update: June 15, 2015]

[chart id=”1513″][chart id=”1510″]

Since Legal Tech is the freshest category I was curious to see if growth would be more dramatic but it looks too early to judge.

[chart id=”1533″]

Observations

I’ve been reading weekly alerts ever since I registered with Angel.co and here are a couple of observations:

  • Compared to other industries, it seems the Legal Startup scene is still in its infancy with 900+
  • Specifically, Legal Tech is just 150+ compared to Fin Tech 1500+ and growth seems slow.
  • The sheer volume may not be enough to produce unicorns and thus attract high rollers.
  • The most popular models seem to be Management (149) and Marketplace (72) e.g. Legalzoom
  • I was hoping for more Compliance (40) e.g. Lawbot.co or Access to Justice (20)  startups like Modria. Models which replace not support legal processes.
  • This leads me to believe that the majority of legal startups don’t chase markets that can not afford legal services. Not even the ones that can afford, but mainly the ones that benefit from the complexity of legal services.

Back to my initial question: Will startups beat law firms? I did not spot a unicorn…yet. I believe the numbers need to go up to attract more Bondrew’s and investments. I wish the legal startup scene would stop chasing its tail and finds its tennis ball.  That’s why I applaud any initiatives that stir passion and reignite the practice of law.  So while I’m certain disruption is imminent, it may not go as fast.

*This was a labor of love over the last 4 months. Along the way, I learned to use API’s, understand JSON and even getting JSON feeds into Google Spreadsheet. But my proudest achievement was born out of a simple desire to display the numbers above in interactive charts [icon name=”bar-chart” class=””]. I thought I could only do that by controlling the platform so I needed to build my own site.  I was probably wrong to think I could not do it any other way, but I’m glad I was [icon name=”child” class=””].

  • Raymond Blyd

Seymour: Maybe I Was Wrong About Legal Wearables
Seymour: Maybe I Was Wrong About Legal Wearables 1192 601 Raymond Blyd

Maybe I was wrong about wearables because I needed to go beyond my comfort zone to see what’s around the bend. I too easily settled for limits. Seymour is the project name for one of the ideas that took shape during the Innovation Tournament and while it’s a technical challenge, it may not be entirely without merit and here’s why.

Business Intake made Easy 

I once attended an Intellectual Property audit for a niche software company to support their Intellectual Asset Management. We had an extensive paper questionnaire and preparation meeting to ensure our visit would be fruitful. The goal was to get as much of the questions answered without making the client feel like it’s an inquisition. When we arrived, it was a bit chaotic and nobody managed to get all the answers. We left with boxes of documents to help us finalize the form.

Modern day logic would dictate we would need some kind of database for the intake. Even better if it was a mobile app with just a checklist and we could divide the load across the team during our visit. It would help if we already had information pre-populated and we just needed to fill in the blanks. Looks good on ‘paper,’ right?

Well I believe in the last decade, our process thinking has resulted in convoluted systems. We used the wishful add-on: “it should be easy to use and intuitive” like a sprinkle of angel dust to make the core product usable. Assuming the core product, the database, iswhat it is all about. No, it isn’t because nobody can use an empty database or worse – outdated data. So the time of laborious data entries should be in our past.

Seymour, See, Save, Share

I suspect wearables will play a major role in this space. Wearables will be the fastest way to grow any database simply because data entry will be more convenient. Forbes reported this as the first useful Glassware and seeing their video, you might agree:

“Sullivan Solar Power …developed a Google Glass app that gives its field technicians “volumes” of electrical system data in a hands’ free, or close to it, manner—which I would imagine to be a welcome delivery mode for someone wrestling with heavy equipment on a rooftop.”

Being fed real-time contextual information in situations where it’s slightly awkward to break out the laptop and do desktop legal research seems extremely powerful. Only consuming information might not make it ‘killer’ for me but if you can combine it with creation it will be close. A quote from this Glass wearing president and creative director:

“…The thing I use it for the most is taking notes. I tap it and say, “Take a note,” and then a microphone shows up and it will accurately dictate everything I say for about 30 seconds. And then when I stop talking it sends it to Evernote. At the same time, if someone else is using Evernote, they can send the note to me and it will appear in my screen.”

sey1

First Look: Evernote for Google Glass

This maybe farfetched, but the possibilities of having a checklist as Glassware and just ‘nodding’ off the list would be quite cool. Better yet, just tapping your wrist will be even cooler:

Tick off checklists for groceries with the Pebble, which syncs to Evernote, for a hands-free shopping experience. Evernote Reminders are supported, so you’ll always have your notifications and to-dos close to you.

sey2

Evernote on the Go: Introducing Evernote for Pebble

If we just infuse the right legal context into these workflows, we can even make legal research fun again. Shopping for groceries is not that different from shopping for Intellectual Property, it can only be made more pleasant by the tools we use.

Going off the grid

There was one little caveat with wearables, actually any internet connected device: its needs an internet connection. Well maybe not. Let me introduce you to “Wireless Mesh Networking.” This enables device to device communication in a free-form, non-internet dependent way. And that’s almost perfect for having wearables talk to our phone – or each other. It’s one of the best kept secrets in the latest iOS 7 and what Google is betting on to extent wearables and even home automation.

Last year I just had a name and a notion. Now it’s slowly making sense and Seymour is my reminder to keep going beyond the bend.

  • Raymond Blyd

It’s A Rebirth, Not A Reinvention of Law
It’s A Rebirth, Not A Reinvention of Law 1070 610 Raymond Blyd
You may have noticed a steady stream of stories surrounding the law and its need to reinvent. But actually it’s specifically targeted at the need to modernize the practice of law and the business model, which gave rise to a $300+/- billion empire. The law itself is complex and will stay that way for awhile – as long as human interaction and perceptions evolve. Yet, it always has been about solving consumer and business problems, not legal problems.

Reset Your Priorities for Clients 

I discovered an interesting graph in a survey done on Law Firm Knowledge Management Priorities. As the author duly noted:

 “The one consistent finding (and this is true even before 2012) is the respondents keep expecting (hoping?!?) to spend time on client-facing KM system but then do not.”

Another study went even further with an extensive dissection of law firm technology and found some astonishing figures in terms of investing in efficiency. When asked: What software does your firm use for experience management/tracking? 82% said: None. In the previous year it was 62%. These numbers conjecture thoughts of inward thinking.

However, one of reason lawyers choose to publish books, blogs, and tweets is to expose their expertise to drive new business. To get in touch with and track potential clients, measure reach, and effectiveness as counsel. Above all, hone their ability as problems solvers.

Revolutionize Your Relationship with Clients

Sometimes the solution might be as simple as creating new alliances with your customers by providing a better network to access legal expertise. Or just a promise to continuously improve your service by adopting industry standards for efficiency. There are way too many links to articles that discuss the evil of the billable hour and the persistent of lawyers to seed Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) to generate more revenue. I believe it has tarnished the trust in this noble profession of being without prejudice.

 Reboot Your Focus on Client Problems 

A simple handshake might suffice instead of a 23 page contract with 14 page addendum because no contract will ever absolve you completely from any litigation. Yet, these tendencies have fueled an $88 billion latent market of DIY legal services. A market which is dynamically upscaling to the fortunate who can afford counsel. Even spawning innovated apps which bring us back to the humble beginnings: to solve real world problems in simple and clear language…and shake hands.

  • Raymond Blyd

The Power of Privacy and The Value of Confidentiality
The Power of Privacy and The Value of Confidentiality 453 276 Raymond Blyd

Google’s Vint Cerf, who is recognized as one of “the fathers of the Internet,” stated “Privacy May Be An Anomaly.” Historically, he is right in some context. We used to bathe in the open and wore less and more revealing clothes in the past. Some won’t mind going back to those days but ever since humans acquired the ability to communicate it always had the option to do it in private. Moreover, confidentiality is the corner-stone of several business sectors such as Health, Legal and Finance. So the question is: as a professional, who will you trust?

Privacy

Snapchat – a service that provides self destruct photo messaging – turned down a reported$3 billion offer from Facebook. Whatsapp claims to have more users than Twitter and handles more messages than Facebook. Bear in mind that Twitter and Facebook are free and Whatsapp is not*. In Asia, Wechat and QQ combined rule the messaging airwaves with more than a billion users. All these social messaging services enable users to communicate much in the same way we use email and SMS. Better yet, social messaging challenges the connections we make by phone, email or SMS. A recent study by industry-analysts Informa indicated that by the end of 2013 OTT (Over The Top) messaging traffic should be twice that of traditional SMS texts, topping out at around 41 billion messages sent every day (compared to 19.5 billion sent via SMS). More importantly: I believe services like Snapchat are popular because they simulate a sense of privacy traditional communication use to provide.

trust3Confidentiality

One might suspect that the push for more privacy is driven by an older more conservative demographic. Actually, it is quite the opposite. Recent studies revealed teens are fleeing social networks while elders, the only growing group, are encouraging them to stay on and broadcast. So if those who share scatter, but the spectators multiply, it is likely that privacy backlash will lead a ‘Trust Revolution’. This is already evident in the legal industry were legal tech experts predict ‘security awareness’ to be among the top priorities for law firms in 2014. To be specific: maintaining confidentiality of client information will be the top priority for law firms according to this article. This is especially more pertinent where professionals rush to the clouds out of convenience. Thus the question is: who can you trust?

Trust

In a previous post, I touched upon Apple’s fingerprint technology as a valuable breakthrough which might have far-reaching implications in how we communicate. Imagine securing not only your phone but all your documents with a fingerprint instead of passwords orproperly identify parties you communicate with and have them sign with their hands instead of a John Hancock. While I’m truly grateful I’m still hesitant to completely place my faith in any one company that either needs to lock me in or lure me to reveal information for ads. Free is very attractive but my soul is priceless and I value a whisper among the trees as much as shouting from the rooftop. As a legal professional, I can imagine doing business with a company that understands my needs. As a Wolters Kluwer employee, I will always strive to secure the trust our customers place in us.

*Whatsapp is a subscription service.

  • Raymond Blyd

Meet Bondrew: Our Future ‘Freestyle’ Lawyer
Meet Bondrew: Our Future ‘Freestyle’ Lawyer 2048 1036 Raymond Blyd

Freestyle Chess is a competition between humans, who are allowed, like in correspondence chess, to make use of any technical support for selecting their moves. Basically it’s an interplay between human intuition and computer calculating power to arrive at the best course of action. What if we had such advance algorithms similar to the chess paradigm, how would these system assist lawyers in picking legal strategies? And who would likely use them?

Freestyle
I’ve always been intrigued by the question how lawyers would use technology in the future. This interesting view of the future which mentioned the freestyle chess analogy reminded me once again: the future is already here, it’s just in camouflage. But to really understand the future of the legal profession I’d first needed a profile of a human (Who) using this advance technology and then look at the technology (What). I’ll will restrain myself predicting When this might happen.

Bondrew
Bondrew grew up somewhere in South America and has traveled the world. He is still always on the go and has never touched a desktop computer or worked in a traditional office. He received his law degree while attending an Technology & Law e-Curriculumof two years by following courses via MOOC* on his smartphone. He has never met his professors in person, yet managed to graduated “top of his class”. He majored in Advance Legal Networking which teaches the ability to leverage technology, peers, digital and tangible sources for legal solutions. He also passed the Litigation Predictions Bar** which automatically makes him eligible to litigate in all online jurisdictions***.

Future
He is not a lawyer in the traditional sense by any stretch but a trader and trafficker of legal information, in short a law information broker in a modern sense. He is adept at leveraging sources for information with technology and thus adds value to his legal practice. He’s able to scan the legal needs, deficiencies and risks of his clients and propose solutions in a matter of milliseconds. By continuously running simulations andquantitative analysis on different legal scenarios, he is able to adapt, predict and communicate his legal support in real time to clients.

Tools
Now if this is a possible future, which tools would he need? I’m hoping he would use the following:

  1. Zepp to network and connect legal sources to legal needs,
  2. Desh to update his legal practice and documents,
  3. Monocle for researching purposes,
  4. im·merse to assist with scanning and intake of new clients and predicting outcomes.

I’m wondering what Bondrew does in his spare time because he spends just 28 hours a week managing and growing his practice…

—

*A massive open online course (MOOC) is an online course aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the web. MIT, Stanford among many other esteem universities around world deliver them. read more here: http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses

**Litigation Predictions Bar: by running digital simulations on actual and anticipated opposing counsel arguments one can predict in a non-jury civil law system, possible outcomes. It is a technique of preventing litigation and refining agreements. However, similar to chess, you’re also able to run actual litigation proceedings and be judged or settle them.

***I admit, it’s easy to fantasize about ODR but as a recovering lawyer it’s still hard to imagine a border less legal market.

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  • Raymond Blyd

About Failure And How Technology Saved My Life
About Failure And How Technology Saved My Life 570 338 Raymond Blyd
I believe technology will not doom us but quite the opposite. It will not only save businesses, industries even but also lives in unexpected ways. This is a story of my failure and how a simple piece of tech saved my life and set me on my current path.

failure1I recently took a quick trip back to my birthplace and was accompanied by my 4-year-old. Much to my astonishment she asked me to visit a school because she was interested in seeing how children learned in Suriname. I went to the nearest primary school but as expected she got cold feet. As a substitute I decided to drive past my old high school and give her my experience. Needless to say I gesticulated on the highlights and conveniently left out all failures.

Later that night I was catching up on my reading and came across this article: There’s one key difference between kids who excel at math and those who don’t. It triggered a traumatic flashback of my high school days which I seem to have suppressed. When I first encountered math it did not excite me. I could not relate to it, I found it useless. I might have projected this during class which initiate a horrible response from my teacher. He basically said: you will never learn math, you’re stupid!

Now imagine the impact of this statement on a 12-year-old. While I tried my best to prove him wrong on the stupid part, he completely ignored me all through high school. I failed miserably at math since day one and it caught up with me at college. I was at a point of failing out of school entirely with my only option to join the military. Not an attractive career choice given the fact that a very bloody civil war was raging. As a last resort I sought help from an experience math tutor.

On our first meeting my tutor tried to grade my math level and was amazed I got this far in school without some basic math skills. After a couple of lessons he was on the verge of given up on me when he finally asked why I found it this hard to grasp math. I told him I could not see any real world implications for math. He dedicated the next lesson given me examples of why math is fundamental. I still wasn’t convinced and then he got a brilliant idea: he gave me a scientific calculator to try out some of the math problems I needed to pass my exams. Up until that point it was only pencil and paper, working out each problem manually.

It took two school board meetings and several visits from my parents to convince the school I had not cheated on the tests. They found it inconceivable that I went from no math skills to A+ grade on college level math in 5 months. The school board posted 2 teachers permanently at my side during both my final exams. I passed and the rest is history.

Now how did the calculator help? first, for some odd reason I could better visualize how the problems should be solved using a calculator. I got so proficient at it that I was showing my tutor alternate ways of solving math problems. Second, I just enjoyed punching in keys and seeing results instantly. It was like magic.

Analyzing in hindsight, I was probably reverse engineering the problems in my mind and then running simulations on the calculator to find the correct answers. Due to the speed of the calculator I could get answers quickly and assess intuitively which one was correct. After looking at many results at a quicker pace gave me the ability to spot the right ones over time. That is how I was able to find alternate ways to solve problems. Not much different of how I later did legal research.

So subconsciously I might have already known the answers but I needed the computer to back me up. The calculator was my bicycle of the mind and it inspired me. I hope to offer you the same ride.

Happy Holidays!

  • Raymond Blyd

CYOS Divergence: How The Growth of Apps Bolsters The Complex
CYOS Divergence: How The Growth of Apps Bolsters The Complex 570 274 Raymond Blyd
Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) has taken root. In 2012, 38% of CIO’s expected to support personal devices. Now 82% of companies allow it and it’s posing new challenges for IT because along with these devices come a lot of new services in apps. All beguile you into accepting a new habit and immerse you. This has giving rise to the ‘Connect Your Own Service’ (CYOS) trend and its unintended consequences: a world more complex and disconnected which threatens to submerge you. Here’s why:

A Fog of Apps 
A glimpse into my computer life 2007-2013 :

  • I have downloaded over 900 apps in 6 years, a trend likely to accelerate due to the lowering prices of apps. Imagine doing this on a PC without running into a nasty virus and a tremendous bill.
  • I have journeyed through multiple operating systems and migrated from desktop to mobile.
  • I have moved most of my information into the cloud and choose software based on their cloud support and mobile clone.
  • I took approximately 7800 pictures and videos. The only category my wife beats me hands down.
  • Privately I’ve stop emailing anyone under the age of 70 and
  • I have shared more with my inner circle between the ages 14 and 70 than at any moment in our lives.

I have undoubtedly generated more data personally and professionally and…it’s liberating yet suffocating.

Say my name!
Each app or service I use will most likely ask me who I am. I will either have to remember my name(?!) from a previous encounter or make up a new and even sillier name. And then comes the dreaded password requirement which needs to be so strong its impossible to remember. I know there’s an app for that but my parents already gave me a name at birth and happily counted 10 little passwords. One company has smartly recognized this fact and hopefully I’ll try it this Christmas. Even though it isn’t infallible and can be hacked by my 4 year old, it’s far better than remembering 900 passcodes which are unbreakable with brute force attacks by global distributed networks. As beautifully presented in this dynamic visualization I suspect no company will ever be entirely safe from breaches.

A Forest of Data
Now the above doesn’t bother me as much as the disconnect between these services by creating silos. In previous posts I’ve mentioned losing information much to my chagrin. I’m already working on solving the bridge of cut, copy and paste and integrating tasks in a single workflow. But ultimately my aim is to dwindle the number of 900 apps. The disparate manner and ambition each service exhibit to solve my problem while struggling to incorporate my larger environment concerns me. Because I find they mostly ignore the context and intent I might have in harvesting and handling all my data and associated analytics.

If This Then What?
This problem has not gone unnoticed nor unexploited by others as even legal professionals have wandered into the cloud with Dropbox (58%), Google Docs (43%) and Evernote (23%). This is also reflected in their use of popular productivity mobile apps. However, these services only store my information but do not connect to my workflow. Moreover, they most likely ignore the intent of legal professionals. Now in order to get a handle on this divergence I starting mapping out my own information network and how it all connects based on how I use it. And then visualized my intent as a legal professional.

cyos1

Nowadays most services support some connections while some purposely block each other. I used RSS trickery or just simply emailing the service to connect my information. Lately I’m able to use smarter services that ‘cook up’ better connections. IFTTT is such a service which use “recipes” to help me reconnect. Even notable publishers like the NY Times have been getting in on the action. Its getting better but its less than ideal so my search continues.

cyos2As featured in DESH I would imagine creating rules such as: IF I receive news on Copyright Transfers I would

  • THEN save it to Monocle OR
  • THEN add a reminder in Zepp to email my client. OR
  • THEN update documents.

cyos3I have spend the first 26 years of my life learning, I’ve noticed spending the rest struggling to keep up with all I have learned. The internet serves to be an engine of convenience by connecting not diverging and we should continue to support that goal.

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