John Palfrey

Two ideas as a follow-up to the legal panel at Jupiter’s quite good conference today on business and blogs:

* Reed Smith, a law firm, enables Denise Howell to publish her excellent legal weblog, Bag and Baggage, which I read regularly.  Donna has a good quote from Mark Young, the panel moderator: “Can I say it? Kudos to Reed Smith. It’s a conservative culture, yet they have allowed this. It’s a very good thing.”  I agree completely.  It’s great to see a big, global law firm supporting this sort of effort by one of its lawyers, not trying to squelch it.  It was confirmed for me that the firm is serious about it, because the marketing chief, Rebecca, from Reed Smith was also at the conference.

* Blogger/Google is serious, too, about thinking through putting a (cc) license into the RSS feeds of their blogging software, judging from a question I got from the audience.  It seems they have to work through some concerns — I’d love to help in that regard! — but at least it’s on the agenda as a possibility.  Much to be encouraged.  They have a bully pulpit and can make a real difference if they were to make a (cc) license the default. 

I’m now yet another blogging voice at the Jupiter Conference on blogs and business.  It’s a cool crowd here, with lots of the people I’ve read but never met, at the Sheraton Boston.  Elizabeth Spiers from Gawker was just talking — she’s terrific, funny, worth listening to (as well as reading).  I’m sitting here with my pal Dave Winer, who did the keynote yesterday roughly on his paper about “What makes a weblog a weblog?”.  Shortly, I’m about to go up there and play the annoying lawyer that I am.  (Lots of lawyer bashing here!  Not surprising, I suppose.) 

Donna will also be here to do her usual great job of blogging the events for the Berkman Center.