Saturday, May 16, 2009

4freeCLE Part 2: Twit My Blog!

This is for my lawyer friends, but also for those who may not be lawyers but are interested in using social networking to share information efficiently,

A while back, I created 4freeCLE: a listserve for publicizing free Continuing Legal Education (CLE) opportunities. It worked fine as far as it went, and I like to think that I helped a few people who needed credits but couldn't afford them (it may surprise you to learn how many lawyers aren't as wealthy as the ones on T.V.)

However, a listserve is a technology from the last millenium: still effective, but no longer the best tool for announcing and archiving. The biggest problem I had was that, as an announcement-only facility, it wasn't developing a community of interest. This means (A) I was the only one contributing content. This means it was too much work for me, and it also sharply limited the amount of content available to the community, and (B) it wasn't really growing at a rate comparable to the need it was addressing.

In response, I've just added a couple of new 4freeCLE venues.
  • The 4freeCLE Blog will include new 4freeCLE postings. There is a certain population that would prefer to look at a blog, or even subscribe to it, rather than subscribe to a listserve or comb through its archive. I'll keep posting to the listserve of course, to continue serving that population.
  • A 4freeCLE twitter to serve those who prefer that venue. Postings to this blogspot are fed to twitter via twitterfeed so it's really no extra work.
I'd love to figure out a way to connect this blog and the yahoogroup automatically, so that I need post content once and have it ripple throughout the various venues automagically. If any smart person knows how to do this, let me know! I can reward you with excessive gratitude PLUS some free CLE!

I would also like to encourage providers of free CLE to post their items directly to the 4freeCLE Blog. I'm willing to give posting permission to anyone of good will; the objective after all is providing better service to our profession and to the public. Contact me if you're interested!

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