Here is a quick update on where you can find SAGE experts speaking on IT topics of interest to the legal and professional services communities.

A Mighty Outlook and PowerPoint 2007 – September 19, 2007 at Noon: SAGE’s Dave Carns and Tony Buffkin wrap up our three part series on Office 2007 for the Information Services and Technology Section of the ALA Capital Chapter. The focus this time is on the latest version of PowerPoint and whether Outlook 2007 is up to the daunting task of managing our email, information, and contacts.

IT Solutions for Small Law Firms – September 25, 2007 at Noon. The Small Firm Management Section of the ALA Capital Chapter is hosting this event. The question for small firms is always how to do more with less? Outsourcing, web services, and mobility provide exciting opportunities for small firms, letting them act big while still maintaining their agility. We will look at these opportunities in detail while also discussing “bread-and-butter” issues like Windows Vista and Office 2007.

We are also firming up speaking engagements on disaster recovery and other topics in October and beyond.

Here is our Friday installment of what is being said on the Internet that administrators and IT pros at law and professional services firms should know.

Where did my Excel commands go? The transition to Office 2007’s new “fluid interface” is causing some consternation with many who have become accustomed to the keyboard shortcuts and menu commands in Excel 2003. Computerworld published this handy cheat sheet mapping the old locations for commands from Excel 2003 to 2007. For more on what has changed and what is new in Office 2007, check out our free online webinar “Compelling Enhancements in Office 2007” on August 15, 2007 at 2:00 p.m. EDT.

Businesses cautious on Vista upgrade. A new poll says that only 2 percent of businesses are running Vista, and only 9 percent more planning on upgrading in the next three months. Now, we know firms that just went to XP last year, so this wait-and-see attitude doesn’t surprise us. Some reasons cited include old hardware that won’t run Vista and training.

Contracts online, should lawyers be worried? Business 2.0 has an article on a Spanish company putting contracts online to cut out the lawyers. More than that, they are throwing in some value-added with their dashboard that has a timeline of negotiations, comments, and more. Inside Opinions sees the move as complementary rather than completely disruptive.

Census Bureau information to your newsreader. Following up on our post on great government web site mash-ups, Robert Ambrogi points out that the U.S. Census Bureau has RSS feeds and podcasts on a number of statistics like “Aging Population,” “Foreign-born Population,” and more.

For more stories filtered for administrators and IT pros in legal and professional services firms, get our supplemental newsfeed, available here through Google Reader.

On Wednesday, July 18, 2007, SAGE and the IS&T section of the ALA Capital Chapter will hold our second session in a series of presentations on the ins-and-outs of Microsoft’s Office 2007 Suite. This session covers the exciting new feature enhancements to Word and Excel 2007: what is new, what has changed; and what that means for your everyday tasks.

SAGE’s Director of Consulting David Carns and Application Specialist Tony Buffkin will guide attendees through common tasks and show how the new versions of Office and Excel improve productivity and compare to the older versions. They will also discuss issues such as integration with other systems like document management, among others.

The session will be held at the offices of Hobbs, Straus, Dean & Walker, LLP, located in downtown, Washington, DC at 2120 L St. NW - Suite 700. To register, please contact Kenny Mitchell at 202-383-3402 (email: kmitchell@wbklaw.com) or Scott Forrest at 202-822-8282 (email: sforrest@hsdwdc.com).

A good rule of thumb is that IT spending in law firms should be 3-6 percent of gross revenue. IT budgets in that range should provide a reasonable level of service and stability for the firm and its staff. To make the budget go farther, consider going with a managed IT service provider that can provide additional resources and high quality service. Managed IT solutions typically exceed the level of service that in-house resources alone can provide on a regular basis.

There are many different flavors to managed IT Services, however. This will be the topic of discussion during SAGE’s Learning Pavilion Sessions at Thursday’s ALA Capital Chapter Spring Educational Forum and Expo. It is important for each organization to find the service that best fits its needs. Subtle variations in service and support can mean the difference between having the service be the right fit or a disastrous and expensive foray. SAGE consultants with experience on both sides--provider and client---will discuss various factors beyond the "spec" sheet that firms often overlook, but should really be at the forefront of their decision making.

Please join SAGE for either the 11:30 a.m. or 3:00 p.m. session in the Learning Pavilion at the ALA Capital Chapter Educational Forum and Expo, and stop by the SAGE booth to learn even more.

Adobe’s “Acrobat for Legal Professionals” blog announced that they will be conducting a webinar on May 24 on document security that may be worthwhile. They will cover discerning whether PDFs have been tampered with, revoking PDFs and other security features. Many of the basics like restricting printing and copying will be covered as well. Registration is through Adobe’s web site.

Just a quick plug for our SAGE Wisdom Webinars that we conduct every Wednesday afternoon at 2:00 pm Eastern time.  This week we are discussing managed IT solutions using our SAGE OnSight service.  In particular, we will be emphasizing how you don't have to give up control of your IT infrastructure and assets will getting the benefit of managed services, like remote monitoring, support center, and site visits.

If you are interested,  sign-up online here.

Upcoming SAGE Wisdom Webinars will cover Sentinel, our tool to perform daily server checks and some monitoring; managing tech migrations for minimal disruption to the firm, and using extranets like SAGE MindPort for internal projects as well as external ones. Future webinars will cover topics like virtualization, Windows Vista and Office 2007, Exchange 12, and managing newsfeeds.

The Wisdom Webinar schedule can always be found at this link and is updated monthly.

SAGE President George Nicholson and Creative Director Peter von Elling are speaking at the Association of Legal Administrators Region 2 Conference on Friday, October 27, 2006 in Louisville, KY. The session, "Blogging: The Best Marketing You Aren't Doing" will cover the basics of blogging for those new to the format, and focus exclusively on law blogs. We will discuss the tension between the free-flowing, run-it-up-the-flag-pole-and-see-who-salutes nature of blogging and the desire many firms have to carefully script all communication with clients and prospects.  Also, we will discuss the new landscape of law firm marketing in the age of participatory web sites, where it's important to be Digged, be Del.icio.us, and have those RSS feeds hit newsreaders.

If you are attending, please come hear George and Peter speak and then meet them afterwards. We will be providing sneak previews here on our blog before the Conference, and more from the presenation afterward.