I’ve finished putting photos over on Flickr from Ireland, now I just have to get all the way through the Scotland portion of the trip. I did decide to break it into different sets, so you don’t have to feel obligated to go through all of them at once, just click the one’s you’re most interested in and go.

I will say, however, that the Belfast set, especially, has quite a few comments about the history and future of Belfast in the descriptions that will hopefully help you understand what I think of when I look back at them. Belfast really was an interesting day trip for me. Photographically, it may not have been the most creative day I’ve ever spent, but it maybe made the most impact on me. It was either that or Kilmainham Goal. They are both so tied to the history I know of Ireland, that I felt very similar after touring both, as if I needed to simply sit and digest what I had just seen. I hope the photos convey just a little bit of that.

The whole collection can be seen on Flickr.

As I waited at the airport in Las Vegas yesterday, I did some quick figuring about the month of August, 2010. In the first 27 days of the month, I had spent the night in a hotel for 21 of them. In that time I had:

Slept in 5 different hotels

Flown over 10,000 miles

Been in 7 different airports

Taken two train trips to another city

Been in 3 different countries

Traveled across 8 time zones

Traveled in planes, trains, and automobiles, as well as public buses, private coaches, boats, taxi’s and a tram.

It’s been an amazing month. Adventurous, exciting, challenging, and yet so rewarding. It’s been somewhat exhausting, but I would do it all again in a heartbeat. The experiences I had in Ireland and Scotland were amazing. I saw history, beauty, and culture that was better than I had hoped. I met, conversed, and even drank, with fascinating and fun people, from all over the world. Then, the month was topped off with all the great people I talked to, learned from, and had a great time experiencing the conference in Las Vegas this past week. (And yes, I may have drank with some of them as well, that’s for sure.)

Sure, I’m ready to be home, and get back into a regular routine for awhile but I will never forget August of 2010. The experiences and memories of these last few weeks will stay with me for the rest of my life, and in the end, I couldn’t ask for anything more.

Just wanted to toss out some links to some more stuff from ILTA this week. I will have another post with some thoughts about the benefits of the conference, but for right now, I have a couple of things I wanted to get out to folks.

First of all, if you attended our ILTAU session on Weds. morning, and were as disappointed as I was that there was some Outlook configuration issues that prevented us from really digging in to that PST by creating rules to filter things out of the inbox, I did go back to the documentation site that Sean Brady started for the session, and add some documentation on using Rules, and the Organize function in Outlook 2007. Check it out, or if you weren’t able to make it, check it out for some information on what we talked about.

Secondly, I had the pleasure of doing a quick interview with Josh Gilliland, of the Bow Tie Law Blog, about Social Networking benefits, and the e-discovery issues with social media. It was great to finally get to meet Josh after many years of “knowing” each other online, and the having some discussion was fun, and a good example of exactly the sort of benefits you get from the conversation at ILTA, above and beyond the educational sessions.

Lastly, for those I met at ILTA (and there were more people than I could possibly name!), or those who I didn’t get a chance to see in person but have connected with online, I wanted to share the places where you can connect with me, beyond the blog.

LinkedIn – http://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemac29

Twitter – http://twitter.com/mikemac29

Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/mikemac29

But, enough about me.

Obviously, I was having too much fun exploring Ireland and Scotland to spend much time updating anything around here the last couple of weeks. I took over 1500 photos and plan to maybe upload a selection of them to Flickr in small batches, as I have time to work on them. With ILTA10 right around the corner, I wouldn’t expect many of them to get up there all that soon if I were you, though.

One thing that was quite the challenge for me in Ireland was the constantly changing weather, and lighting environments, as I wandered around. For photographers, lighting is sort of important, yet in Ireland I ran into situations where I was shooting in sunlight, and suddenly, it wasn’t sunny. For example, one late afternoon after returning from a tour I was walking towards the River Liffey and realized that the late-afternoon sun would make for some really nice shots. However, by the time I walked 3 blocks and got myself situated along the river, it was raining. Fifteen minutes later, it had stopped raining, but had become rather windy and overcast. So I headed back up O’Connell Street, only to have that late afternoon come back for a bit, only I was now shooting elsewhere, and I decided to stay where I was rather than run the risk of heading back to the river only to have the sunlight disappear again.

So, many of my pics from Ireland will need some post-processing work to adjust for the varying light situations. Meanwhile, we spent a week in Scotland and had one half-day of rainy and cloudy weather, with the rest being beautiful sunny days. That’s ridiculously rare, as many of the locals we talked to wanted us to move there in order to keep the weather luck we had! That helped make my photography a bit easier!

Still, the trip was wonderful, and I have so many memories tied to these photos that I will cherish them for years to come. I hope to be able to share some of the stories and history of both Ireland and Scotland along with the photos. Hope you enjoy them, when I get around to putting them up!

It’s tomorrow. I wanted to take part, I really did. I even talked to a coworker about signing up for the same one. I hesitated, only because I knew it’d be a week from my trip to Ireland and Scotland, and there’d be an outside chance that maybe there would be some last minute things to deal with. Barring that, though, I figured I could manage it.

Then the last two weeks happened. The normal “must wrap up before going on vacation” stuff, on top of having to get all my ILTA conference speaking stuff turned in before I go, and one mess of a case on a tight deadline have had me working most evenings, and much of last weekend. Yes, I’ll be working a little this weekend as well, but also doing a couple of social events, and still doing those last minute things that need to get done this weekend. In short, even if I tried to squeeze in a photowalk, I’d spend most of it thinking about all the other things I need to get done. Not good for creativity, eh?

Oh well, I’ll make up for missing tomorrow with some time photowalking myself around Dublin, right?

As someone said on Facebook this week, when I’m on vacation, this will all be worth it. Wise words.

If you’re interested in taking part tomorrow, check the website for a walk near you!

So I’ve seen a number of the techie folks writing about how they’re removing their Facebook profiles, due to various policies of the Facebook team, or the lack of stability in some of the features, etc. I can’t say that I agree with everything the Facebook folks do, nor am I in love with all the games and other features of the service, but this past weekend was a great example of why I’m most definitely not giving up on it.

I’m not walking away from the place where dozens of my friends and family got to be part of my birthday celebration, even though the wife and I were traveling. The place where I got to watch video of my 4 year old niece sing “Happy Birthday” to me, and the place where I learned my cousin gave birth to a little baby girl, who I will share a birthday with from now on.

Over the last couple of years of using Facebook, I’ve gotten to know coworkers better, learned about the adult lives of kids I grew up with, gotten back in touch with extended family that I had done a crummy job with keeping in touch with over the years, and connected with various folks that I’ve only known online.

Like all social networking tools, it’s not the technology and it’s not the policies, it’s the people. I want to keep up with the people I’m connected to on Facebook, and the technology makes it easier to do exactly that. Removing my profile would hurt me a whole lot more than it will hurt Mark Zuckerberg.

You might feel differently, you might not be getting the value I get from it, or you might be able to get the same value with another tool, and that’s fine. We all have to make our own decisions, and far be it for me to try and decide how much value you are getting from your Facebook connections, but do take a minute to think about whether those contacts are maybe more important than a little annoyance about policy and procedure.

It seems like forever since I spent much time just shooting some photos, so when Angela suggested a stop at Inniswood on the way home from Marion on Saturday, it sounded like a great idea. Not only was it tough to get back in the shooting groove, but this was the first time out with my new camera backpack. Based on the stiffness in my shoulder, I should probably spend some time getting used to hauling it around too, especially before I head to Ireland in August!

Good, an excuse to take more photos.

You can see the small set from the trip over at Flickr.

The conference session schedule was released today, an yup, not only will I be attending, I’ll be speaking a couple of times as well.

In looking over the details, obviously I’m drawn to the Litigation Support sessions at first, and frankly, I’m a little underwhelmed by the titles. Seems like some of the same topics we talk about at every conference every year, but then again it’s fairly obvious that many, many firms still don’t really get it. I’m hopeful that as the details get fleshed out, we hear some fresh ideas. There are certainly enough quality speakers in that track’s sessions to give me hope that there will be!

As far as my own presentations, the session content is still in the very early stages of being developed, but I’m excited about the topics. On Tuesday, Aug 24 Ill be on a panel discussing The Power of One: Adding Value to Client-Focused Practices and on Weds. the 25th I’ll be taking part in a double session in the ILTAU hands-on lab talking about Managing Information Overload through Personal Knowledge Management. I’ve been thinking quite a bit about both of these topics, and am looking forward to really getting those thoughts organized and presented. You might even see a blog post or two discussing specific thoughts in the meantime, since you guys make a good sounding board and always let me know when I’ve got something wrong.

Hopefully, we’ll all be able to have some good discussion around the topics, either here on the blog or in person at the conference.

So if you’re going to be at ILTA, look for me and say hello, and whether you are or not, what pops into your head when you read those session titles? What would you tell a room full of folks, or want to hear about? I’d love to read your thoughts!

I haven’t been doing much traveling or photography of late, but the wife just returned from a Mediterranean cruise this week and has started loading up some of her photos over at Flickr. She’s got the opportunity to see some really great sites, and learn so much about the history. I’m jealous, but happy for her.

If you’re interested in seeing some of her photos, check them out here.

OK, I don’t usually ask for much around here, but today I am asking for a favor. You see, I’m going to be part of a hand-on session at the ILTA conference this year, and I’m currently working on putting together a PST file to use as part of our demonstration. (We need to get this submitted early so it can be incorporated onto all of the PC’s in the hands-on session.)

Anyway, since we’re using this PST as a demo, I can’t put anything in it that is specific to work I do for my firm. I’ve been filling it with all sorts of newsletters and email lists, but I also need some good, honest to goodness work emails, only they have to be generic. So, if you would like to help out this little project, and don’t mind the fact that 50 or so attendees will see your email address on the email, all you have to do is send an email to my work address (mmcbride at bricker.com). It can be about the donuts in the kitchen, or the team meeting schedule or you can send me an email asking for the TPS reports. (In fact, I may just use TPS reports as part of the search and filter queries, so really, send me some of those!)

I’m hoping this will be a good demonstration on email productivity, and really, since we’ll all be in Vegas for the week instead of the office, what better time to learn about how to locate the important stuff piled up in the inbox!

Thanks everyone!