Last year the student body at UWO Law voted in favour of changing the degree designation from LL.B. to J.D.  The Juris Doctor (J.D.) designation is more similar to the U.S., and is intended to indicate that graduates have previous education prior to law.

The transition does not indicate any change in the degree, graduate requirements, or admissions criteria.  Background on the process can be found on Law is Cool.

The University Senate approved a motion to change the title, which had three components:

1. Current students will have the option of choosing either the LL.B. or J.D.
2. Students starting in Sept. 2009 will be doing a J.D. degree
3. Graduates will have the option to convert their LL.B. to a J.D.

The header on the site has been updated to reflect the change.

A Conservative majority was averted, and considerable amounts of taxpayer money was spent just to gain a few more seats.

The political content in the sidebar will be taken down.

Yesterday’s experiment with the world’s first live-blogging event from audio had mixed results.

Traffic from the (Canadian) Thanksgiving weekend resulted in a delay by about 45 min. after the event officially started, but it was still before the main speakers arrived.

One of the best features of the minimal lag time for the text conversion, usually within a minute or two from calling in the message.  There were absolutely no problems getting through to the line to the service.  Updates were made hours in advance to any mainstream media coverage, except possibly live television.

But the biggest limitation appeared to be accurately recognizing the voice message, despite efforts to speak slowly and clearly.  Specifically, names were frequently missed and dropped out entirely, especially if they were in any way unique.  Stéphane Dion and Jean Chrétien were obviously missed, even with (and perhaps because of) a French enunciation.

Situational factors also intervened.  There was no telephone reception in the main room, meaning real-time play-by-play developments could not be posted as planned.  A considerable amount of background noise, including the live pounding of dhol drummers easily drowned out attempts to call in.

The utility of this call in technique was still demonstrated.  Telephone reception is usually better than laptop reception would be anyways.  Most events will not have such an overwhelming amount of background noise, and a Bluetooth attachment would easily allow hands-free updates in frequent intervals.  Word recognition could use some work, but as long as names are avoided it generally seems to do a decent job.  Even this issue can be addressed by the option to attach a link to a voice file for each post, which would clarify any ambiguities present.

Aside from media personnel using this for covering events, voice to blog applications can be used in meetings, conferences, or even emergent situations (“I need help ASAP for ____ Please contact me if available).  It’s definitely easier than trying to text or open a laptop for quick status updates, especially since the service provides a (free) local telephone number to call in to.

Text of posts that did manage to get posted are below, with some edits indicating where text was lost.

Friday, October 10, 2008 9:18 PM
“Summary of today’s talk, a vote for Harper is a vote for more lies.”
Friday, October 10, 2008 9:07 PM
“Finally got out. There was no reception in the building at all so I couldn’t update anything.”
Friday, October 10, 2008 7:46 PM
“[With} Andrew Cam[p]bell of the Ontario [Young Liberals] Liberal’s and talking about how incredibly packed this place is and what a wonderful turnout we have.”
Friday, October 10, 2008 7:43 PM
” [Jean Chrétien,] former Prime Minister of Canada has arrived to large applause by the crowd.”
Friday, October 10, 2008 7:37 PM
“Adam Isa [, a] leader [in] of the Somali community is also here[.]  [The atmosphere is] staff are exciting.  [Jean Chrétien and Stéphane Dion] are expected to arrive shortly.”
Friday, October 10, 2008 7:27 PM
“Just supposed to daily  area. [ran into ______, a Toronto] Lawyer, the [ in the Toronto area. The] mood is upbeat.”
Friday, October 10, 2008 7:20 PM
“Just land [ran] into Ryan [Singh} of the Ontario y[Y]oung Liberals right here in the street. So, [it] seams like every body is having hard time finding parking.”
Friday, October 10, 2008 7:16 PM
“There’s so many people here to see Deon [Dion] here today there’s not even [any] parking left, so we [will] have to find parking some where else.”
Friday, October 10, 2008 7:13 PM
“Arriving at saint un, Edmond Campion Secondary School about 45 mins after the event has started. Let['s] see what I can catch.”
Friday, October 10, 2008 6:36 PM
“Between the four accidents on the highway and long weekend traffic, it looks like I might be a little bit late.”
Friday, October 10, 2008 5:46 PM
“Shelley [Filling] up gas in kitchner. Vault [Vote] Liberal for cheaper gas.”
Friday, October 10, 2008 4:38 PM
“[...] The first micro blog in history to cover a political event live.”
Friday, October 10, 2008 4:37 PM
“I’m leaving London Ontario for Brampton while doing the first audible micro blog in history.”

The writ has dropped, which means the troops will be rallied once again.

I’m adding some election related stuff to the side-bar. 

If you don’t know I’m a Liberal, you probably don’t know me at all. 

 Despite what any of you might say, they are better than any of the other options, and miles ahead of the current ruling party.

Major issues for this election will be:

• the environment and the Green Shift
• health care
• the economy
• NATO military operations

Any bickering over “leadership” is typical side-stepping from important issues and are only a diversion in this election, one that voters hopefully will not heed.

There are some nifty Liberal videos being uploaded on YouTube that I’ll rotate through on the sidebar as well.

There’s a new addition to the sidebar under “Publications.”

This one is not something formally authored, but Join the Conversation: How to Engage Marketing-Weary Consumers with the Power of Community, Dialogue, and Partnership did use some of borrowed material in his book published last year, Join the Conversation: How to Engage Marketing-Weary Consumers with the Power of Community, Dialogue, and Partnership.

The source of the collaboration was a wiki entry a couple years ago on Constantin Basturea‘s The New PR entitled, What Should Every Company Be Monitoring?

Shel Holtz, Cameron Olthuis, Steve Rubel, and Jeremiah Owyang also had their hands in creating and edting the entry.

Nobody thought it would turn to print, but you never know what does these days. You can see a preview of it right around page 141.

As an interesting sidenote, you can now search “Omar Ha-Redeye” on Amazon and come up with this hit.

Similarly, Drs. Laurie Elit and Jean Chamberlain Froese (Editors) of McMaster University are added for their inclusion of a paper in their book, Women’s Health in the Majority World: Issues and Initiatives from Nova Publishers.

The paper was presented at the 8th Annual International Women’s and Children’s Health Symposium (IWCH) in Hamilton, Ontario on September 30, 2006. The theme of the conference was “Rebuilding Health Communities After Disaster and Displacement: Immigrant Refugee Women and Children in Canada and Abroad.”

A similar paper was previously presented in Dhaka, Bangaldesh at the 3rd International Conference on the Impact of Global Issues on Women & Children (2006). The conference was sponsored by McMaster University, and Omar Ha-Redeye received both the McMaster Graduate Student Association (GSA) Travel Grant and the Anne Hall Memorial Prize to help subsidize the costs of travel to present the paper there.

There will be a few more additions to the publications section in the coming weeks.

Links to several social media sites I use have been added to the About page.

They’ll probably eventually end up in the sidebar, but for now it’s a tidy place to store them.

Today is a special day.

And no, I’m not talking about that for those aware of its other significance.

I’m going live on this site today. 

As an avid blogger who contributes to several sites, including Law is Cool, Slaw, and Social Media Mafia, one might wonder why I need yet another blog.

This one will focus on personal activities and happenings.  As stated on the About page, the reason for this is that no matter how much I try to convince some family and friends to adopt social media tools, they refuse.  Still, they pester me (I mean that in the kindest of ways) about what I’m up to.  Typing my name into the url browser is something I know they can handle.

Those already connected to me via social media tools will notice simultaneous (I hope) duplication of content.  It saves me a lot of work, and helps get the word out across different formats.  If you’re curious, I use a nifty WordPress Plugin in conjunction with Ping.fm to accomplish this.

I’ll probably back-track some content that has been posted elsewhere when I get the time, so this won’t be the first post any more.  It’s probably better to collect all my info in one place for my sanity.