Each of us has probably thought when we were younger that our generation was the first to discover the delights and travails of music and life in general. Nowadays social network sites can to a degree be classified by age and purpose. Sadly my Facebook account has not been a great success – nobody wants to be my friend (including and especially my own sons)! And yet I have over a hundred LinkedIn connections. Recently I accepted an invitation on LinkedIn from the 19 year old offspring of a family friend who is presumably building a business network. Interesting that they chose this medium for this purpose – it would be most unlikely that the same person would have invited me to be a friend on Facebook.
In SCL we have recognised that newer entrants to the professions or to our specialist area may have a different perspective on the use of technology and perhaps as a consequence the practice of IT. We all use and have an interest in computers and IT – it sort of goes with the territory. But with the incredibly rapid and exponential advance of technology the way we approach working life evolves from generation to generation. I remember telexes and IBM Golf Ball typewriters in offices – and Psion Organisers. My children do everything on line and are inseparable from their iPhones or Blackberries. They naturally use IT having been brought up on various game systems from the early Mega Drives to PS3’s. It is second nature to them. Sonic the Hedgehog has interestingly survived but is now involved in much more complex games with really impressive graphics. I remember when my (then much younger children) needed, can you believe it, my help in getting up a particular waterfall in a Sonic game. Now I doubt I could even reach the waterfall if it still exists in the current games. The Wii is changing our perspective of how we interface with computers as we exercise, play tennis and go bowling in our living rooms.
It follows I think that in any community like SCL we benefit from the participation of members from different generations. We each bring a different perspective of IT and of its relevance to law and to the practice of the law. Hence as I have said before one of our ambitions has been to encourage more junior lawyers to join and actively to participate in our society. This seemed to be a bit of a gap in our membership. I am therefore very pleased to note that we have held the first of our events targeted at this area of our membership – and that it was a great success. Some 70 junior lawyers attended our first conference focused on their generation on 20 January 2011 in London. The event was hosted by Mcfarlanes, for which thanks, and Simon Deane-Johns gave an excellent talk. I am reliably informed there was a buzz about the evening and a very different turn out from some of our other events.
Congratulations to all involved and I am sure this will be the first of many such events. And if by any chance you have never no familiarity whatsoever with the history of Sonic the Hedgehog please feel free to ask me, or perhaps more appropriately one of our younger members.
Clive
