We're coming to the time of year when we give thanks for the good things in our lives--family and friends, of course, but other blessings as well.  For many it has been a challenging year and some have certainly experienced setbacks.  But for all that, there are still things to be thankful for and I hope everyone will take time over the next week to focus on those.

At ALM it has certainly been a year full of challenges.  But it has also been a year of many small victories--great dedication by teams of professionals who every day come to work intent on trying new approaches, launching new products, and meeting the ever-changing needs of our customers.  In recent days, there have been a number of those small victories and I think they are worth highlighting:

1.  As many of you know, we have had a lot of trouble over the last few months with the technology that powers many of our local and national websites.  Servers crashed and pages loaded incredibly slowly, much to the frustration of web editors around the company as well as our readers.  For months Gene Bishop and his team tried one potential fix after another, trying to isolate the problem and resolve it.  We reached out to our technology vendors, several of whom put their own teams to work trying to explain and fix the problem.  Many things were tried, and some worked at least a little bit, but the resolution seemed elusive.

Then a few weeks ago the team decided to route our web traffic through the servers that belong to another vendor--called Akamai--which we hoped would help us isolate the problem.  And, lo and behold, we have seen tremendous improvement in the metrics we use to measure our sites.  Pages are loading faster and overall reliability is much improved.  And I noticed some of our web editors were smiling again, always a hopeful sign.

The point is not just to celebrate the fact that a problem that has plagued a critical part of our operation has been fixed, important though that may be.  The point is to celebrate the team from IT, editorial, our digital group and our vendors who wouldn't give up on finding a solution to this nagging problem.  They could have just complained, shrugged their shoulders, and figured it was something they had to live with.  Instead, they worked together to find a solution.  And for that we should all be thankful.

2.  One area of our business which has had its struggles this past year is the conference business.  Registrations have been hard to sell as companies and law firms cut back discretionary costs, including conference attendance and related travel.  We have had to rethink our conferences, knowing that our audience still wants to get together for networking and professional development. But the idea of being away from the office for a full day or two is just not palatable--or affordable--for many of those in our audience. 

A few weeks ago, The American Lawyer launched the first of what I hope will be a series of Thought Leadership Breakfasts.  Over a hundred paying guests crowded into a room at the Harvard Club to hear Aric Press lead a panel discussion on new ideas for the law firm recruiting process.  Both the time commitment and the price were lower than our traditional full-day conference might have required--but that's what our audience seems to want right now.  Kudos to Aric, Henry Dicker, Rachel Lewyn and others on our Events team for creating this new product.

3.  While on the subject of Events, it is worth noting the incredible success of yesterday's Virtual LegalTech.  I hope you had a chance to check it out.  Over 1,300 registored visitors came to the site in order to attend one of the video presentations, stop by the virtual tradeshow booths or chat with our speakers and one another in the virtual lounge.  It was terrific, and the buzz from attendees was uniformly positive.  

Full credit to Scott Pierce, Henry Dicker and our Events team for launching us into this exciting new venture.  

4.  This morning I got word that Law Technology News launched its long-awaited and much-anticipated new website, which can be found at:

http://www.law.com/jsp/lawtechnologynews/index.jsp

Note the inclusion of video, reader polls, twitter feeds, blogs and other devices to make the site "stickier" and more useful for readers.  As we continue to upgrade all of our websites, these web 2.0 tools are going to become an important component of our online offerings.

As with all site redesigns, this one took a lot of effort by teams on both coasts:

Sherry Lee  - project manager

Jeff Chung  -web producer

Monica Bay - web editor

David Snow - exec. editor

Sean Doherty -web editor

Brian Witt - web producer

Drew Malcom - designer

Shane DeLeers - art director

Great work, and a harbinger of site redesigns to come in the future.

So that's four small victories and much to be thankful for as we approach the holiday season.  Solving problems and trying new approaches--that's how we'll succeed personally and professionally.

If you have a small victory--or even a big one--which you would like me to share on this blog, drop me a note and I'll do so.  Or you can add it yourself in the comments section below.