The
Elements of Style @ LMA14
#Kickoff
Derek Maine
Two months
before the Legal Marketing Association’s Annual Conference in Orlando, before I
had heard about an LMASE scholarship, before I had applied and before I,
incredulously, won, I sat down at my desk, took the cellophane off the wrapper
of the conference agenda and began my search for the theme. I had a few naïve
and obvious guesses; social media, “Big Data,” Mobile Apps, ROI on time spent
scouring LinkedIN for ‘decision-makers.’ As I dug into the agenda, the speakers
and panel discussions mentioned all of these vagaries in one form or another
(except for scouring LinkedIN to identify ‘decision-makers,’ apparently that’s
just me), but there was no underlying theme. It was a smorgasbord of tools and
techniques that hit on one aspect or another of every piece of my day-to-day
working life. So if I wanted a theme, I was going to have to start by getting
on a plane.
There’s
something no one warns you about when attending an LMA conference and I could
have used a head’s up. The industry is, top to bottom and left to right, made
up of absurdly good looking people with “I-need-to-up-my-game” style. I almost
stole another man’s shoes before I even checked into the hotel. As in, I saw a
man sitting in the lobby with his very nice shoes off, resting in front of him,
and I went through a rudimentary pro/con analysis on attending the conference
v. taking off with his shoes, catching the next flight to North Carolina and
declaring pyrrhic victory. If this seems like an especially adolescent
observation it comes from years of attending trade shows with my father and
witnessing swarms of bored, lethargic looking salesmen collecting dust in the
corner of fluorescent conference halls, sporting five o’clock shadows. At LMA,
my fellow attendees, my peers, were a collection of professionals clearly
excited to be there, mixing with their old friends and new colleagues, proud of
their work and their industry. I got my shoes shined.
A
few weeks before the conference my email inbox at work contained almost twenty
unread messages with the subject line, “Issue with the golf balls.” My
voicemail light was blinking and there was a post-it note from a senior partner
that also referenced golf balls. It seems there was some back and forth on what
exact golf ball needed to be ordered for an upcoming raffle giveaway.
Committees were formed. Allegiances established. No matter how wonderful your
firm, how present your leadership, there are going to be those days where you
mediate a discussion on golf balls. Or font size. (“I was considering hiring
that firm, but did you notice they used a 14 point on the notepads? Needless to
say, I passed” – General Counsels everywhere, all the time). Kat Cole, President of Cinnabon, Inc.,
humanitarian & charmer extraordinaire kicked off the conference by allowing
us all to revel in the big ideas. It was an elegant reminder of why we love
this work, why we love this industry. We can affect change. We work with brilliant
minds. We help sell crucial services that have tangible, sometimes life and
career altering, benefits. Her clever refrain, “If not now, when, if not me,
who?” was tweeted and retweeted and hash tagged throughout the conference. When
shopping for golf balls, it’s easy to forget that my work has meaning. Thank
you, Kat Cole, in 11 point Calibri,
for reminding me.
Tues
4/15/14: The Social
Media, Big Data, Competitive Intelligence “Just Right” Formula (#Day1)
Wed
4/16/14: Buying In and
Selling Out
(#Day2)
Thurs
4/17/14: There is no “New
Normal.” There is Normal & There is you
(#AirportGiftShop)
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