Monday, April 14, 2014

The Elements of Style @ LMA14

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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