One of the benefits of being on the LMA 2011 Conference Committee is I have access to some pretty nifty lists, like the Passport to Prizes list from many of our incredible sponsors and exhibitors. When it comes to LMA and swag there are only THREE key things to remember:

  1. Visit the Exhibit Hall early and often, and don’t forget your business cards (because there will be booth give-a-ways as well).
  2. You must be present to win the Passport to Prizes, and all conference attendees (including committee members) are eligible to participate.
  3. The Grand Prize Drawing will take place in the Exhibit Hall on Wednesday April 6, 2011, at 3:00 p.m.

    PASSPORT TO PRIZES

    SPONSOR

    BOOTH #

    PRIZE
    ACC

    205

    $150 AMEX Gift Card

    ALL-STATE LEGAL

    319

    $250 AMEX Gift Card

    ALM

    200

    $150 AMEX Gift Card

    Best Lawyers

    307

    iPad

    BizActions

    316

    Kinect

    ClearImpact

    116

    Panasonic Lumix Digital Camera

    Clockwork Design Group

    216

    $100 PetCo Gift Card

    Concep

    311

    Flip Ultra HD

    eLaw Marketing

    204

    Amazon Kindle

    Gifts On Time

    218

    California Wine Tour Gift Basket

    Heraldry

    119

    $100 Heraldry Stationary Gift Certificate

    InsideCounsel

    300

    Ultra HD Flip Video Camera

    Jaffe PR

    304

    Flip Camera

    Leadership Directories

    302

    xBox 360 4GB with Kinect

    LexisNexis

    201

    $75 AMEX Gift Card

    Lexology

    410

    Bottle of Vintage Dom Perignon

    Majestic Mills Engraving

    110

    $250 Apple Gift Card

    MaxAdvertising

    315

    Beats Headphones by Dr. Dre

    MergerMarket

    112

    Kodak PLAYSPORT Video Camera

    Merrill Fine Arts

    401

    iPad

    Noble Pursuits

    103

    Kindle

    Schmidt Marketing, Inc.

    111

    Book: Business Development for Lawyers:

    Strategies for Getting and Keeping Clients

    SomeThing Digital

    118

    Flip Slide HD Video Camera

    Sound Path

    219

    Amazon Kindle

    Super Lawyers

    206

    $175 AMEX Gift Card

    The Ligature

    305

    $200 AMEX Gift Card

    Versys

    215

    $100 Amazon Gift Card

    Okay, I’ll admit it. Technically it’s called “Networking for Prizes” … but I liked the old name better, and it lent for a better title. 😀

    Are you getting excited? The Legal Marketing Association’s Annual Conference kicks off in just one week. I know many of you are going through the online materials, flipping through the agenda, trying to decide which sessions to attend. Just remember, there’s MORE at LMA. The MORE sessions (Mentoring Opportunities with Real-life Experts) are round-table discussions facilitated by leading LMA members. As a member of the conference committee, I had the pleasure, with Catherine Alman MacDonagh, to help coordinate these sessions and I hope you check them out:

    Wednesday, April 6, 2011 – Conference Day Two

    10:45a.m.-12:00 p.m.

    • ABA 20/20 Commission and State Bar Developments
    • Avoiding Ethical Pitfalls – Examining Ethics-related and Regulation Issues
      • What are the top legal ethics mistakes that fall through the cracks? Are you aware of the importance of conflict checks? What are the ethics involved in social media, multi-jurisdictional practices, and offices that cross state boundaries? Join this roundtable discussion to find out, in addition to discussing recent court decisions in legal ethics cases and what they mean for you.
      • Facilitator: Russell Lawson, Sands Anderson
    • Branching Out – Explore Legal Marketing Career Paths
      • Uncover potential legal marketing career paths, and take this opportunity to meet a mentor/match make with LMA’s finest to help you transition into your new position/career.
      • Facilitator: Roberta Montafia
    • Confessions of a Legal Marketer – the Clean Slate Table
      • Own up to your legal marketing mistakes in a ‘safe’ environment – hear others ‘horror stories’ to know that you’re not alone and it’s OK to move on.
      • Facilitator Megan McKeon, McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff LLP
    • Ways in which to Collaborate with the ACC Value Challenge
      • Explore the value proposition of value based billing and AFAs, and ways in which your firm can become a supporting organization of the ACC Value Challenge.
      • Facilitator: Felice Wagner, Sutherland
    • Convergence of Knowledge Management and Business Intelligence
      • As content continues to grow exponentially in the public domain and is increasingly merged with proprietary content, a need to effectively harness, manage, and act on this information will gain greater importance.  More and more, legal professionals that perform the function of business intelligence and business development are being asked to find actionable insights from a wide array of different sources. Knowledge Management can, and will, play an increasing role in ensuring that these folks are finding the actionable information that they need to achieve their business and practice objectives.
      • Facilitator: Peter J. Ozolin, Manzama

    1:45-3:00 p.m.

    • Top Tips for Marketing on a Shoe String
      • How do you continue to market without a budget? It is possible. Participate in this roundtable to share and learn marketing and business development ideas with little to no budget that bring big rewards.
      • Facilitator: Adam Stock, Allen Matkins Leck Gamble Mallory & Natsis LLP
    • What’s next for the Legal industry?
      • The recession is almost over, now what? What practices are now on the rise? If the pyramid is out, and everything in the legal industry is shifting, what business models are now at play? This thought-provoking discussion will get you thinking about the implications surrounding the 21st century legal business model.
      • Facilitator: Maggie Watkins, Best Best & Krieger LLP
    • How do you Transition a Lawyer from a Hot Practice when their Practice has run cold?
      • Learn ways in which you, as a legal marketer, can play a part in allocating resources appropriately, so when a practice group runs cold, you’re prepared to help identify and transition a partner, using their current expertise to identify and renew their practice.
      • Facilitator: Tracy LaLonde, Akina
    • Adding a Value Proposition to your Marketing Department
      • As the structure of today’s law firms changes, so too does the look and feel of today’s legal marketing departments, and the way in which marketing and business development work together. Learn how you can add service standards to your marketing department, by recognizing your firm’s culture and how you should work within it as opposed to allowing it to impede you and your priority projects.
      • Facilitator: Kevin McMurdo, Perkins Coie
    • Quick Facilitation Tips to make you more Effective in your Day
      • There are many quick tips and ideas you should be adding to your tool box to make you more effective in your day to day functions and to increase your success rate with selling ideas. Learn them here!
      • Facilitator Beth Cuzzone, Goulston & Storrs
    • Ways in which to have Better Relationships with your Vendors
      • Vendors can be your best resources. Do you have the relationship you need for maximum support and access to critical information? How do you even frame a conversation with a vendor to ensure you get what you want from it?
      • Facilitator: Tim Corcoran, Thomson Reuters

    The Legal Marketing Association’s annual conference is just around the corner, and I’m starting to get excited. I’ve had the honor and pleasure of participating on the conference committee this year, and, in my unbiased opinion, the conference agenda is looking incredible. Better check out the MORE sessions. Catherine MacDonagh and I really enjoyed contributing to these. But, let’s face it, the networking that takes place at LMA is key to carrying on our work (and keeping our sanity) throughout the year. The colleagues and friendships I have developed through LMA keep me tied to the industry more than anything else. If you have yet to plug into the online social network of LMA , there are a few things you can do:

    1. Open a Twitter account if you don’t already have one. Once your account is open, search #LMA11 and you will have access to the conference Twitter stream. (If you don’t want to open an account, but want to “listen” in on the conversation, you can still search the Twitter stream and listen in on us).
    2. Once on Twitter, send @lindsaygriffith and @lalaland999 (Laura Gutierrez) a message. Lindsay is keeping a list of the LMA Twitterers on her blog; Laura has created a List to Follow on her Twitter site. I have a list as well that you can access here.
    3. If you are planning to blog from the conference, let me know in the comments section below and I’ll add your blog. So far, I have the following bloggers who will be posting from the conference. I’ll also publish a separate list as we get closer to the kick-off.
      1. Nancy Myrland, Myrland Marketing
      2. Tom Matte, The Matte Pad
      3. Lindsay Griffiths, Zen & The Art of Legal Networking
      4. Laura Gutierrez, Duets Blog
      5. Heather Morse, The Legal Watercooler
      6. Jonathan Fitzgarrald, Bad for the Brand
      7. Larry Bodine, LawMarketing Blog
      8. Adrian Dayton, 12 Virtues Blog, Legal Marketing: Social Media Edition
      9. Ross Fishman, Ross’s Law Marketing Blog and Law Firm Speakers
      10. Cheryl Bame, Legal PR Advice
      11. Russell Lawson, Progressive Marketing Blog
      12. Robert Algeri, Great Jakes Blog
      13. Gina Furia Rubel, The PR Lawyer
      14. Hubbard One, The Hubbard Perspective
      15. Amy Knapp, Not Knapping
      16. Sonny Cohen, Duo Consulting
    4. Meet fellow social networkers at the Tweet-up/Inaugural reception for the LMA Social Networking SIG.
      1. The Social Media SIG is for those who have an interest or primary role in using social media and online networking platforms to enhance marketing and business development efforts. Connect with this group at the #LMA11 tweetup on Monday, April 4 at 6:45 p.m. in the Crew’s Cup Lounge.
    5. Join the LMA Conference Group on LinkedIn to connect and participate in discussions specific to the conference. It’s a closed group, so if you need an invitation, let me know in the comments section below, or send me a LinkedIn message.

    I look forward to connecting with you either in Orlando, or online.

    Grammar geeks unite, or take up arms! The new words are here!!! Making this year’s cut via the Oxford English Dictionary are Twitter and texting favorites:

    • OMG
    • LOL
    • FYI

    And there are new meanings to old favorites, such as heart. As in: Foodies rejoice, Taquitos and California Rolls are not only yummy, but legitimate words as well. Fashionistas, better watch those Muffin Tops. And for all my peeps at home, it’s not just us who call the City of Angels “la-la-land.” It’s now finally a place and a word all on its own. Word. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZjAantupsA]

    Let’s face it. To succeed in legal marketing, or anything to do with working with lawyers, you have to have a tough shell. I spoke on a webinar this week with Darryl Cross and John Byrne where we discussed social media. We’ve all spoken on the topic in the past. Darryl and I have participated together on a panel. John and Darryl have participated together. But this was the first time the three of us joined forces. The conversation, from my perspective, was fluid. We followed the outline as best we could. There’s a certain chemistry between us that allowed for banter. We didn’t all agree with one another, which leads to a more interesting debate. We did what we were asked to do. And we got slammed in some of the reviews. I was completely shocked. I don’t think everyone is going to like anything that I do or say, but, jeez, a couple of the comments (okay, one specific, but he wrote on and on) were just downright harsh.

    The worst …. Unfocused …. Poor quality.

    Ouch. I’ve spoken on the subject, in a similar roundtable format, before lawyer groups and have received glowing reviews, as have we all, so what went wrong here?? It hit me quickly. I wasn’t just speaking before a group of lawyers. I was speaking before a group of litigators. And, litigators are a different breed within the law firm dynamic. Litigators are trained to look for loopholes and to then drive a Mack Truck through them. Litigators are more skeptical than your average attorney. Litigators live by the rules, written and codified if possible. Litigators want proof. Litigators are not comfortable with fluid. So what am I taking away from this?

    • We should have better identified our audience. Knowing they were lawyers was not enough. We needed to know what kind and type of lawyer comprised our audience.
    • We should have had a bullet-pointed program, and stuck to it. An outline was not enough.
    • We should have downplayed our camaraderie/chemistry and provided a more fact-based presentation.

    I don’t think we would have met everyone’s expectations in the audience. That’s pretty impossible to do. I did, however, hear back from other people on the call who found our presentation informative and interesting. If you follow my blog or have seen me present, you know I am a colloquial writer and speaker. I don’t present from the vantage point of the legal ethicist, nor do I hold myself out to be an expert of any kind on legal ethics. I present from the vantage point of the business developer and marketer. I operate within the confines of the legal ethics.  I look to the lawyers in our midst, the ABA and the state bar associations, for their interpretation of the rules as they apply to my states of operation. However, the legal ethics of social media are presently developing, so right now we’re operating off the current rules of professional conduct. As for me, personally? I’ll take solace that while I got slammed harder than John or Darryl, my overall ratings were also the highest. I guess somebody out there liked me :D.

    Contrary to some perceptions, marketing isn’t about throwing your message out to the broadest group of people and hoping something sticks. To me, where professional service marketing is concerned, which legal is a part of, targeted and niche marketing is one of the most effective approaches. For instance, it’s hard to market a general litigation, IP practice or corporate practice. It is much easier to market a construction defects, medical device practice or emerging technology practice. The target is narrowed, and you can then broaden your efforts and grow your visibility within that segment. I am in NO WAY saying limit yourself to one segment or industry, or that this is the ONLY way to market. It’s just one way of making rain. At a prior firm I had a rainmaker in the corporate department who always marketed to three industries: One that was red-hot right now, one that was on it’s way out, and one on it’s way up. While managing his red-hot practice, he was learning about and making connections with the up-and-coming industry, while winding things down with that once hot, but not so much now, industry. This partner was one of several rainmakers within the firm, each one with a different way of making rain that worked for him or her. Cordell Parvin writes about this in his post today, Lawyer Marketing Key Point: Narrow Your Client Base and Widen Your Visibility.

    As you know, I began my client development efforts as a commercial litigator. I struggled to figure out how I could market myself. I was flailing away marketing to everyone. Unfortunately for me, there were several older and better known commercial litigators in my home town. I changed my focus and narrowed my target market to highway and transportation construction contractors. It was by far the most important decision I made in my career. I actually widened my practice, to include contracts and every day advice. I narrowed my client base so I could be more valuable as a trusted advisor.

    Cordell then runs through a few examples of helping his clients narrow their niche before concluding:

    So, if you are marketing to everyone and not finding any success, you can narrow your focus to a smaller group, find a niche practice, or continue marketing to a wider audience. Whatever approach, use the tools, like blogging to widen your visibility. These are examples demonstrating there is more than one way to make rain.

    So, if you’re tired of throwing spaghetti up against the wall, hoping something sticks, you might want to try narrowing your niche.

    Thank you to guest blogger  Gail Lamarche for recapping Lexblog’s webinar, Find Your Voice – Speak With a Purpose , featuring Faith Pincus.

    ———————————————————————————————-

    Once again Kevin O’Keefe offered LexBlog’s clients a great webinar on March 16 with Faith Pincus, a licensed attorney who trains lawyers (and others) nationally on how to enhance their speaking ability. Faith blogs at Speech Advice. Faith began her presentation by quoting Thomas Edison,

    Opportunities are missed because they are dressed in overalls and look like work.

    Speaking engagements are work, but they are also excellent opportunities which allow you to shine as an expert in your field.  So how can you get speaking engagements? Think of Your Audience To whom do you want to speak? Typically, for lawyers, the audience can be broken down to three categories:

    1. attorneys that can refer clients to you;
    2. attorneys that can hire you directly; and,
    3. attorneys that can bring you on as a consultant;

    Then, reach out to groups or associations that can refer business to you. Perhaps it’s a Realtor or builders association. Also check your local chamber of commerce websites for clubs, don’t forget the public can hire you directly too! Faith gave an example of trust and estate attorney she worked with, he found great success speaking to local church groups. Think outside the box! Who To Approach Once you determine your audience, do your research. Find out who handles the guest speakers for that organization and research the person who you will be “pitching”. Check social media avenues to see if you’re connected to them in some degree on LinkedIn. If you have a connection in common, reach out for a referral. Having a personal connection by someone who can attest recommend you is better than a cold call. After all, it’s all about relationships. How To Ask – Back to Basics If you can’t go that route through a connection, e-mail (or make a good ole fashioned phone call) and offer to speak for their group…nicely! Faith cautioned not to be arrogant by saying “you are the king or queen” of “x.” Offer to speak in a friendly, causal, but professional manner. There is nothing wrong with asking people for speaking engagements. The answer is always no if you don’t ask. If there’s a specific venue or program, ask to speak – especially if you are speaking for free. If you want to speak for a fee, that’s a whole different ball game. Be sure to include your background and qualifications, let them know why you are an expert in your niche. Also mention any honors or recognitions you earned (top 100 lawyers, 40 under 40, etc.). If you have an audio clip, presentation outline, newsletter or blog post, offer it to the conference organizer. Make Speaking Engagements Worthwhile If you are going to make the effort to speak, do a good job by meeting the needs of your audience. Faith recommends to show up at least a half hour early to meet your audience.  Ask them why they are there and what they wanted to learn. That way you can tailor your presentation on the fly and, as a bonus, you have that one-on-one connection. Faith also shared the “don’t” list:

    • Don’t show up 15 minutes before and just stare at your notes. Use this opportunity as much as you can to network. You already known as the expert. And have a better chance of getting referrals.
    • Don’t wait until the night before to prepare. Practice, practice, practice.
    • Don’ read, work from an outline. Get a DVD on public speaking, go to Toastmasters and check out Six Minutes blog, do everything you can to improve.
    • Don’t put up a whole bunch of text on slides and just read off them. PowerPoint is meant as a visual aid. Prepare an outline, review it and mark where will slides enhance what your message. Then find images, perhaps even create custom cartoons. Need inspiration? Prepare a leave-behind with the information.

    Marketing

    • Use your blog pre and post event. Check out Class Action Countermeasurers. It lists topics on blogs with links to the presentations, speakers and organizations. Include your speaking engagements on your firm bio.
    • Repurpose your presentation. Use it as a blog topic or article in a newsletter. Plan ahead and ask if you can get an audio copy of the event. If you can’t, there are recording devices that can attach to a lavaliere. Hire a professional audio editor (at anywhere from $40-$100/hour) to get nuggets to post on your blog and website. The audio editor can make a nice introduction and cut out the “um’s and ah’s.” When you have a good video opportunity, use it.
    • If you get evaluations from where you speak, hang on to them for next time you want to speak. Get testimonials and get audio sample to pitch to other organizations.
    • Use social media. Post your presentation on Slideshare, an excellent resource for research and a plug-in application on LinkedIn. Speaking of LinkedIn, do you lawyers know that LinkedIn has surpassed Martindale Hubbell in lawyer profiles?
    • There’s also TripIt which allows your connections to see where you are going and when you are speaking.
    • Write a blog post before the event: hey I’m going, hope to see you there; here’s my email, reach out to me. A perfect example, is our Legal Marketing friend, Nancy Myrland. While there, do a short blog post on what you have seen, observed and learned. When you return from the conference, highlight hot discussions and share with your audience.

    Recommended Reading:

    1. Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive
    2. Slide:Ology

    Q&A Kevin shared the following audience questions:

    • Q:  How do lawyers let people know what they do when they are speaking in front of a large audience? A:  Faith, Present in a thoughtful manner. Include short war stories and mention in the course of your presentation how you help your clients. Also prepare a leave-behind and include a checklist that is valuable, something your audience needs to refer to over and over again. Get that top of mind awareness.
    • Q:  Toastmasters, yay or nay? A:  Faith, Yay. Toastmasters is an excellent organization for people to get over the fear of public speaking and nervousness. The program is designed to allow you to practice over and over again in a non-pressured environment. The audience is just like – not trained public speakers that need help. Of course, you can also hire speaking coaches, like Faith.
    • Q:  What can you do with all those videos from previous presentations? A:   Faith, Hire professional video editors (typical hourly rate $60-$70/hour). Split up the video in two minute segments with great sound bites and post on YouTube, your website and blog. The video editor should be able to do a nice phase in and phase out and don’t forget to add a byline.
    • Q:  What can I do if I don’t have any video presentations? A:   Faith:  Go to an A/V recording studio and do a 5 or 10 minute presentation. A:  Kevin:  Bloggers have power to get speaking engagements. In fact, Kevin’s speaking engagements grew tremendously after he started blogging. He recommends: 
      • following blogs and publications distributed by organizations that invite people to speak via RSS feeds (or your Google Reader);
      • follow them on Twitter
      • reach out and connect with then on LinkedIn
      • get to know conference coordinators, become their confidant and someone they can trust
      • use your blog tools; share word of events on your blog; set up a speaking engagements or presentations topic that’s easy to find

      Two main take-aways:  do your research to get a speaking engagement and once you do, don’t waste the opportunity.

    I had an interesting conversation last week in regards to using a personal name v. a descriptive term on Twitter. I am in the “use your real name” camp for Twitter IDs for personal accounts (versus a company ID for a corporate account). Here’s are a few reasons why (according to me):

    1. If you’re participating in social media, you’re most likely trying to identify and build relationships. Relationships are developed between people. Not between descriptive terms and people.
    2. Social media, as far as I am concerned, is about conversations. Two way conversations happen between people. One way conversation happen from an entity to a person. I’m not even sure how a descriptive term communicates, but I know people who do Tweet this way.
    3. If you Tweet under a descriptive term, how will anyone identify you outside of a Twitter stream? Will they put your name together with your Twitter ID? How would you be identified at a conference or industry event?
    4. Tweeting under your name allows your followers to get a holistic view of who you are (assuming that you’re tweeting about something more than business, which you should be doing, but that’s the subject for a different post).

    I’m not just a legal marketer. I am a mother, a Girl Scout troop leader, a sports fan, a former punker who still likes to slam in the pit at a concert, etc. There’s much more to me than The Legal Watercooler. If we’ve never met in person, and we were to bump into each other at, say, the Legal Marketing Association’s annual conference next month, how would you best be able to identify me? By “LGL_MKTR” – a descriptive term of what I do? Or, by my name? I’m going with by name. My name is more than just who I am as an individual. It is part of my brand. It is the entry way to the holistic, and authentic, Heather. I am one of thousands of legal marketing professional. I am one of a handful of Heathers who are legal marketers. But there is only one me. Why make it a puzzle for my readers and followers to know who I am? Oh, and speaking of names, yes, I did make the final change. It’s Morse, as in code (no relation).

    I’ve had a few incidents (yes a few, so I am not referencing a specific “you” here) where I have received calls from people not too happy with one of my blog posts (shock). With each call, I couldn’t get the person to see past the fact that I wasn’t writing about him or her, per se, but was using the “incident” as a springboard to a broader conversation. In fact, one post actually said: “let’s take this incident and use it to discuss the broader issue of X.” (Paraphrase to hide the identity of the offended party in question.) So, for those who still don’t get it, who actually think this post is about them, here’s one of my processes for writing a blog post:

    1. I read an article, see a program, or have a conversation with a peer.
    2. I get inspired by the subject matter.
    3. My inspiration starts to churn around in my head, moving in different directions, inspiring other thoughts and ideas that now take on a life of their own.
    4. The ideas are random and don’t have any weight, are partially formed, and need to be organized.
    5. If I don’t write a blog post, my head will explode.

    Writing at this point is cathartic. It clears my head. It helps by taking these random thoughts and organize them so that they make sense. It provides me a process so that I can then communicate these new ideas with clarity and relative finesse while standing around the coffee maker chatting with my partners. Granted, on numerous occasions I have referenced in a couple lines/block quote the gist of article, program or conversation, but that’s really the extent of it. OK. I’ll double admit to hyper-linking to the article so that the reader can readily review my observations on their own (gasp), and come to their own conclusions (double gasp). Or, worse yet, hyper-linking to the event to give that organization some press (oh, the humanity of it all). At this point, I am using that article, program or conversation as a SPRINGBOARD to a broader and larger discussion. It’s the beginning point of the “conversation” we social media geeks keep clamoring about. For instance, on my Facebook wall right now, we’re not talking about Cate Blanchet’s specific dress at the Oscars last night, but referencing it and using it as inspiration to the broader discussion of couture dresses as art rather than wearable clothing (and, yes, this is a complete exaggeration of our comments, but I am using it for dramatic license, so, Cate, please don’t get upset with me). Many years ago, at a Legal Marketing Association Leadership Conference, then LMA-president Diane Hamlin said “Let’s not act like a bunch of lawyers. Let’s not attack the example.” Wow. How true is that? So, please, don’t attack the example. Just because I mention you, doesn’t mean I’m writing about you. I might be writing the piece to be part of the conversation, or to get someone else’s attention via hyper-links to their article or name. In other words, I might just be referencing the article, event or post for the link bait it provides and nothing more.

    The power of speech. The power of a speech. When you couple a speech, with a microphone and an audience with access to the social web,  you have a powerful tool of communication and an opportunity to reach the world. And with this power of the social web comes the END of anonymity. The END of control. The END of censorship. And the beginning of personal responsibility for what you say, Tweet or post. As a member of the Legal Marketing Association’s Los Angeles Chapter, Cheryl Bame (and all of us) have learned an important lesson. The boundaries of retroactive censorship have moved, and are perhaps erased forever:

    What is the difference between a pen and paper, an audio recording device or a Flip video camera?  That is the question that came to me when I learned not all of the panelists from yesterday’s LMA-LA program would allow me to post the video I shot online or on my blog. (skip) Despite the private event, the panelists were speaking in a public forum.  What if someone in attendance took notes, quoted all of the panelists, Tweeted, wrote a blog or article and also posted to other social networking sites?  Why is there a difference between those forms of communication and my Flip video?

    Cheryl is right. The ability to take notes and share information is not new, only the medium of social media (and YouTube specifically here) is. Now, we just need to let all the speakers know this. Social media is a powerful tool. Cheryl knows this, and so should every conference organizer and speaker:

    Being a student of social media I know that video is a powerful PR tool, not just for my blog, but for the Legal Marketing Association chapter which would have gained a lot of exposure if the video went viral and was seen by hundreds if not thousands of people in the legal industry around the world.

    Once you step foot on a dais, you, as a speaker and an organziation, lose all control. Your “official” scribe and videographer might be controllable, but then there’s the audience. Have you looked out into an audience lately? Almost everyone is out there tapping away on a smart phone which came loaded with Twitter, Facebook, and a WordPress applications, along with a camera and video. With an Internet connection, content from the stage is posted to the social web with only seconds of delay. Our industry is not the first to come to realize that you cannot control content. We are all caretakers of the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech. We are all reporters. We are all producers of content. We are all distribution channels. We, as a collective, cannot be censored. So what is a speaker to do? As a speaker you need to take care in what you say in private, and most definitely in public. Just ask Prince and Kim Kardashian who keep trying to pull YouTube videos off the Internet, but they keep popping back up. Or the NFL, NBA or NCAA who are trying to keeps sports stars off Twitter (good luck). Or the government of Egypt who lost the revolution, thanks in great part to social media. And now there are some who are trying to ban Twitter in U.S. politics? Double good luck there. You can try and ban social media all you want, but you won’t get too far. Once you step foot on that dais, everything you say can and should be recorded, Tweeted and shared. The problem here isn’t social media, the problem is that you can no longer take back something you say. You can’t erase it, spin it or whitewash it. Post a picture on Facebook, you can expect it to go public. Send out a poorly worded/thought out/stupid or insensitive Tweet and it can ruin your career. As for yesterday’s LMA-LA program, Cheryl mentioned that the program was private. It was not. It was a speech given to an audience of a professional association in a hotel conference room. ANYONE could have RSVPd to the event and attended.That’s about as public as you can get. The speakers all knew this. However, one said something during the program that he later regretted, and is refusing to give approval to posting the video. So, no, the YouTube video will not be posted. The official article will not mention the unmentionable. It’s going to be up to a social media savvy attendee to get out the news, and, unfortunately, it won’t me me. I had chosen to sit in the back of the room yesterday and listen to the program. I took some notes, but nothing intensive. I knew that Cheryl was recording the event and that it would be posted to YouTube. I guess not.