Welcome back
It has taken me several weeks to gather all of the posts from the old blogs in Typepad and Wordpress, but it’s finally here. I’ll be doing lots more cleanup and highlighting dozens of “Best Of” posts over the next several months so come back again soon. I’m glad you’re here!
Pretending to Act Brilliantly
My friend Jim Canterucci interviewed me for his Personal Brilliance Podcast. He'll be posting portions of the interviews throughout this month and I encourage you to check it out. I'm not sure how much brilliance there is in my interview, but I always enjoy talking with Jim and I think you'll find some interesting things in there.
I'd also encourage you to check out the rest of the podcasts. I'm working though them right now, and I've got to say, so far all of them have been worth a listen!
Upcoming Events: Idea Market and Inter:PLAY
If you're in and around St. Louis, there are a few things I'm involved in you might like.
The first is an Idea Market on September 15th. We've taken off several months for the summer, and I'm itching to try some new things with the group. We've only room for 30, so sign up now if you'd like to come.
The second is the Inter:PLAY, the new St. Louis Interactive Festival. The St. Louis Bloggers Guild has put together some really cool panels, and I'm pleased to be participating on three of them:
The Small Business and Social Media – Friday 9/19 @ 4pmHow prominent is your business’s online profile? Is it necessary to build relationships with bloggers and others in social media? Learn just how important social media is to your business – along with how to save your advertising budget dollars, build a viral marketing campaign, increase word of mouth, and other “guerilla marketing” techniques. Featuring Marianne Richmond, David Gray, Matt Homann, and Madalyn Sklar; moderated by Melody Meiners.
The Emerging Ethics of Social Media – Saturday 9/20 @ 1pm
A roundtable discussion on the ethical questions surrounding the world of social media. Topics addressed may include: privacy of bloggers and those whom bloggers write about; truthfulness v. artistic license; email and comment etiquette; and more. Featuring Todd Jordan, Jaelithe Judy, moderated by Matt Homann.
Cyberbullying – Saturday 9/20 @ 2pm
An apropos topic in our state of Missouri - which became the first to outlaw “cyberbullying” with a controversial new law. This panel will host an open discussion on online safety and privacy issues that all internet users face. Explore ways to protect yourself and your family while still participating in online communities. Featuring Elizabeth Helfant, Matt Homann, Kim Dorsey, Dana Loesch; moderated by Lisa Bertrand.
And if you like music, Inter:PLAY is a part of the much larger PLAY:Stl, with 99 bands over 3 days (warning, link opens with music). Hope to see you there!
Lessons learned. Mostly the hard way.
Just entered a presentation to SlideShare's World's Best Presentation Contest that I've been noodling around with for a while. It uses pictures of my daughter, and is titled, "If I'd only known then .... Lessons learned. Mostly the hard way." Check it out, and give it a vote if you like it.
Retreat with Me
About a month ago, I had the great pleasure of working with the Subrogation Group of Cozen O'Connor to help them design and facilitate their portion of a firm-wide retreat in Orlando, Florida. Paul Bartolacci, a fantastic attorney and great guy, just sent this testimonial I thought I'd share:
"We worked with Matt to plan and present a half day involving approximately 100 lawyers from a specific department within our firm. We were looking for something a bit different than the traditional law firm retreat program -- upbeat and innovative, while at the same time useful and giving us a strategy to move forward. Matt was perfect. He took the time to listen to what we wanted to achieve and understood our goals. He spent extra time with us before the event to really get to know us as a group and what our practice involved.Matt delivered a speech that was creative and pointed us towards new ideas and a different way to view and analyze problems. Our activities were fast paced and interactive, yet produced concrete goals and results. In short, he "got it".
This was the last session of a 3 day retreat and people left feeling very positive and focused. Following our session many members of the group commented that this had been the best session of any of the numerous retreats they attended. I would certainly recommend Matt for any law firm retreat and look forward to working with him again."
If you are looking for a speaker or someone to help you squeeze a bit more fun, creativity and focused results out of your legal event or retreat, give me a call. I'd love to help.
London Legal Blogger Meetup?
I'm in London next week, and free Tuesday - Thursday. Anyone want to get together? Email me: Matt@LexThink.com if you're interested.
Re-XPLANE-ing XPLANE
In my last post, I promised renewed posting and big news. Well, the news I have is big all right, but it isn't what I was expecting to share. Last week, I was laid off from XPLANE, along with six others. Though I'll continue my relationship with XPLANE as a contractor -- doing about the same amount of work as before -- I'm now free to, ahem...as they say, "Explore new opportunities."
Apart from my continued work for XPLANE, which I love, here's what else is on my plate for the next 30 days:
1. Relaunching LexThink! with a "future of law practice" event in Chicago this fall. Look for more here next week.2. Rebuilding my legal speaking and retreat facilitation business. I've always been a pseudo-regular on the legal speaking circuit, but I've recently been focusing on big-picture legal innovation topics. I just returned from a retreat I designed, facilitated and keynoted for a practice group of a major international firm and will expand and formalize my offerings (under the LexThink brand) before the end of the month. If you want an "Innovational Speaker" for your event, give me a ring.
3. Reviving the blog. I'm going to re-focus my energies on the [non]billable hour, and finally put together all those long-promised posts that have been living in my Moleskine or my head for the last year. Look for several dozen posts in June, as well as my oft-promised e-book on August 1.
4. Reconnecting with you. I've met so many amazing people through this blog, and I'm sorry for losing touch. Forgive me. It is good to be back.
My Upcoming Travel
I've got lots of stuff coming up for work and fun, and would love to meet some readers of this blog when I'm on the road. Here's where I'll be over the next several weeks:
Dallas, TX: April 23-25.
Orlando,FL: May 16-19.
Washington DC: June 18-22.
Also on the "tentative" horizon:
Herndon, VA
Irving, CA
Atlanta, GA
If you're in the neighborhood and would like to meet, drop me a line and we'll see if we can connect.
Matt
Idea Market in the News
I've written about my Idea Markets here before. Here's an article from the local Suburban Journal that talks about one I did for the International Association of Business Communicators.
Back Home and Blogging (for now)
In the last six weeks, I've been to Minneapolis, Portland, Boston, Seattle and Anchorage. Regular readers of this blog have noticed that I'm no longer a regular writer of it. That's going to change. Though I've not been blogging a bunch, I've been doing a lot of thinking about innovation, community and group collaboration. While I get my thoughts together, you might enjoy this profile of me in Law Practice Magazine. Check it out.
Portland and Seattle
I'm going to be in Portland on July 22nd and 23rd, and then up to Seattle on the 24th through 28th. If you are around and would like to get together, drop me a line.
Explaining XPLANE.
As I wrote the other day, I have joined XPLANE as a full time consultant. I want to thank everyone who has reached out to me to offer me their congratulations and support. I also want to answer several of the questions I've received, and figured it was far easier to do in a blog post. So here goes:
WHAT IS XPLANE? XPLANE (Wikipedia Entry) is one of the pioneers in Visual Thinking, which is the process of distilling complex processes and concepts into easy-to-understand and visually striking XPLANATIONS. In short, XPLANE helps companies improve their business communication. XPLANE has offices in St. Louis, Portland and Madrid.
WHY XPLANE? Since I returned to St. Louis over a year ago, I have been spending many of my Thursday afternoons at XPLANE's Visual Thinking School, a weekly design and thinking exercise conducted primarily for internal XPLANE personnel. I was invited by XPLANE CEO Dave Gray to attend, and found myself intrigued by the way XPLANE used drawing and visuals to communicate complex business processes. At the same time, XPLANE folks started coming to my Idea Markets, where I began to incorporate many visual thinking and drawing exercises and found it startling how much more effective a little "out of comfort zone" drawing could be than simply a verbal-based exercise. After several months of VTS, Dave asked me why I didn't work for XPLANE. Surprised by the question, I began to consider it. Six months later, and after a trip to visit the Portland office, I'm here.
WHAT WILL I DO? My official title is "Consultant," though that really doesn't describe what I'll be doing. Part of XPLANE's unique process is pairing up a consultant/facilitator (me) with an artist/concept designer (the people with real talent), and going to a client's office for a day-long discovery session. Instead of taking written notes, the artist will actually use live drawing to help visualize the client's story, audience, goals and needs. By combining this live-sketching with a number of brainstorming and drawing, XPLANE is able to elicit a far more complete picture (literally!) of what the client wants to communicate. Here's an overview of the process.
My role is to be the consultant/facilitator in the client sessions. In addition, I will work within XPLANE to expand the consulting practice and further develop the process for multiple client scenarios -- not just those that need an XPLANE "product" delivered at the end of the engagement. Finally, I am going to work on a "visual thinking module" that will bring the benefits of visual thinking to workshops, conferences and retreats.
In short, I get to do the same kinds of things I was doing before, but within a really cool organization, with amazingly talented people, and for much larger clients.
XPLANE will also begin to sponsor the Idea Markets. More on that soon.
WHAT ABOUT THIS BLOG? I will keep the [non]billable hour going. I am working on a redesign, and you will see some cool new things in the next 90 days. I am also going to be re-purposing much of the older content in ways to make it more accessible to newer readers.
WHAT ABOUT LEXTHINK? Dennis, JoAnna and I will be having a sit down soon to figure out what's next. We have too many cool things planned for LexThink to let it go. Stay tuned.
WHAT ELSE? If you have any more questions, shoot me an email at homann@gmail.com or mhomann@xplane.com, and I'd be happy to answer them. I am so excited to be working for XPLANE. I have spent most of my working life as an entrepreneur, and to find an employer where the entrepreneurial spirit is part of the fabric of the organization is really cool. Thanks for all your support!
Matt
Time to XPlane Myself
I will have lots more Tuesday, but I want to announce that I've joined XPlane, The Visual Thinking Company, as a full-time consultant. Super cool company, wicked sharp people and a perfect fit for my talents and skills. Check them out. I'll tell you more after the holiday weekend.
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Gotta Lotta Blogging to Do
I've got a lot of catching up to do, so forgive the ton of posts (starting with this one) that you'll see today. My schedule, coupled with a really cool announcement I'll make Monday, is my excuse -- not that you were asking for one. Thanks!
Back Up Your LinkedIn Profile
I caught this tip over on the My LinkedIn Power Forum about backing up a LinkedIn profile. From the post, here's how to do it:
1. Print it as a hardcopy. You can click on the [Print] icon
above your headline and print it. This is the most traditional way
of backup and is also strongly recommended to always keep a hardcopy
just in case all your backup softcopies cannot work at the time of
recovery.2. Save it as a PDF or Word file. You can either click on the
[PDF] icon above your headline and save it as a PDF or cut-and-paste
your profile and save it as a Word file. The latter will have an
advantage of cut-and-paste back to your LinkedIn profile page at the
time recovery.
If you frequent any other social networking sites, it would make sense to back up your profiles there as well.
As an aside, the PDF printout is a pretty slick (and quick) way to build a resume. It looks great, too!
Techshow Blogger Pub Crawl
I am heading to Chicago this morning for ABA's Techshow. This afternoon, I'll plot a course for the First Annual Techshow Blogger Pub Crawl, and post it here. We'll meet at 7:00 pm in the lobby of the Sheraton Hotel and Towers and hit 4-5 bars within walking distance. If you are going to be in Chicago for Techshow, or live there and want to join us, please sign up here.
Oh, and don't worry if you can't join us at the beginning. When I post the schedule, I'll let you know what bars we'll be at (and when), so you can join us in the middle or the end.
See You in NYC!
Forgive the light posting, but it has been crazy lately. I'm off tomorrow for ALM's LegalTech in NYC. If you'd like to meet up, drop me a line at Matt@LexThink.com or call me at 618-407-3241. I hope to see you there.
Harold W. Homann, Rest In Peace
My Grandfather, Harold W. Homann died yesterday. He was an amazing man.