links for 2007-04-01
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Why some "exclusive" offers work to attract other consumers and some don't. Interesting read.
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Neat community based color palate tool from Adobe.
links for 2007-03-30
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An interesting tool for travel planning.
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Interesting take on Theory of Constraints
Ultra-Rapid Focus Group
Kathy Sierra talks about an Ultra-Rapid-Design Party with some great brainstorming tips that I'm going to shamelessly steal for my Idea Markets and Innovation Retreats. Here's how she describes it:
Forget focus groups. Forget endless meetings and brainstormingsessions. Throw an ultra-rapid-design party, and do it in a single day.This approach exploits the wisdom-of-crowds through a process ofenforced idea diversity and voting, so no consensus, committee, or evenagreement is needed. And it's way more fun.The Product Design Dinner Party takes 9 people, a pile of diverse"inputs", and has each of the 9 people voting on--and pitching--oneanother's ideas to continuously reconfigured groups of 3 people,letting the best ideas rise to the top. The process is a littlecomplicated, but it's derived/modified from an existingrapid-prototyping design I'll talk about later in the post.
Go to the post for a step-by-step guide. Definitely worth a try.
How to "Black Out" During Your Next Presentation
Bert Decker has a great (and easy) tip to improve your next presentation: Use Black Slides. According to Bert, a blacked out slide (as opposed to justing hitting the "B" key) accomplishes three things:
1. Clear the screen. Once you’re done with the picture, graph or supporting information,you want to remove distraction, and go to a black slide so you canamplify, tell a story, or make an additional point, etc.
2. Black out the screen. Simply put, so you can walk in front of the projector. Almost allmeeting, board and conference rooms are poorly designed so that theyhave the projector screen right in the middle of the room or stage. Itshould be at the right or left, so YOU can be in the middle. After all,YOU should be the center of your presentation, not your slides.
3. Totally change your mindset. Change he creation and emphasis of the presentation. This is by far the most important of all, and needs it’s own paragraph.
Who is Going to Pay for Those 18 Minutes?
NYT article on the perils of multitasking. The money quote:
In a recent study, a group of Microsoftworkers took, on average, 15 minutes to return to serious mental tasks,like writing reports or computer code, after responding to incominge-mail or instant messages. They strayed off to reply to other messagesor browse news, sports or entertainment Web sites.
There are some other good studies mentioned in the article. Worth a read -- if you've got the time.
Pay Per Client?
Not sure where the legal ethics gurus come down on this one (I think I can guess), but Google has now rolled out a Pay-Per-Action advertising service, which requires you to pay only if the user completes a clearly defined action after clicking on an add -- such as buying something, joining a mailing list, etc. Pricier than AdWords, but much more bang for the buck.
The Bonus Boost: Better Peformance
File this one away in the "things that make you go hmmmmm" department. This article in Science Daily (hat tip: Guy) suggests employee bonuses work WAY better then pay raises in motivating employees:
Giving a 1 percent raise boosts employee job performance by roughly 2percent, but offering that same money in the form of a bonus that isstrongly linked to a job well done can improve job performance byalmost 20 percent, finds a new Cornell study on the relationshipbetween pay and performance.
I'm Sorry for Your Loss. Was He Funny?
A quick tip for meeting the family of a decedent at estate wrap-up time, courtesy of Tricks of the Trade:
If you have to interview a grieving family after a death, a good question to ask is: "Did he have a good sense of humor?"
This will almost always shake the family out of their grief, makingit easier for them to talk to you, and bring up an anecdote that reallyshows the character of the dead person.
Presentation Inspiration
If you want to see some best-in-breed presentations, check out Slideshare's World's Best Presentation Contest. Slideshare is an online, presentation sharing application. Worth a look.
Building the Perfect Innovation Retreat - Call for Help
Readers, I need your help. I'm designing an intensive, two-day, innovation-focused law firm retreat that I can sell to medium and large firms. Before it goes "live" I need to do it at least twice to iron out the kinks and make it hum.
Here's what I'd like to do:
- Do the retreat for a firm of 10-20 lawyers, their staff and selected clients (yes, I said clients). The cost to the firm will be my travel, lodging and retreat materials. I'll also ask the firm to pay me an amount commensurate with the "value" of the retreat to the firm -- but only if they thought it was the best retreat they'd ever done.
- Assemble a group of 10-20 small firm or solo lawyers for a two-day innovation retreat here in St. Louis in early June. Because most solo and small-firm lawyers don't get the benefits of a law firm retreat, I want to bring several of these lawyers together to collaborate with one another and to bring innovation into all of their practices. Also, I want to see if the concept of a solo/small firm "retreat" will work. If I get enough people, I'll set the fee at an amount sufficient to cover my costs (probably at $250 per attendee or so). Each attendee will be on their own for travel and lodging.
Let me know if you are interested. You can e-mail me at Matt@LexThink.com if you or your firm would like to participate. Thanks.
Start Wine-ing in Your Business
Hugh at Gaping Voidingvoid recaps some "lessons learned" in his first two years of working with Stormhoek winery. Just a few of his points should resonate with anyone (including lawyers) trying to build an amazing business:
14. We can make this as lucrative and as intellectually stimulating as we want to. The ball is in our court.16. What's driving innovation and sales on our end is not a technological issue, it's a cultural issue. Get the right culture going, and the tech looks after itself.
17. When I started working in the advertising business as a young buck in London, back in the late 1980s, Bartle Bogle Hegarty were considered the best game in town, even if they were not the biggest agency. Every young advertising student aspired to have a gig there one day, everyone daydreamed of one day having John Hegarty return their calls. The were considered the Praetorian Guard. Within two years from now, I want every smart, driven young person in the wine trade to be thinking the same way about us. That to me would be a far more worthy definition of "success", than how many cases we sell.
Idea Market VII is April 16th
The next St. Louis Idea Market is April 16th at the Lucas SchoolHouse. I'm abandoning the CollectiveX Networking Site we'd been using,and instead posting it as an event on MeetUp.com. Here's a link to sign up.
Techshow Blogger Pub Crawl Details
The Techshow Blogger Pub Crawl is all set. Here's a map of the crawl with the times for each stop. Here's the agenda:
7:00 pm Start at the Sheraton Hotel
7:00 - 8:30 Lucky Strike Lanes, 322 E. Illinois Street, directly across from the Sheraton.
8:30 - 9:30 P.J. Clark's, 302 E. Illinois Street, in the same building as Lucky Strike.
9:30 - 10:30 DeLaCosta, 465 E. Illinois Street, a swanky new bar just down the street from P.J. Clark's.
10:30 - 11:30 Dick's Last Resort, 435 E Illinois Street, a fun bar right on the river.
11:30 - ????? Lizzie MacNeill's, 400 N. McClurg Court, right next door to the Sheraton.
I hope you can make it. Sign up here (or just join us on the Crawl).
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.
Techshow Blogger Bar Crawl
ABA's Techshow is just around the corner, and we need to do something to get the bloggers together. Since there's nothing formal planned for us, I'm organizing the First Annual Techshow Blogger Bar Crawl. We are going to meet in the Sheraton Hotel's lobby at 7:00 pm on Thursday, March 22nd and head out on a walking (and drinking) tour of the neighborhood. I'll have more info on the places we'll be soon, but expect to hit between three and five bars. I will enforce the schedule, so if you can't make the beginning of the crawl, join us along the way.
I've set up a Techshow Bar Crawl page here to register. Cost is free. See you next week!