Salon in a Saloon?
Salon in a Saloon? That’s one way I’d define the upcoming LexThink Lounge. From Wikipedia:
A salon is a gathering of stimulating people of quality under the roof of an inspiring hostess or host, partly to amuse one another and partly to refine their taste and increase their knowledge through conversation and readings.
And saloon? Well, you all know what that is.
Keep the afternoon and evening of April 19th circled on your calendars (the day before ABA’s Techshow). More details to follow.
Technorati Tags: lexthink, unconference, blawgthink, saloon, salon
Forcast your Future
Jim McGee writes about a speech by Paul Saffo. In the speech, Saffo shared his rules for forcasting the future. Though I won’t pretend to understand the meat of Jim’s post — or Saffo’s speach, for that matter — these rules are worth remembering the next time you need to predict the future in your business or your life:
Rule 1. Know when not to make a forecast.
Rule 2. Overnight successes come out of twenty years of failure.
Rule 3. Look back twice as far as forward.
Rule 4. Hunt for prodromes.
Rule 5. Be indifferent.
Rule 6. Tell a story or, better, draw a map.
Rule 7. Prove yourself wrong.
Technorati Tags: forcasting, predictions, paul+saffo, jim+mcgee
Not blogging yet? Your clients may expect it.
Still looking for a reason to blog? In this post from the Work Better Weblog titled, Wanted – Real Estate Agents to Blog the author explains why he wants his next real estate agent to have a blog:
This is what I’m looking for in the next real estate agent I work with:
- A weblog that’s about 60% ‘business’ - properties, housing market, interest rates, mortgage stuff. With the rest of it more personal and hopefully completely off topic. Ideally, some posts will cross both sides - likes restaurants and events in the neighborhoods they really like.
- Yes, the weblog needs to have an RSS feed filled with photos so I can automatically stay up-to-date on the home sales in the area.
- I’d also like an iCal calendar available, so open houses can be loaded into my things-to-do this weekend.
These 3 items help me build a relationship with an agent, on my terms and without the risk of spam and unwanted phone calls. While at the same time, building the agent’s reputation, credibility, and network.
You’ve been warned. ;-)
What is your ink to data ratio?
Before you prepare your slides for your next trial, or slap together another PowerPoint for a client meeting or presentation, read this article setting out some basic principles of information design from Luigi Canali De Rossi. In it, the author gives some suggestions on ways to better present data (charts, graphs, etc.) in presentations. Here are a few:
- Drop unplanned and unfunctional 3D effects from your information graphic. Unless you are a trained designer drop 3D graphs in favor of the apparently simpler and less fancy traditional 2D graphs.
- Eliminate all frames and borders. They are not needed. Your data will not escape the newly found free space around it, but it will "breathe" and will provide with a more relaxing and legible visual space.
- Drop also all unneeded borders of colors, bars, slices. Your eye can tell a column from an empty space without the addition of black ink around every object created by computer software.
- Cut the prison bars. The horizontal and vertical "gridlines" that many graph tools utilize is nothing short of a visual prison, sold to us with the excuse of helping our eyes better find the value reflected by each bar.
- Do not utilize bitmap, hatches, patterns to differentiate different bars, columns or slices. These effects are the heritage of the old times when there was no color available to differentiate different graph elements. These solutions are highly disturbing to the eye, they "vibrate" and create so called moiré effects. More than anything they look ugly and old-fashioned.
- Drop, eliminate, mute or simplify all remaining visual components which serve only decorative or unnecessary graphic-enhancing purposes. Reiterate and improve, until you can actually see that the quantity of ink you are using is truly serving the very purpose of communicating real data.
I know I’ve violated at least four of these rules in presentations over the last few years. How about you?
Update: If you want to learn more about presenting data, check out this article about Constructing Bad Charts and Graphs.
If you want a serious meeting, hand out toys.
Kirsten Osolind, back to blogging at Re:Invention, offers several guidelines for team meetings. Some good stuff, and my favorite is the title of this post. Welcome back to blogging, Kirsten!
Technorati Tags: facilitation, meetings, fun
links for 2006-01-17
-
Good summary of main points in one of my favorite books of 2005.
-
Does this mean the solo lawyer is the new big firm?
-
Amazing photos. Worth a quick look.
links for 2006-01-14
-
Interesting favor-swapping concept. Think about doing this for clients.
-
Business book review podcast.
-
Great Gmail hack to sort mail from online services.
Get on the Same Level as Your Clients
Jack Vinson shares a suggestion from Sylvie Noel for laypeople communicating with experts:
[I]f you want to understand your local expert, tell her how much you already know about the subject. That way, she can adjust her vocabulary to your needs.
Good advice for starting out a new relationship with a client. Have them tell you how much they know about the subject first.
Technorati Tags: client+service, attorney, client
No Gain Without Solving Pain
Are you a lawyer who’s thinking of going solo? Take this advice from Joel Spolsky:
Don’t start a business if you can’t explain what pain it solves, for whom, and why your product will eliminate this pain, and how the customer will pay to solve this pain.
links for 2006-01-13
-
Send text messages to cell phones from your computer.
-
Extends tablet pc functionality to firefox.
-
Track your packages on a Google Map.
LexThinking Again?
Nothing written in stone just yet, but circle Wednesday, April 19th on your calendar. More next week.
Technorati Tags: lexthink, blawgthink, unconference
Wanna Go Camping in LA?
I’m going to BarCamp LA, on March 4–5. If you are in the LA area, and want to get your Geek on, head over to the Website/Wiki and join up. It’s free!
On another note, I’m putting together a creativity/brainstorming group to meet in February in the LA area. Anyone interested?
Count the Days by Counting Cards
Here are a few great planning and productivity tips from Eric Maisel, via this post on Worthwhile:
Get seven decks of cards with similar backs. Lay out all seven decks on your living room rug, backs showing. This is a year of days (give or take). Let the magnitude of a year sink in. Experience this wonderful availability of time. (This is a powerful exercise.)
Carefully count the number of days between two widely-separated holidays, for instance New Year's Day and the Fourth of July. Envision starting a large project on that first holiday (today!) and completing it by the second.
I wish I’d heard about the decks of cards exercise when I was mediating family law cases. It seems like a great way to convey the healing power of time, or to help couples work out their division of custody (he gets red cards, she gets black, or vice versa).
Technorati Tags: productivity, mediation
links for 2006-01-11
-
"the biggest thing you do to reward great business people and great technological people is to give them harder problems."
-
"The public beta, when taken advantage of, subverts the symbiotic relationship that should exist between a company and its customer. The only true beneficiary of a public beta is the company."
BlawgReview Editor works for American Lawyer Media?
Someone asked me this question, and I pass it along without comment: “Why does American Lawyer Media own BlawgReview?” I also got this nugget: the telephone number listed for “Ed Post” belongs to Jennifer Collins’ at ALM.
Update: Now it makes more sense. Here is a post from Lisa Stone on ALM’s Legal Blog Watch referencing the BlawgReview Awards and talking about the Anonymous Editor:
Meet Lady Justice or Themis, as portrayed by She-Hulk and Greg Horn, Marvel artiste extraordinaire. She is your host for Blawg Review Awards 2005, which is most appropriate, given her day job and her not-so-mild-mannered alter-ego. If you don't know Jennifer's backstory, then you need to read on.
Update 2: I really like BlawgReview. It’s a great concept well executed. And I don’t know 100% for sure that Jennifer is the anonymous editor, just a hunch. Also, I absolutely have total respect for the public contributing editors Evan, Michael, and Kevin. I’ve just been wondering how ALM’s up-to-now anonymous ownership of BlawgReview (or of the domain, at least) factors in to the whole equation. In the interest of full disclosure (and it’s all about disclosure, isn’t it?), I used to belong to the law.com blog network. Any ax grinding I had to do, was done here.
Update 3: The BlawgReview editor tells me I’m wrong.
Wanna Love a Lawyer?
I know, as a married guy, I’m a bit out of touch with the dating scene, but is there an audience for this? From the website:
Lawyers in Love is the best place to meet successful, brainy lawyers, law students, and other legal professionals for friendship, dating, fun, romance and companionship. If your schedule makes it difficult for you to meet people, if you are still working during happy hours and other social events, if weekends are devoted to writing briefs, you will love this unique opportunity to find romance on the Web.
links for 2006-01-10
-
Good primer on setting expectations with clients before work begins and during engagement.
-
Good practical introduction to concepts of price vs. value.
-
Replace one client (or two)
-
Great idea!
-
Cutting out the real estate agent. Are lawyers next?
-
Collection of tools/sites that present information visually.