Filed under Social Media

One of our experiments with the Web Content Conference was to video record all of the breakout sessions. Admittedly, we hadn’t completely planned out what we would do with the content once we had it. But we knew we had only one chance to capture the live event  Our annual conference is always a work in process so, well, we’d figure it out. When set free, content finds its own level. We had all the time after the conference to consider how to free it.

Content Delivery Network

Throwing these videos up on our YouTube or Vimeo account would’ve been easy, free and social. But our videos were too long for these services.  Instead we are storing the videos using Amazon  Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Cloudfront as our content delivery network.  Because this is streaming media, we’re using  Real Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP). These services charge for storage and bandwidth.

Delivering  Content

Once the video was uploaded, we started posting the videos individually to our company blog. For each we wrote a short summary and then embedded the video into the post. Because we found that each video actually loaded on the page when the blog was accessed, page load times were unacceptably slow. So we used the “more” feature in our WordPress blog and embedded the video “below the fold”. Now the blog visitor can read the short summary and only when they click the “read the rest of this entry” does the video load. Not perfect, but good enough. And we were learning.

Web Content 2010 Video in a branded wrapper and embed code provided

Packaging the Product

We went back to the drawing board and created a friendlier “wrapper” for the video, branding the video frame with video session title, presenters name,  company logo and a prominent start button. To encourage viral distribution we also included the embed code which brings the video, the quick start usability and branding assets. Now any person can lift the video and place it wherever they’d like.  We created a video page on the conference website. Pretty cool.

Content Lives

Web Content 2010 was a great event. And as most who attend conferences know, the presentations are rich chum for stimulating dialogue among the attendees. There is tons of great actionable  information in these videos.  Special thanks to our presenters for giving us the permission to video and release their valuable information.  If you were unable to attend the Web Content Conference and/or web content is your thing, watch the videos. And pass them on. We’ve given you the tools.

In a recent  Legal Marketing Association listserv discussion, legal marketer Larry Bodine opined that “IMHO, the whole purpose of blogging is business development.” I don’t agree that the business development objective squeezes out every other.

Perhaps I’ve been spending too much time with people involved in any number of open source movements.  But in these communities, the idea of sharing ideas through any number of tactics, including blogging is to hypothesize, postulate and otherwise endeavor to move the ball – forward, preferably.  Whether it be legal marketing or Drupal module development, to begin a long list, there are a lot of methodologies subject to exposure, evaluation and opinion. Tossing those ideas out there via social media may have a business development benefit, but if they elicit thought and  stimulate expressed opinion the synergies of two-heads being better than one begins to kick in.

In the same discussion thread, law marketer Jayne Navarre says, “The most successful bloggers I know put their personality into it and even stick their neck out a little bit to make it provocative, conversational and distinctive.”  Again, I don’t know if bloggers only “stick their neck out” for the reasons Jayne says.  Rather, or maybe additionally, it is because we have a point of view which might not be yours. And if it’s an interesting enough presentation, you perceive it as provocative.

Marketers, of course, pressed for ROI for any tactic requiring resources, seize social media and blogging for all of its business development potential.  That’s ok. But let’s not forget that there is really nothing wrong with simply making a contribution to your industry or profession. And, in fact, specifically striving for the latter may achieve the former.

Now in its fourth year, the Web Content Conference continues to provide some remarkable value.

If you go back 4 years, when Michael, a/k/a the boss, proposed the Conference, I was the first to provide my unqualified support by calling the conference a stupid idea (more emphatic adjectives removed). Today, I continue to eat crow. In spite of my involvement with website content development, at that time I didn’t appreciate either the body of knowledge surrounding content management or the evolution in web content management systems. Clearly, others did as that conference and each successive one have played to an SRO crowd of attendees.

Today, the Web Content conference continues to provide an effective forum for taking a snapshot of what is happening in website content. Unlike DrupalCon or CMSExpo, Web Content 2010 takes a more strategic view of content management. Attendees are those who are responsible for content creation, website administration and business strategy. Increasingly people who perform online community management are also drawn to the conference because of the strong social media component and the understanding that social media is content. When you put the crowd of about 150 in a room together, as we do for some sessions, meals and hospitalities, the mix of disciplines generates some interesting buzz.

What really makes Web Content Conference glow is the program and the talent that fills it. The one-day session-based conference is preceded by a day of more in-depth workshops. For example, a workshop exploring the entire business case for online content management will feature specialists in online commerce, search optimization, client relationship management and web content management and focusing on not-for profits and small business.  And this year we’ve attracted Kristina Halvorson, founder and president of Brain Traffic,  to do an entire afternoon workshop on Content Strategy as well as offer a shorter session during the main conference. Many of the presenters like Seth Earley and content marketing evangelist, Joe Pulizzi,are alumni of prior conferences and are back, quite literally, by popular demand.

Web Content 2010 is offering workshops on Monday June 7 and a full conference on Tuesday, June 8. To accommodate attendee’s schedules and interests, various participation packages are available.

We recently completed a website for Leonard, Street & Deinard which is built on the Drupal content management system (CMS).  At launch the site includes some effective functionality which was enabled largely due to the CMS.  Although Drupal-based sites are propagating rapidly on the Internet, to our knowledge, this site is one of the first enterprise law firm Drupal websites.  BigLaw, it seems has Drupal constipation. In fact, based on our own experience, do-it-the-way-they-did-it-yesterday (because it is safe) law firms continue to build new sites on proprietary content management systems for twice the price and half the functionality that is available to them.

Not surprisingly, the innovation in law websites comes from the entrepreneurial companies – both law firms and the professionals whose clients are law firms. In particular, we recently learned of Simplicity Law, a Littleton, Colorado based law firm with a differentiated set of services focused on small business. Their creative business model is represented by a forward looking site built on Drupal.

Most important for the Simplicity Law site is the effortless content presentation.  For example, a page featuring small business law articles includes a “most popular” list generated by Drupal’s ability to incorporate visitor behavior. Content is “tagged” for organization by the site administrator and access by the site visitor. And, bless their souls, site visitors are invited to add their comments to the articles presented. You can call this Web 2.0. I just think it is a site that initiates the client relationship by inviting engagement. You know, client centric.  BigLaw are you listening? No. I don’t think so.

I was discussing this site with one of my strategic partners in the LiftOff Law consortium, John Hellerman of Hellerman Baretz Communications. I was excited when John told me his firm’s new website was also built on Drupal CMS.  And indeed it was good to note his site features integrated social media and social forwarding capabilities. Additionally, one of my favorite practices Hellerman Baretz embraces is featuring (like, to the home page) recent posts headline from their blog. What I also especially liked was the seamless integration of the blog into the site.  Unlike some BigLaw firms who hold their blogs out at arm’s length (because they might bite? … or smell?) or call them not-so-clever things like “blawgs” (ha, ha, ha, uh, not funny) or simply bury them in a link from an attorney bio, the Hellerman Baretz blog is just another way of presenting content. The blog is prominently accessible through the site’s top level navigation as “Knowledge” Knowledge. How accurate. And useful.

It’s great to see this kind of website execution from professional services firm like Leonard Street & Deinard, Simplicity Law and Hellerman Baretz. We’re not claiming Drupal CMS is the Holy Grail. And we also know some of the things we and others try aren’t as effective as we thought they might be. But at least we try, revise and try again. In doing so we endeavor to share a common plane with our entrepreneurial law firm clients who are also evolving their client services to serve their market.

So you’ve got this 2 ½ year old start-up company, Avvo, running a conference in Seattle, Washington called “Advanced Social Media Training for Lawyers.” As I explained in an earlier post, the nexus of social media and legal marketing got me hooked on going. I’ve gone to legal marketing events where social media is a component of the event, but not a legal marketing event where social media is the focus. I was curious to see a) who would go b) what would be their interest and c) what was the content of the event.

Is this Conference Legit?

My first concern was the integrity of the conference organizer.  Company produced conferences might often be viewed by internal staff as shooting fish in a barrel. With all those live one’s in a room it’s hard to resist the temptation to reel in as many as possible. While Avvo CEO Mark Britton opened and closed the conference, he served as effective conference bookends and actually had something of value to say. Although sales staff silently trolled, they mostly stayed busy helping to manage event logistics.

About the Attending Lawyers

The event was attended by  about 200 lawyers including some bar association types and a very small smattering of legal marketing consultants. Lawyers were mostly small boutique firms liberally represented by plaintiff and consumer law. Although Perkins and Coie was an event sponsor, I didn’t meet any others from BigLaw.

Attending lawyers were largely media and technology savvy. Off-topic conversations included discussions of office efficiency and personal productivity. As a group they had crossed the chasm. Few were questioning the social media proposition as much as they were working to define their strategies and tactics to leverage new media. Only the professional crowd I met at EduWeb, a conference I attended for higher education educators earlier last year, showed a higher level of media and technology savvy than this group of mostly younger lawyers.

All About the Content

The best presentations and presenters connected their message directly to the attendees. Doug Mandell, discussing LinkedIn, had taken the time to evaluate every attendee’s LinkedIn profile against 14 criteria. When the performance average proved to be 8 of the 14 (57%), Mandell assigned the crowd an “F”. That got everyone’s attention. Tim Stanley of Justia riveted the crowd, ending the first day by going 50% over his allotted time (with permission) and then still apologizing for talking so fast.

The second day began with an optional 1 hour of CLE credit on the subject of Ethics in Marketing. Although not an attorney, I “audited” the session and found the information compelling. The downside of social media and the ethical issues dominate most lawyers’ thinking on this marketing strategy. Yet keynote speaker Bob Ambrogi @BobAmbrogi observed, “”As far as I know there has never been a disciplinary action against an attorney for answering questions online.”

Susan Lyon @SusanLyon from Perkins and Coie presented the perspective of a large firm practicing attorney who also maintains a broad public persona on Facebook and Twitter in addition to the more business-oriented LinkedIn. Susan confronted common concerns by lawyers about establishing the right balance between privacy and social networking.

Random Acts of Meanness

The event was not without some mild excitement. Midway through the first day, event organizers were confronted with some non-attending jackass Twitter flame throwers. Although there may have been a message in their sarcastic comments, it was obscured by their rude and disruptive behavior. Conference organizers didn’t blink at this menace and the dialogue flowed around the scofflaws and at a higher level.

Always Finish with Beer

We closed the conference properly with  Beer for Bloggers at Kell’s Irish Pub with local resident and legal blogging maven Kevin O’Keefe of LexBlog picking up the tab. Thanks, Kev.  All told it was a bold and successful move by Avvo. And we had some great beer, too.

P.S.

Yes,  I went bird watching on the Kitsap Peninsula after the conference with a friend who works at Amazon. We found 43 bird species and I added 8 life birds to my list.

I attended the Avvo “Advanced Social Media Training for Lawyers” conference in Seattle last week. It was excellent. There were many topic-relevant highpoints. What I’m about to share was not one of them.

Like many well-organized conferences our broadband-enabled conference room included an active Twitter community of attendees. Non-attendees were also chiming in at #avvo. As a best practice, the Twitter stream was also displayed in a Twitterfall on the podium. That is, the Twitter-enabled backchannel of commentary and opinion was brought forward to complement each presentation. I find this kind of total immersion Presenter – Twitter environment works well to stimulate my active engagement with others based on the presenter’s material. Except this time I experienced a new twist.

In the midst of the topic-relevant Tweets, non-attendee @ScottGreenfield scolds, “This #avvo used car salesman conference is deeply disturbing.” @btannenbaum @btannebaum added, “Remember something you avvocating maniacs, if you’re not a good lawyer, people will find out, despite your blogs and online garbage #avvo.” @ScottGreenfield continues, “We’re twitting about the #avvo conf in Seattle. We are living it via twitter. It’s very ugly.”

Ironically, the essence of what these two harassers were saying was not incorrect. In fact, they had some great points about abuse of social media, thoughtless blogging and even the alleged “social media gurus” (SMG) who industrialize the process of building real human networks.  However, as one who was present, what was clear was there was a mis-match between their sterotype of the interests of the attendees and the reality of what people were focused on learning and being taught. The flamers were flinging mud but they had the wrong target.

In the end, the rogue Tweeters were not effective but simply annoying, prompting @kaitlinjanusz to respond, “no one wants to hire attorneys who are malicious to other attorneys via social media. The avvocating conference is wonderful.” I, too, elected to offer my two cents, observing with some tongue in cheek, “Most diminished brand of the day: @ScottGreenfield. Forget it. I’m not referring any of my criminal friends for you to defend. #avvo.”  After a few more insults directed at the conference organizers, the attendees and me, the squabblers went away – hopefully to do some legal business and not editorialize by remote.

Without being too doting, I credit the Avvo conference organizers to unflinchingly maintain their commitment to the public Twitter feed and stoically ignore the Twitter flames. Reality is an adventure and Avvo seemed to be up for the experience in this, their first social media conference. Howsoever it was structured, an engaging conversation emerged among attendees as well as several not present. In the end, the conference was a richer experience for everyone. And the flamers were simply noted for being jackass.

I’m going to the AVVO Avvocating Advanced Online Marketing Training for Lawyers conference in Seattle in a couple weeks.  Three things about this event turn me on:

First, the conference focus is the nexus of two of my professional interests, online marketing and the legal industry. Looking forward to a snapshot view of where online marketing is specifically impacting a specific targeted vertical market.  And since the legal industry is, generally, so incredibly retarded in the uptake of these strategic online marketing opportunities, I already feel a certain amount of dynamic tension revolving about this conference. Will it be fear and loathing? Resignation? Or general embracement of new strategies? It will be interesting to see where the attendees line up on this stuff.

Second, the presenters represent a cross section of what is happening in both legal marketing and online marketing. Bob Ambrogi and Tim Stanley founder of Justia have deep roots and genuine street cred in the legal industry. In media, social and otherwise, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, Microsoft and Twitter will all have representatives pressing their case. And event sponsors Steve Willey of Savitt Bruce & Willey and Susan Lyon from Perkins Coie will probably introduce more legal vertical reality into the conversation. There’s more, but you get the idea. Reps from the major players in the online marketing drama will be putting the best face on online business development opportunities for lawyers. Will the conference attendees be sympathetic? Will they get it? Or will it be the more commonly heard fears of downside risk prevail? I’m eager to find out.

And third, I’m looking forward to some winter birding in the Seattle area. I guess it’s pretty rainy now. But, in the approximate words of Thoreau, “if you want to observe wildlife, go in wild weather.” Following the conference I’ll probably remove myself to the Kitsap Peninsula for the following weekend to digest the event’s proceedings and pick up a few life birds.

This trip should be revealing on all fronts.

After work yesterday, I went to work. I joined up with 90 other people to practice our marketing craft. Here was the set up. A nascent organization, Windy City Social, was sponsoring a Marketing Challenge. Three business cases were presented and the crowd dispersed into nine teams to tackle the marketing challenges of each case. Pizza, beer, competition and collaboration at the Cubby Bear in Chicago.

The self-acknowledged un-cool General Motor’s Buick division challenged the crowd to help build a marketing program to bring the average age of their buyers down by about 20 years. No longer selling Electras and LeSabres, Buick’s  newest models were arguably cool enough for their target 35 – 55 market and they were looking for new ways to get the word out. Southwest Airlines, already in possession of the cool factor, desired to share their “bags fly free” differentiation with less frequent travelers. And for truly “cool” in the literal sense, the Chicago Special Olympics sought to grow participation in its Lake Michigan Polar Plunge annual winter fund raiser, now celebrating its 10^th year and having grown to over 1200 chilly plungers.

Teams had 90 minutes to consider the objectives, develop a plan and assemble a presentation. I joined one of the three Polar Plunge teams. Ten of us, having never met and with no appreciation for each other’s skills or background sat in a circle and stared at each other, perfunctory name introductions already forgotten. Go.

Amidst the cacophony of nine teams hammering out their solutions, our group’s leader, Daniel Honigman, filtered the input. Simple, he dictated and we responded by eliminating multiple affinity groups and market segments and focused on one. With that focus, ideas flowed and Daniel contemporaneously captured, structured and edited our draft into a rough PowerPoint. Stop.

Nine 5-minute presentations later we’d heard songs, monologues, skits, taglines and positioning statements. The business case sponsors voted and winners were announced. But actually, we all won as each of us refined and sharpened the skills we need in our day jobs including working quickly, effectively prioritizing, collaborating synergistically and presenting convincingly. It was a hard day’s night, but I had a ball.

It is rare for a day to go by that we don’t receive some kind of inquiry about Drupal. In fact, in response to the inquiries, our lead Drupal developer, Doug Vann, published a Drupal-related blog post just last week. In his post he addressed the question, “What’s All the Buzz About Drupal”

So we’ve decided to offer a hands-on Drupal Training Workshop to dig a little deeper into the question of why Drupal is getting a lot of buzz.  Let me emphasize right away that this workshop is aimed at website administrators and marketers who are NOT deeply technical. Web developers who are technical but want to also understand the business case for using Drupal would also find this workshop useful. I took a very similar course from Doug over the summer and found it to be a great way to orient myself to Drupal. And this course has the advantage of also being hands-on.

We think that some of the likely candidates for this workshop include people who are in the following situations:

Leverage Social Media
Drupal is social publishing software.  Chances are you are encountering challenges integrating social media with your present content management software. You can find out if Drupal might take you closer to where you want to be.

Micro Sites
We know that a complete corporate website overhaul may not be in the cards for you today, but you may have some business initiatives you want to pursue online.  When budget and timeline are significant constraints, Drupal may offer an implementable solution. Our client, the Lake County Forest Preserve District just launched a simple Drupal microsite on a very short leash. Not only was the outcome successful, but they have a Drupal site in which they might explore capabilities in anticipation of some future re-development of the District’s main website.

Dated, Proprietary or Non-existent Content Management System
Perhaps you are still managing your website using either page-based content management systems like Adobe’s Contribute or just making changes in the HTML website code. The Drupal CMS might provide a relatively easy evolution of your website to something considerably more powerful and requiring fewer technical skills to manage.

I suspect I haven’t captured the scenario of everyone who might be interested in migrating their website to Drupal. For an investment of your morning on October 13, 2009 and $40, you can assess your website problem against this solution. It could be a very efficient way to gain clarity on your requirements as well as evaluate this particular option.

If you are interested in one of the 18 seats available, you can register here.

If you ask 10 different people to describe Drupal, you will get 10 different responses. That is because Drupal is so many things. Open source social publishing software, a web content management system, a web content framework, a web applications framework; these are some of the answers you will receive. If you break down these answers you quickly find a couple key points that stand out.

Open Source

Drupal is open source. This means that no one owns the code that makes Drupal what it is. It is also FREE to download and FREE to modify. Indeed, a 10,000 plus sized developer community is making Drupal better all the time. Drupal is indeed a Web Content Management System (CMS). In the 21st century it is not acceptable to have a website that only a programmer can control. A robust CMS like Drupal allows the end user to add, delete, edit, moderate, and publish the content that is on their site. This puts the power of the website into the hands of the site-owner NOT keeping it in the hands of the site-developer.

Social Publishing Software

Drupal is social publishing software. The prevailing idea behind Web2.0 is to have user contributed content on your site. Drupal allows users to create content, blogs, articles, new groups, multimedia, etc. Drupal also allows finite control of permissions so that only allowed users can add specific types of content to the site.

Web Application Framework

Drupal is a Web Application Framework. If you have some new and inventive idea that has never before been done on the web, bring your napkin sketches to Drupal. The well documented and well designed Application Program Interface (API) will aid you in writing the code to allow Drupal to make your idea into reality.

Large Developer Community

Drupal is a LARGE and growing community. Drupal is controlled by no one but owned by everyone. The community thrives on a concept that is sometimes described as “Collaboration, not competition.” By doing this, the community organically forms into overlapping cells of teams that take on the necessary tasks that have made Drupal an enterprise level solution to the web development needs of mom-&-pops, NGOs, NFPs, and Fortune 500′s as well. The community successfully handles security updates, feature adds, accessibility concerns, and the ever changing integration methods employed by 3rd party entities such as Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others.

Drupal continues to win awards every year in a variety of categories from a variety of sources. Many members of the Drupal community are celebrated authors, employees of major companies, holders of multiple degrees, and genuinely nice people who donate a lot of free time to grow and aide the Drupal project and community. More and more companies are leveraging Drupal to build large scale, feature rich sites in relatively short time spans. With Drupal and all of its add-on modules being free, companies can spend more of their resources on configuration rather than the old system where every new project started out with re-writing a lot of the same old code.