On this episode of The Geek In Review, Tom O’Connor, Independent Litigation Technology Consultant, talks to us about his recent blog post, What in the Wide World of Sports is Going on at ILTA?
In addition to ILTA’s woes, Tom covers other issues regarding member associations, and how new entries into the legal vendor market are changing the vendor-customer relationship… and not for the better.


Greg discusses his role as the “World’s Okayist Dad” and his inability to find his rental car’s gas door release switch while in New Jersey.
Marlene is on a trip to Texas, so the podcasting duo actually get to sit in the same room and record this episode.
Marlene also has a speaking engagement coming up at the Ark Group’s 14th annual Knowledge Management in the Legal Profession, entitled “Game On! Using ‘Gamification’ to Engage Your KM Users.”

Remember to subscribe to The Geek In Review on your favorite podcasting platform, and leave a review if you like what you hear.

Transcript

Marlene Gebauer 0:00
They have to ask me how my gumbo was what was I gonna say? Oh needs hot sauce

Welcome to The Geek in Review, the podcast designed to cover the legal information profession with a slant toward technology and management. I’m Marlene Gebauer.

Greg Lambert 0:29
And I’m Greg Lambert.

Marlene Gebauer 0:30
So Greg, how was your How was your week this week? Oh,

Greg Lambert 0:33
it was good. I went up to New Jersey and New York, New Jersey, New Jersey. I was I was around your stomping ground while I was up there. So as I like to refer to myself as the world’s okayest dad, I took my 18 year old daughter up to New York so that she could get her first tattoo is really awesome.

Marlene Gebauer 0:54
You are an okay is dad

Greg Lambert 0:57
is I’m totally okay, turned out really nice. We rented a car and drove across Manhattan Island, which I will never ever do again. And into New Jersey. We went out to the shore, I took your advice and went out to the shore and checked it out had had a great time. So

Marlene Gebauer 1:15
now I have a question for you. All right. Did you stop at a gas station?

Greg Lambert 1:19
Yeah, apparently you’re like the last state where you can’t pump your own gas. That’s

Marlene Gebauer 1:24
true. So luckily, we are civilized in New Jersey. That’s

Greg Lambert 1:27
what I hear. Luckily, someone had clued me in you not to get out and pump your own gas because apparently they will like tackle you and throw you in jail if you do that. But I will tell you this I was a total idiot Texan trying to figure out one it was a rental car. So first had to figure out which side of the car the gas tank was on. And I know there’s a little arrow on the on the gas gauge told me so I was I was cool with that. So then the guy goes, you know, he starts tapping on the window after I tell him to fill it up and give him my credit card. He taps on the window. He’s like, open up the gas thing and I can’t find I can’t. I just can’t find it. Finally, the guy is like I can see the frustrate he like walks around the car and he goes to like open the door. But it’s locked. And then I can’t find the unlock. But it was he he knew luckily, genius am I working with here? Luckily, I had Pennsylvania tags on it. So I just played it off

Marlene Gebauer 2:20
like I was from Pennsylvania. Sorry, Pennsylvania.

Greg Lambert 2:23
Didn’t want people to think Texans didn’t know where the gas tank was.

Marlene Gebauer 2:26
I’ll never tell. All right, all right today.

Greg Lambert 2:31
But otherwise is great experience. Good. Well, I’m

Marlene Gebauer 2:33
glad you enjoyed yourself. Well, we should tell the listeners that we are actually recording together in the same

Greg Lambert 2:39
place. Yes, right. Now, speaking of going to New Jersey, you’ve come to Texas,

Marlene Gebauer 2:44
you’ve come to Texas. That’s right. I am taking some vacation time and doing some work time here. And we thought well, what a perfect opportunity to try out the system together. So

Greg Lambert 2:55
yeah, so we’re actually using the same microphone, which is unusual, but we found that if we had two microphones in the same room, it would pick up both of our voices we MacGyvered it. So we’re MacGyver we got like the plugs or half plugged in here so we’ll see how it sounds but this is an absolute beautiful microphone this this puts my microphone to Shane this so what kind of gain is this? It’s a Blue Yeti Blue Yeti and it’s even got a little blue cover to it. So as is beautiful keeping on theme. Yep. Well, we had some sad news today. We just turned out that

Marlene Gebauer 3:31
that Aretha Franklin passed away. Very sad news app. She

Greg Lambert 3:35
she actually did some good recording in Muscle Shoals and I went to high school only a few miles away from that. And so the Muscle Shoals sound she had I’ve seen I’ve seen the special and she was put up in the high dollar holiday and while she was there, in the very nice early 70s, which you know, in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, the Holiday Inn in the early 70s. Aretha Franklin probably not the best experience for her, but turned out some really good music. So we’re

Marlene Gebauer 4:04
all we all benefit from that. Yeah. This is the part of the show where we play some Aretha Franklin, but I believe your copyright lawyer said that we

Greg Lambert 4:13
can’t Yeah, apparently we don’t have enough money. Not sure about this. Just so you all know, we’re thinking about it. Yeah, yeah, I would sing but I’m not even sure one. I’m sure people don’t want to hear me saying so I want to do that. Yeah, I’ve got a voice for newspapers. One of the things I did want to talk about, and I’m not really sure how to wrap my head around this, I was talking with someone earlier this week about some technology, project management, possibly some pricing and matter management issues in and I had a really good question. And that was when you bring in technology like this into a firm who has to be the key players within your firm to make the approval for this and get it implemented. And I have a checklist of things And for us, it’d be things like what we call our management committees. Because when you get high dollar things like this, you need to make sure that the big powers that be paying the bills are okay with well, the people who’s who Yeah, whose money we’re actually using is are okay with it, you think about technology. So you need your CIO information. So if you have a CTO or or knowledge management director or Library Manager, whoever’s in charge of your internal information, and money wise, especially if we’re talking about pricing, things like that, you want your CFO practice group leaders, industry group leaders, however your your setup might got, that’s a lot of moving pieces, trying to get everybody together and everybody to agree. And the thing is, is they asked me, Well, who would lead this project? And I really had a hard time answering who would be

Marlene Gebauer 5:50
when you think about when you really think about it? Yeah, you know, who was the person that that makes the final.

Greg Lambert 5:55
So I guess if you, if you think of it as a technology than your CIO, if you think of it as a process, then you might have project managers, project management, project managers, if you think of it as a legal skill, then you think of it as your attorneys,

Marlene Gebauer 6:09
because ultimately, they’re the people who were are using it. So yeah, so

Greg Lambert 6:13
I came, you know, just an idea. And I was talking to you before we jumped on here, and you you quickly shot it down. So now you can shoot it down in front of everybody was I was wondering if and I know that sometimes we do this, you know, we go out and we we ask consultants to come in. And I always laugh. We pay a consultant a boatload of money to tell us things that we already know that we want that verification that it’s not just a good idea in our head, but actually other people think it’s a good idea as well. So I’m wondering, when you have a large project like this a big technology that’s coming in, what about the vendors basically creating a secondment where they send somebody who’s embedded into your firm, that they talk to all of these moving pieces, that they make sure that the structure is set up, that people are hitting the benchmarks. And I mean, if you really want to be risky, they reach out and talk to the clients and tell them what we’re doing and make sure that we’re doing things, not just how we think that needs to be set up, but that the clients think we should be setting up and how we should be working with them as well.

Marlene Gebauer 7:23
Well, I think shut down is a little too harsh. But what we were what we were talking about was who’s going to be listened to and you know, vendors have an interest. So I don’t know that they necessarily would be the ones that are listened to maybe consultants, maybe not. If it’s if it’s some significant change management that people don’t want to hear, you know, they may say, You know what, that’s a nice opinion. But no, and what I was saying is that really, maybe clients are kind of the way to go that if they are using the technology, and they are talking about the technology, and I’ve seen this happen, then that’s when people start talking about it. They’re like, Oh, you know, what do we know about this? Or what do we know about that? Or we’re using those types of tools or those types of services systems? And then that’s when the conversation seems to get going.

Greg Lambert 8:10
It makes sense to me. I mean, in reality, your project managers should be the ones that are doing it at least internally. But sometimes we need a third party to come in and not necessarily tell us anything different than we tell ourselves, confirm that confirm that. That is this is the way that we need to go. And as we all know, we don’t really like to talk, especially if it’s money or process. We don’t like to talk to our clients about that. Right. So having a third party come in and be the mediator between us and the client to make sure that we’re on the same page. I think that’s a win win. So Marlene, I’m excited about this week’s guest, Tom O’Connor, who’s the independent litigation Technology Consultant at Gulf Coast legal Technology Center in New Orleans guy and friend of our friend Toby Brown. And Tom wrote this week, something that caught a lot of people’s attention if you’re a member of Elta. You may have heard that their CEO Dan Lew tikkas had resigned effective August 31. But it was like right before the Elta con conference and which is kind of funny since last year, they had some Shaco Stradic.

Marlene Gebauer 9:22
Not funny, but kind of ironic. Yeah. Ironic.

Greg Lambert 9:26
I’ll change that wording. So kind of ironic that last year about this time Dan had let someone go before you know just a little bit of an uproar unable to last year we got Tom Tom had written an article blog post the article. Yeah. So Tom O’Connor had an article this week on his blog, and I’ll put a link out there on the shownotes which was called what in the Wide World of Sports is going on at ilta which is a really long the funny. Yes. Am I Yeah, and so the Tom Tom had brought Come down a couple of things on the shakeup. And then some issues with whether or not bloggers were considered professional enough to be given press passes if it

Marlene Gebauer 10:09
was allowed to get press passes just period. So we

Greg Lambert 10:12
had a little bit of technical difficulty with Tom and Skype, podcasts a man if it is not, it is not an interview with us if we if we don’t have any technical issues, so. So with the with that, let’s jump right in and listen to Tom O’Connor. Alright, let’s go.

Tom O’Connor 10:37
Things have been kind of crazy at the administrative level there for a couple of years now, as I’m sure you know, in which kind of bizarre if you will, I don’t know if it’s karma or con. I was gonna say that, but I don’t know. Is that, you know, He had let Peggy go last year, right. Wait.

Marlene Gebauer 10:55
I remember that. It was like, God, that’s just awful. And I mean, you know, look, I mean, I suppose there’s, there’s business reasons for everything. But it that just seemed like odd timing. It

Tom O’Connor 11:06
seemed like a terrible timing. I understand that. You know, I’ve known Peggy for maybe 30 years, and this beard actually used to be read. And she’s, you know, she’s a very strong willed individual. And that was her show. And she had, you know, her ideas of things. But what I had been told was, and I don’t know, you know, I don’t know how accurate this is. I think in the post, I said, I had been told this by unofficial sources that she had already indicated she was going to resign at the end of last year anyway, which made it even crazier to me like, Okay, if you haven’t, you know, if you too, are butting heads, that’s great. But have her do the show and get through the show. Of course, maybe at that point, he figured she’s got it all teed up, and you

Marlene Gebauer 11:48
don’t need her. Yeah, still. Yeah.

Greg Lambert 11:51
And I had heard the same thing. Tom, she had announced that she was going to retire at the end of the year. So yeah, that’s kind of a slap in the face.

Marlene Gebauer 11:57
It’s a double actually let her finish. And then, you know, give the package and be done with it. Yeah, yeah,

Tom O’Connor 12:02
I think I don’t know, Dan, I’ve never met so but I’ve been told that he’s equally strong willed. So.

Greg Lambert 12:10
But my thought on when Dan came in last year, and especially after, after the conference, my thought was this guy is going to last a year, or he’s going to last forever. And it looks like it was a year? Oh, well, it’s just there was just so much changed there. And so little communication with the membership on what was going on. And this is a membership that has had one Executive Director or CEO the entire time, and to have that much change that fast with no real communication was just a recipe for disaster. Yeah,

Marlene Gebauer 12:44
I mean, you can see what happened is that, you know, you had a break off group starting their own Association having their own conference, yes,

Tom O’Connor 12:51
that the board had presented been presented with a likelihood that there might have been more people defecting along those same lines and perhaps joining the other group, and that that kind of came to a head sometime in the last 30 days. Yeah.

Marlene Gebauer 13:05
And I’ve heard some additional people actually have left very, very recently, within the last few days. So

Greg Lambert 13:10
the membership itself, though, is kind of set up to not really be affected by individual defections, like that. So I can, I can see that if, you know, having served on sociation boards, and served as the president of an association, I could see somebody saying, Well, you know, it’s really that’s great that they’re going to do that it doesn’t really affect us. And that’s,

Marlene Gebauer 13:32
that’s the short term, but in the long term, I mean, it’s Tom, as you point out that was this going to continue to be a peer to peer organization? Is it going to be more hierarchical? You know, is it focusing on members or revenue? I mean, all these types of questions are very good ones that you raise, and will impact people

Tom O’Connor 13:49
that I think is the bigger question is, what’s the philosophy, if you will, of the group? Where’s the organization going? And I understand things change. I mean, not the group, it was when it started years ago, it was a very, very small it was, you know, the, the Wang environment and, you know, it’s a much, much larger, obviously, international group. And, you know, can you maintain the peer to peer structure, if you will, or feeling? I don’t know, I don’t know, as you said, right, coming from a membership type organization,

Marlene Gebauer 14:17
what do you think the direction is going to be in terms of where ilta goes? And do you? You know, what do you think the membership thinks about it?

Tom O’Connor 14:24
So I guess what I was saying was my, you know, my perception, if you will, is a is a relatively small sample of your members. So you know, what I’m hearing is just from people who I know and I don’t know, how reflective that is of what’s going on in the group at large as with any group, whether it’s the you know, your organization or the National voting electorate, you know, some people tend to be very vocal, some people not tend not to participate at all. And so how do you decide what people are really thinking? I mean, what I’m hearing and the people I know and I’ll be candid about this, the people I know are more Mostly in my age group, they’ve been in the organization for a long time. So they tend to reflect that peer to peer point of view. I don’t know, you know what that means in terms of all of your membership. And I think the only I think there’s two ways you can gauge that. One is to reach down to your local membership, your you know, your your chapters and start taking their temperature. And the other is to take a survey and then send a survey out to everybody. Ask them

Greg Lambert 15:30
we’ll be back in a minute the second half of our interview with Thomas.

Marlene, I understand you have a presentation coming up on October 23 and 24th.

Marlene Gebauer 15:44
Yes, I do. I’m speaking at the Art group’s 40th annual knowledge management and legal profession conference. My topic is called game on using gamification to engage your CAM users. And Greg, I use game on because I know I’ve heard a cartoon character say this at some point. And for the life of me, I cannot remember who it is. So if anybody out there knows what character it is that that that says this, please let me know. All

Greg Lambert 16:12
right. Well, I have to agree. It’s a snazzy title. So hopefully, someone will remember whose catchphrases game on so please let Marlene know because it’s driving me crazy.

Marlene Gebauer 16:22
Oh, I should mention, the conference is going to be held at NYU Law School in downtown New York.

Greg Lambert 16:27
Yeah, took a look at the list. And there’s a number of great presenters there. So make sure that we put a link out on the show notes for it. Yeah. So

Marlene Gebauer 16:34
please, everybody sign up for the conference, it’s going to be a good one.

Greg Lambert 16:44
Now back to our interview of Tom O’Connor.

Marlene Gebauer 16:49
I’m wondering, given the upheaval here, and sort of splintering groups, seems like associations are all having a harder time securing membership, securing people to attend the conferences, which you know, let’s face it are very expensive events to put on. And, you know, I just I wonder how healthy it is, from a financial standpoint for these organizations. I mean, I was just talking to somebody who is basically saying, you know, information is much easier to obtain. Now there was a time where a going to conferences really was the only way to get information. So you know, from a peer to peer situation. And now, you know, you have blogs, you have a lot of stuff on the internet, you know, it’s just more prevalent. So, you know, what do you think about that?

Tom O’Connor 17:31
I couldn’t agree more, you know, on active and disclaimer, my wife is the blogger for a sets a certification group, okay, they do a con of webinars. And that’s a significant educational opportunity where people can get information that they might otherwise get at a session at a conference. So you’re right, I think first cost, you know, it’s tougher and tougher for people to get buy in on a cost. I mean, imagine if you’re an employer, and one of your folks comes to you and says, Hey, I need to go to a conference in Las Vegas for four days, that’s a tough sell anywhere for four days is a tough sell. And then the rise of Internet availability, I have always been surprised. Well, let me I’m sorry, let me back up a step. And then third, something that’s always been a strong suit of ilta has been what we would call vendor neutral sessions, things that are very, very strong educational sessions. In fact, I think the educational sessions have always been the strength of the conference. I think that that’s been diminished somewhat in the last few years. And I understand that because you need to get vendor buy in to you know, to put on the show, and the vendors want to have their speakers it’s uh, you know, you’re making a bargain with the devil. And so all of that is tough to do. All the shows are suffer LegalTech, New York, their their attendance was way down last year. They didn’t do the West Coast legal tap, the ABA tech show, their attendance is down, that’s actually become more of a regional show. And you’re seeing the rise of smaller, more focused conferences, the Masters conference, today’s general counsel, and even Bar Association solo and small firm conferences from bar associations. So people can get things regionally, locally in that that hurts and no one of them ding, Joe. But you know, the Louisiana bar solo and small firm conference gets about 250 people, well, maybe 10 or 12 of those would have gone to Hilton, but now they won’t. And then he you multiply that by 20. Other Bar Association’s it makes a difference. I think that’s part of it. Yeah, I

Greg Lambert 19:26
think you’re right. Having worked with WWL there’s a number of things that we have to look at, as far as you know, the annual conferences are still where the majority of the money’s coming from. And the vendor consolidation has hurt us because they’re, you know, there were three vendors buying three booths and they consolidated and now they buy one booth and there’s less money and so there’s less money. People have asked for shorter conferences, the Elta conference, when I go there, it’s it’s a long conference. And so I’ve seen people ask for that and then In this year, I’ve had people say, Well now it’s too short. So it makes it really hard to satisfy people budgets are cut. That’s the generally the very first thing to get cut is conference travel. Exactly. And and then again, you’re right. There’s there’s definitely some specialty groups out there such as Ark. There’s other other legal ediscovery you know, there’s a number of things that are out there like a real focus. Now you get old so was on Toby Peele, three, Toby does p3 academics

Marlene Gebauer 20:35
are getting into it. I know, like, you know, Vanderbilt and you know, Chicago, University of Chicago. They’re all doing their own.

Greg Lambert 20:42
Yeah. codecs in California. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, there’s competition out there, which is, which is great for the consumer. Right, but not so good for the associations.

Marlene Gebauer 20:55
And it’s a shame because, you know, I always appreciated the the efforts that, you know, individuals would would put to, you know, to put together these these, you know, presentations, and I always found those were, those were the most useful sort of understanding, you know, what peers were doing, you know, it was also interesting to hear what vendors were doing. But you know, I also think it’s easier to get that information, and you don’t necessarily have to go to a conference to do that. But oftentimes, if you’re dealing with, you know, peers across the country, this is like the one time you can, you know, get to have those networking opportunities. And and, you know, share experiences, the

Tom O’Connor 21:31
unfortunate from my perspective, influx of non legal investment in legal vendors, the VC money, the buying and consolidating of vendors, by people who have no interest in the legal field per se, you know, going back to the early days, not only a built up, but a lot of the vendors, people like I pro summation, Lexis, and Thompson, you know, Lexis, when it was time someone’s West. Now, these are all people who came up in the legal profession. Now, it’s become an industry, it’s a business, it’s bean counters, who are really only concerned with one thing, and that’s the number of sales they turn. And that’s their focus. And when dealing with organizations, that’s, that’s their focus. They want to push, push, push, push, push, until they can maximize their sales, they don’t care about the long term health of our profession. In many cases, these companies are bought by VCs that are little more than a flip the house mentality, they’re only going to own it for two or three years, and they want to flip it to somebody else. And we’ve seen that with epic with advanced discovery with crawl, you know, all, especially in that ediscovery space. These are people who I’ll be blunt, five years ago, the leadership of some of those countries were selling vacuum cleaners, they were selling medical devices, they were selling anything except a profession and professional services to professionals, and they don’t get it, they don’t get that. And I think in many cases, that turns them away from some of the shows, because they’re not going to close sales at the shows. That’s not what the shows have traditionally been, as you just said, it’s about networking, it’s about building relationships that don’t get bored, they get it, they don’t, don’t buy it. Yeah,

Greg Lambert 23:13
and and I’ll throw in something on top of that is that a lot of times the sales people that you’re dealing with are the same people, when they get bought, you’re still dealing with them. So they’re trying to maintain that relationship, but the people behind them are changing the rules. And so it really makes it for a very, you know, very tough relationship with people that you had long term relationships. And it’s not necessarily they’re doing that, if it were up to them, they would want to continue on with understanding that look, this is this is our one time that we get to sit down in front of 1000 plus people of our customers of a certain type and we can have that conversation that we can learn from each other that we can build that trust and you’re right, Tom that I think the the people that are behind the scenes that are have the money and there’s a lot of cheap money that’s coming in to the to the industry right now. You know, they’re looking at sales, build up profits, and then you know, cut, cut the business up and and sell it off, and then move on, move on to the next big thing.

Tom O’Connor 24:20
And those those behind the scenes people very much have the what I call the Zig Ziglar mentality. If you talk to 10 people, you should get four appointments and out of those four appointments, you should get one sale. So they come back from a show and they see that they scan 200 badges. It’s like well, where’s my 10? Sales? Yeah, right. And

Marlene Gebauer 24:37
really what is about it’s about sharing information, really, you know, on the exhibit floor, it’s about Gab, you know, being able to gather information about a bunch of products all at once very quickly. It’s not about as you just pointed, as you pointed out, it’s not about making the sale, but it’s setting it setting the you know, it’s setting the the setting the scene for for doing that

Tom O’Connor 24:57
exactly. It’s a it’s all about relationships and who you can trust and who you’re going to follow up with. And I just some of these companies just don’t get that they don’t get it. Yeah.

Greg Lambert 25:07
And part of the the issue that you think about is I know, traditionally salespeople get commission off of new sales, not off of continued sales. And really, you know, it’s, it would be different if, you know, if we bought a car, and we paid $30,000 $50,000 for the car, and it’s a one time expense. And then five years later, you know, we go and buy another car. But here we purchase the stuff and it doesn’t go down in price on year two, yeah, we license stuff.

Marlene Gebauer 25:38
Yeah. So each each episode of license should should count, right? And

Greg Lambert 25:43
so they, you know, when you’re sitting there talking with a vendor, and they’re saying, Well, look, we need to have these new sales, and I go to them, I’m already spending six and seven figures with you every year. And you’re telling me that that’s not enough for you to give me the service and help me with my education? And help me understand the new products that are that are coming out that as an existing customer? It’s almost like the cable company? Yeah, I think it is the cable company. Is that, you know, they value new customers more than they value their existing customers. And I think in this industry, which, you know, there’s there’s a ton of lawyers, but this is a small community. Yep. And when you get a bad reputation, that reputation spreads quickly. So

Tom O’Connor 26:34
yeah, but they again, they don’t care because they’re gonna be gone. Tom, I

Marlene Gebauer 26:37
wanted to switch gears for a second, because I was very interested in the part of your piece where you were talking about the inconsistencies regarding, you know, press passes for journalists and sort of who was who was included and who wasn’t included. And you know, I’ll be completely honest, I was having a really hard time fall, it’s like, alright, so these guys are in and these guys are in. And I was really having a hard time trying to figure out the rules. So I would love to hear a little bit more about that. And I think the listeners would like to hear a little bit more about that, you know, sort of tell it tell us about some of these inconsistencies.

Tom O’Connor 27:12
The new rule is I tell you, I feel like I should have a picture of Bill Maher that I’m holding. And the new rule was, was, as I understand it, and I was told this by whoever got I forget who it was, but it was a staffer who turned me down for my request the new the new guidelines, if you will, and, and that, of course, brought to mind shades of Pirates of the Caribbean. Were in fact the same. They’re used by the ABA to give their credentials out. And I thought to myself, and I think I said this, I mean, well, that’s a, that’s not exactly the group, you want to be following the lead of when it comes to really anything to do with a membership organization. These days, they’ve had their membership gutted, because they’ve had no member benefits to show people don’t see a benefit to joining the ABA. But the bottom line is the rule said that a press pass could be given only to somebody who worked for a quote unquote, legitimate news organization that was a news organization in the traditional sense.

Marlene Gebauer 28:17
I mean, I think my main sort of focus was like, it’s like, okay, some people are allowed, you know, but other people who you would think would be allowed or not allowed. And then I was I was curious about, like, the whole blogger, you know, situation like, you know, the where I think a lot of people are getting their information. And I mean, it didn’t we just have that that Microsoft report that was going around where it’s like, you know, three geeks was number one. And that’s a blog. And that’s where people are going. I mean, I’m not, you know, I’m not, of course, I am kind of shout out to three geeks. But you know, it could be another blog. And the point is, it’s like, it’s a blog, and that’s where everybody’s going for it. And then I’m thinking about all the podcasts that are like exploding on the scene, and people are using those. It’s like, I don’t I don’t think we would get a press pass. Do you, Greg? I don’t think we would.

Tom O’Connor 29:04
The rules seemed inconsistent. And even the inconsistent rules were inconsistently applied.

Greg Lambert 29:14
All right. Well, I think we pieced that interview together about as well as we could. I feel good about it. Yeah, Tom, Tom had some really good things that like I know, he was saying is his microphone cut out? So one of the things with associations is that you know, times are changing, being able to rely on the revenue of your annual convention as the sole or at least the majority of your of your money making throughout the year. Those days are numbered, if not already gone. So Marlene, it’s been good to have you here in Houston. And so I took Marlene out for lunch before we started the podcast today and we went over to tree beards which is tree Berets. Yes, great, great Houston staple and got the Gumbo and She

Marlene Gebauer 30:00
also guess what else did you get? Red Beans and Rice with sausage,

Greg Lambert 30:03
red beans and rice salt. How

Marlene Gebauer 30:05
was it so good, but I gotta tell you, I gotta tell you the gumbo needed a little hot sauce. Yeah.

Greg Lambert 30:09
Well, luckily we had about a bucket full of hot sauce over here. Well, we knew Yeah, I think I spelt a little on the table. So I gotta go get some bleach and and get that out. All right. Well, guess what? What? I think this wraps up another one. That’s fantastic. Yeah, well, it’s really good to be in the same room. So we’ll have to do this again sometime. Yeah, so maybe maybe the next time I come to Jersey, we can we can set up some sure do it from the shore. As we going listen to the waves lap the beach to be very relaxed, absolutely therapeutic. Yeah, we’ll put everybody to sleep.

Marlene Gebauer 30:43
We do that anyway. That’s true. That’s true. All right.

Greg Lambert 30:47
Well, that does it for this week. If you like what you hear, wherever you’re listening to the podcast, go ahead and subscribe. Give us some five stars six star 10 star treatment, whichever one five stars in buffer, and, and if you’d like to, if you want to put some comments out there as well, that will help us Thank you and we’ll talk to you later. And I

Marlene Gebauer 31:11
want to thank Kevin MacLeod for his original music. Bye bye

Transcribed by https://otter.ai