This week we go “talk show mode” for a special episode where Marlene recaps her trip to the Women + AI 2.0 Summit at Vanderbilt Law, hosted by Cat Moon, and shares why the event felt different from the standard conference grind, more energy, more structure, and yes, a DJ.

The summit’s core focus sits right on a tension point in the wider AI conversation. There’s a persistent narrative that women use AI less than men. Cat Moon’s framing, if it’s true, it’s a problem, and if it’s false, it’s also a problem, sets the tone for a day built around participation and peer connection. The format uses “spark” cards, mini, midi, and maxi prompts, to push attendees into small conversations, deeper reflection, and a final takeaway.

Marlene also highlights sobering research shared during the opening, including an “AI competence penalty” dynamic where identical work is judged differently depending on whether evaluators believe a man or a woman used AI. The discussion lands on why these biases matter inside legal workplaces, and what leaders and peers can do to reduce the social cost of being open about AI usage.

Interspersed throughout are short interviews with attendees and speakers. Nicole Morris (Emory) captures the day’s purpose, expanding AI knowledge, talking risks, and connecting across roles. Sabra Tomb (University of Dayton School of Law) reframes AI as a leadership amplifier, moving from day-to-day management overload toward strategy and vision. Adele Shen (Vanderbilt) offers a funny but sharp taxonomy of AI “experts,” including “technocratic oracles,” “extinction alarmists,” and “touch grass humanists,” which sparks a candid side conversation about self-promotion, authority vibes, and who becomes “the story” in AI discourse.

The episode closes with a look at how education and training can work better. Marlene and Greg lean into peer show-and-tell sessions, leadership modeling, and safe spaces, both governance-safe and learning-safe. A two-person segment from Suffolk Law (Chanal Neves McClain and Dyane O’Leary) adds a teaching twist, integrating AI tools into skills instruction without isolating “AI week” from real lawyering judgment. The final note comes from Stephanie Everett (Lawyerist) on the power of stories, and the reminder that people do not need to internalize the narrative someone else hands them.

Listen on mobile platforms:  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ |  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | Substack

[Special Thanks to Legal Technology Hub for their sponsoring this episode.]

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com
Music⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Transcript

Greg Lambert (00:00)
I’m Greg Lambert from the Geek in Review and I have with me today Stephanie Wilkins from Legal Technology Hub and Stephanie, I understand you got a new series that’s coming out. Can you tell us more?

Stephanie Wilkins (00:13)
We do, it’s called the law firm rebooted. And we’re taking a look at the emergence of a new business model that we’ve seen a lot in recent months, which is the AI law firm. Since late 2024, we’ve seen 15 to 20 firms launch globally. Sometimes they call themselves an AI firm, an AI first firm, an AI native law firm. But it’s all the same concept of this new business model that is disrupting the old way of law firms doing business.

And the commonality of all of them is that they place AI at the center of their legal service delivery. And regardless of whether they call themselves AI native or AI first, we’re looking at firms that either have AI as part of the client facing output or firms that sit slightly to the side of the traditional partnership model, but all built around using AI at the core of their delivery model. And some of these are AI first boutiques. So you see a lot of different names for them.

But we’re talking about firms that are not just a traditional law firm with a particularly robust AI function or an AI committee. We’ve seen a lot of that. We’re really trying to dig into if and how these firms are disrupting the way we’ve seen law delivered and practiced in the past before. So the series, which will be launching this week, is called The Law Firm Rebooted. Nikki Shaver from our team first wrote an article about AI law firms in general and the phenomenon.

But then to add onto that, we’re going to be sitting down and interviewing a number of these firms one-on-one to really get into the weeds of how they’re disrupting the way legal services are structured and delivered. The first interview we have is with Pierson Ferdinand which is a bit of a unique firm because while some of these AI firms are very small, Pierson Ferdinand, for those who aren’t familiar, launched about two years ago in January 2024 with 130 founding partners, and they’ve more than doubled in that size.

and their model is a partner-only law firm with no associates, but they really have built from the ground up a tech stack and a way of delivering legal services with AI at its core. So it’s a really interesting interview, and I think it’s a great kickoff to the series, which will interview a lot of different firms with different perspectives on this new phenomenon. So I hope people really enjoy it. Again, it’s called The Law Firm Rebooted, and you’ll be able to see…

all of the entries in it on legaltechnologyhub.com

Greg Lambert (02:37)
Man that sounds super interesting. So thanks for bringing that to us

Stephanie Wilkins (02:41)
Yeah, thanks, it’s been fun. It’s fun to talk to these firms and hear what they’re doing.

Marlene Gebauer 0:00
Welcome to The Geek in Review, the podcast focused on innovative and creative ideas in the legal industry. I’m Marlene Gebauer.

Greg Lambert 0:07
And I’m Greg Lambert. As you can see, we’re doing something different today. We tried something new.

Marlene Gebauer 0:14
I feel like I’m on a talk show right now. So this might be the way we do it from now on. It’s true. I like this background, it looks pretty nice.

Greg Lambert 0:23
So, yeah. Well, what we decided to do, since we had someone cancel on us, is this. You had gone to the Women + AI Summit in Nashville with our at least five-time guest, Cat Moon at Vanderbilt. It was fantastic, from what I heard. So we thought we would take time to talk about it. Marlene can explain what she got to see. And you also interviewed some people while you were there. We’re going to intersperse those within the show today.

Marlene Gebauer 1:10
Yes, yes. All right.

Greg Lambert 1:13
First of all, what’s the idea behind the motivation behind Women + AI?

Marlene Gebauer 1:21
So this was something Cat and her team started last year. It’s centered around the fact that there’s a narrative out there that women are not using AI as much as men, or are not involved in AI as much as men. Her thought was, if this is real, it’s a problem. And if it’s a false narrative, it’s also a problem. So let’s get together and start talking about this. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend last year, but I heard so many wonderful things. I said, I am going this year. And I did. It was everything and more.

Greg Lambert 2:07
Okay. And it was at Vanderbilt.

Marlene Gebauer 2:09
It was at Vanderbilt Law, yes. It was a really nice facility, and we had a DJ. I don’t think I’m ever going to go to another conference that doesn’t have a DJ. It was so much fun. She had done this before. She had playlists. Everybody got to put in a song that got them pumped up. You’ll appreciate, I did “The Chain,” but it was the Nina Diaz cover.

Greg Lambert 2:44
Oh, I like that.

Marlene Gebauer 2:45
Yes, it’s really good. So I have access to that if you want it.

Greg Lambert 2:44
Yeah, I had walk-up music for my partner retreat last week. Did I tell you what I played?

Marlene Gebauer 2:54
No.

Greg Lambert 2:55
I played The Dollyrots, “Because I’m Awesome.”

Marlene Gebauer 2:54
Nice.

Marlene Gebauer 2:58
So I should have put that one up too. It’s not too late.

Greg Lambert 2:59
All right. So talk to me about the theme. Who was there? How many people were there, do you have an idea?

Marlene Gebauer 3:07
Gosh, I don’t. I know it was at capacity, and I know there were at least 40 people on the wait list.

Greg Lambert 3:20
Sounds like she might need a bigger boat next year.

Marlene Gebauer 3:23
There was discussion about that.

Marlene Gebauer 3:27
I have mixed feelings. I like the fact that it’s one day and it’s small. If you want to go, you really have to sign up and go. You have people there who are all in. Nobody’s on the fence about it. So I do like that. But I get it.

Greg Lambert 3:49
Was there a theme this year?

Marlene Gebauer 3:53
I think how I would explain it is, it was dealing with this question. How do we become, as individuals, working more with AI, more impactful with AI? How do we teach others? How do we intersperse this into the larger community?

It was centered around this idea called “sparks.” There was a mini spark and a maxi spark, after “sparks,” in case you don’t know. There were steps along the way. Your first mini was, what is really challenging you with AI right now? Then you talk to somebody about that, and they help you think deeper. Then you do something similar with the next person. Then as the summit went on, at the end, you came up with your final takeaway.

Greg Lambert 5:12
And you also got to interview some people while you were there. We have a break here. Who is up first?

Marlene Gebauer 5:22
Who should we pick first? Let me see. I’m going to pick our friend, Nicole Morris from Emory, who was there.

Nicole Morris 5:33
Hi there. I’m Nicole Morris from Emory University in Atlanta, and I’m up here at Vanderbilt Law today for Women + AI. Happy to be here on a Saturday. This has been an amazing convening of women all across the country, some in academia, some at law firms, some at vendors, all convening to talk about how AI is being used in their workplace, how they see the tools as helpful, what are the risks and concerns they have, and then how do we expand AI knowledge, particularly to women, and how we can do more with it to increase our productivity.

For me, this has been amazing to see people live, in person, and talk to them and hear how they’re doing things in their workspaces, and to see my friend Marlene in person after so many months. Thank you.

Greg Lambert 6:24
Well, now that Nicole has explained that.

Marlene Gebauer 6:28
Nicole basically said it. You didn’t even need to hear it from me. This is a great starting interview because she lays it out and sets the stage. You can feel the energy coming from her. And it was like that with everybody. Everybody was engaged, positive, happy to be there, interacting with different people. The program was set up so you would meet new people, even if you’re not a person who likes to meet new people. So that was pretty cool.

Greg Lambert 7:13
Yeah, it’s nice to have events where people want to be there.

Marlene Gebauer 7:22
It wasn’t like, okay, I have to go here, and I have to go here, and I have to go here. You get distracted. This was concrete, and we could all focus on it.

Greg Lambert 7:39
Was there a keynote speaker?

Marlene Gebauer 7:41
Cat came and introduced everything. Then we had a number of speakers who did short talks. Most of the people I interviewed were speakers on stage, and they talked about different things related to AI. We’ll get into that with some of the interviews.

Greg Lambert 8:00
Have you ever spoken at one of Cat’s classes? Did she start off with meditation in the class?

Marlene Gebauer 8:08
I can’t remember if we did, but we talked about meditation here. We didn’t do an opening meditation for this one, and she specifically mentioned that. We might have done it at closing. And we also had a dance at closing.

Greg Lambert 8:26
So you started off with a dance too, if I remember correctly.

Marlene Gebauer 8:28
Big, high energy. Which was good because she went into some of the statistics before we got into the speakers, which were sobering. I’m not going to go into all of them, but I’m looking at one right here. They talk about competence penalties of men who use AI and women who use AI. Men, negative six. Women, negative 13. Then 26% of men who didn’t use AI themselves penalized women who did, 26% more harshly than they penalized other men for the same work. At the bottom it says, “That’s not a gap, that’s a trap.” Ouch. It set the stage, these things are out there, what are we going to do about it?

Greg Lambert 9:28
And for clarification, the AI penalty, what does that mean?

Marlene Gebauer 9:33
This was software engineers evaluating identical code. They were only told whether it was written by a man or a woman, with or without AI.

Greg Lambert 9:50
So it was identical.

Marlene Gebauer 9:54
It was identical.

Greg Lambert 10:11
So who’s next on your interview list?

Marlene Gebauer 10:14
I think I’m going to do Sabra Tomb from Dayton.

Sabra Tomb 10:21
Hi, I’m Sabra Tomb, and I am from Dayton, Ohio, where I work for the University of Dayton School of Law as the Director of Training Programs and Strategic Business Development, as well as a professor. Today I gave an ACE talk on my personal experience with AI, going from manager to visionary. Using AI has allowed me to focus on strategy and vision versus being overwhelmed with day-to-day tasks. I am thrilled to be here today with other women who are passionate about AI and teaching other women how to be empowered with AI. Thank you.

Greg Lambert 11:04
There was one part where she talked about going from, and I can’t remember exactly, from management to visionary. When she was talking about that, what was she doing to enable herself to be seen as a visionary?

Marlene Gebauer 11:25
I liked the way she framed it. It wasn’t “AI is a productivity tool.” Instead, she framed it as allowing you to be a leader, and impacting your highest calling. The trap is you start getting into leadership roles but keep being pulled into day-to-day tasks. As women, we often do because that’s what we’re supposed to do. But that doesn’t allow you to focus on the work that advances you and makes you a leader. She said it transformed her ability to do that because she’s using AI tools.

It resonated with me. I know how that feels, pulled in a million directions. Expected to set up meetings, figure out what happened two weeks ago, write an email about it, while also trying to think strategically and put a plan together. It’s hard to hold all of that at once.

Greg Lambert 13:07
With her being an academic, do you see parallels in law firms and state and county?

Marlene Gebauer 13:19
I think this is everyone. Anybody in a leadership role has this push-pull. If you don’t have depth to delegate, if you don’t have other people to do it for you, the AI can do it for you.

Greg Lambert 13:54
Okay. Anything more on Sabra?

Marlene Gebauer 14:01
No, I think we’re good.

Greg Lambert 14:04
You got some cards at the conference. One’s red, one’s white. Explain the difference.

Marlene Gebauer 14:12
I mentioned the mini and maxi sparks. This is the card we used. The first question is, what are you wrestling with? You’re supposed to write one, but since I can’t follow the rules, I wrote three. Then you find somebody you haven’t met, you tell them what it is, they ask probing questions, you jot thoughts down.

Then the midi spark, the second thing, you find a different person and share what’s sparking. Then you start talking about which workshop locations you’re going to. We had two sets of workshops, and it was hard to choose. The second one was easier for me because I was facilitating. I did one on AI style guide audit, and one on a “core plus four” framework for building your AI adoption blueprint. We went through the exercise.

Cat Casey did the AI style audit.

Greg Lambert 15:45
Cool. Anything to cover on either of those?

Marlene Gebauer 15:48
Yes. For AI literacy, the things you need. You need safe spaces, technical safe spaces and learning safe spaces. You need peer learning, learning from and with peers. You need leadership support. Leadership needs to support it and do it, and people need to see that happening. Then you need the AI spark, who gets the ball rolling, who are your evangelists.

It was a good framework. I was thinking, who are our sparks, what are our safe spaces, how do we make it more comfortable for people who are not comfortable, how do we get ideas out to people who don’t know. I thought of a couple cool things we’re going to try.

Greg Lambert 17:03
So they talked about safe spaces, and also technical safe spaces.

Marlene Gebauer 17:12
Governance, knowing what you’re doing. And being able to work on it in a safe way.

Greg Lambert 17:26
One thing I hear constantly, and I stress at work, especially with leadership. When leaders are engaged using the AI tools and talking about how they’re using them, it causes a groundswell. People go, I need to be using this. One of the biggest clues for success is how engaged leadership is.

I know a lot of us think start from the bottom up. I think we split it and focus on leadership too, and encourage them to share their experiences. If an associate sees senior partners using it, they’re encouraged. If they don’t see usage from leadership, they’re not encouraged.

Marlene Gebauer 18:40
Yes. “Do as I say, not as I do,” you don’t want that. The top-down, bottom-up model works well because everybody learns from everybody. You see leadership, you’re inspired, you do new things. It’s a cycle.

Greg Lambert 19:01
Okay. Want to go to the next person?

Marlene Gebauer 19:10
Let’s do Adele Shen, who is a student at Vanderbilt. You’re going to like this one.

Adele Shen 19:21
Hi, I’m Adele. I’m a student founder at Vanderbilt. I’m here today and I gave a talk on my perspective on three types of AI experts. I used a little bit of humor to categorize them, to point out the specific background they have and how it might inform their biases.

Marlene Gebauer 19:43
Adele was great. She doesn’t go deeply into it here, but it resonated with me because I’ve been listening to some podcasts and something was bothering me and I couldn’t place it. Then she had this great quote. She attended South by Southwest, and someone said adoption of AI is like the five stages of grief, which I thought was hysterical.

She broke people into technocratic oracles, extinction alarmists, and touch grass humanists. The touch grass humanists are like, we’re outsourcing all our thinking to machines, we need guardrails.

Greg Lambert 20:43
Now be on the beach while my AI agent is running the economy.

Marlene Gebauer 20:47
Then you have extinction alarmists, the math and PhD folks. Then you have big tech companies. They want you to see it through their lens so they have importance. And then technocratic oracles are the new type of tech politicians. They’re telling you what’s going to happen and you should listen to them.

Greg Lambert 21:26
Attending their webinars and paying for their seminars.

Marlene Gebauer 21:35
What I noticed in one example, I won’t name the podcast, it was all men, smart, powerful, but talking like they know better than everybody else, including people at a high level who are not doing this work day to day. It felt like “look at me” versus “I’m trying to help.”

Greg Lambert 22:20
I’ll run parallel with that. When talking heads become the story, red flags go up. You see blogs and Substacks where if you scratch below the surface it’s “look at me, I’m important.” Is that what you mean?

Marlene Gebauer 23:08
Yes, I think that’s what she was saying about that group. I get that a lot of this is a vehicle for business and you promote yourself as an expert. But in this case, they weren’t promoting business, they were promoting themselves as omnipotent about what’s going to happen. I don’t think anybody is omnipotent about what’s going to happen.

Greg Lambert 23:58
Yeah, for sure.

Marlene Gebauer 24:02
If they are, I’m investing in whatever stock they have.

Greg Lambert 24:07
So yeah.

Marlene Gebauer 24:12
Another takeaway, top skills to prioritize. Turning an idea into a prompt. Explaining pros and cons to someone, what it does and doesn’t do. Integrate it into workflows. If people can do those three things, they can talk about it. We need more people talking about it, not only you and me, or people whose job is this. People using it for clients need to feel comfortable talking about it.

Greg Lambert 25:38
I want to pull on training. If I could duplicate myself and do one-on-one training, that’s best to get people from zero to one. But that’s not doable. What was covered on training, what works, what doesn’t?

Marlene Gebauer 26:23
They covered some things. In-person training. Basic training. Governance training. Practice-related training. Offer CLE. Do short bites.

I liked the idea of show-and-tell sessions by peers. Peer training can be best because if a peer is doing it in a similar practice, you can see the relevance. That motivates you.

We talked about leadership again. Hearing leadership usage stories. Hearing more people using it. Social channels where people talk about it. You learn from others’ questions and experiences, and it’s not a heavy lift.

Greg Lambert 27:50
All right. Next is a twofer. Chanal Neves McClain and Dyane O’Leary from Suffolk Law School.

Chanal Neves McClain 28:10
Hi. My name is Chanal Neves McClain from Suffolk University Law School in Boston.

Dyane O’Leary 28:15
And I’m Dyane O’Leary, also at Suffolk University Law School. Chanal and I both teach the first-year legal practice skills class. Like so many other law professors, we’ve been thinking about how, whether, how, when, if, to incorporate AI into our skills instruction for today’s students.

Chanal Neves McClain 28:30
Today we discussed how we don’t have to look at the human skills and the AI skills as bifurcated pathways. When you get down to the substance of both, we need both coexisting together at this time so that, as lawyers, we can lead how this technology will be adopted by our educational institutions and by our profession.

Dyane O’Leary 28:56
A lot of courses kind of stuff AI into a two-week module and then do away with it, or stuff human counseling into a two-week module and then do away with it. So we tried to think about exercises able to do both sides of the coin. My exercise had students work with actual AI tools, but then only discuss them through the lens of traditional lawyering skills like judgment and ethics and critical thought, to shape students so they weren’t just using a tool. They had to think about it from a more human point of view.

Chanal Neves McClain 29:27
And my exercise, I built a client, a video-chatting client, that students counseled on a legal problem. They were able to, in a low-stakes environment, see what it’s like to prepare for and come up with some kind of strategy for client counseling, and to have real-time dynamic responses, because the models are capable of doing some helpful things in the classroom.

Greg Lambert 29:57
Oh, that sounds cool. Awesome.

Marlene Gebauer 30:08
If I understand right, Chanal created a video AI interface simulating a client. Exactly. Working within technology but using human counseling skills.

Greg Lambert 30:21
That’s really cool.

Marlene Gebauer 30:29
I’d love to pick her brain. How did she make it, how long did it take? I’ve seen tools on the market, simulator tools, but she made one.

Greg Lambert 30:46
Interesting. And Dyane, I like the idea. Use the tools, but when you talk about them, it’s from lawyering concepts, not “how to use the tool.”

Marlene Gebauer 31:06
Yes. You got information, but you discuss it as an attorney.

Greg Lambert 31:17
I still think the academic environment is the best place to expose students to AI. With the Socratic method, you still have to stand up and give your interpretation, your IRAC view. I don’t know if they still do that. We did it last century. But it feels like a place for the best and safest exposure. They learn what tools do and don’t do, blending human skills and AI.

Marlene Gebauer 32:12
I’ll talk about the session I facilitated at the end of the day. It was called Playbook.

Greg Lambert 32:22
So you were between the attendees and the DJ.

Marlene Gebauer 32:28
Before the end. Everybody poured in at the end, but we got through it on time. It was coming up with practical ways to build AI knowledge, and then spread knowledge and use. We did a design workshop exercise. People wrote down ideas, met in small groups, narrowed them down, put them up on the board, consolidated them.

There were four areas, Playbook, Principles, Questions, and Stories. From all these, we’re taking an end result, and there’s going to be additional work after. If people want to be involved, there’s opportunity.

And before the last interview, I want to talk about the Principles maxi spark workshop. That team shared their board, and their spokesperson read the principles, which were amazing. I don’t have them in front of me. Anastasia Boyko sent them out on LinkedIn. If you look underneath, it’s there.

Greg Lambert 34:15
We’re going to have Anastasia on the podcast.

Marlene Gebauer 34:17
So there’s going to be opportunity to get involved.

Greg Lambert 34:31
I’m never thrilled when I go to a conference and there’s still work after. Like homework. I don’t like homework.

Marlene Gebauer 34:44
You can’t do all of it in one day. You get fired up, you start the wheels turning, then the hard work continues after.

Greg Lambert 34:55
It was a one-day conference. All right. Who’s our last person?

Marlene Gebauer 35:02
Our last person is Stephanie Everett from Lawyerist, one of the sponsors.

Greg Lambert 35:09
Thanks to all the sponsors.

Stephanie Everett 35:13
I’m Stephanie Everett with Lawyerist, where we help law firms build healthier businesses and implement technology. This morning I had the honor and privilege of giving one of the ACE talks here at the Women + AI Summit. I talked about the power of stories. I shared a personal story from when I went to a fortune teller who gave me some not so great predictions about my life. I didn’t realize it, but I started internalizing that story and allowing it to live in the back of my head and make decisions about my life.

It wasn’t until I realized that, stopped it, and created space for something different, that the story showed up differently for me. I think that’s what we’re doing here today at the summit. It’s amazing energy, women coming together and talking about what we want our stories to be, how we are going to leverage AI, and how we are going to drive our profession forward. It’s a super exciting day, and I’m glad to be a part of it.

Marlene Gebauer 36:11
Stephanie’s was a great one to end on. Her story was great, and I’m not going to tell it. That’s her story. But if you ever meet her, it’s a great story. My takeaway is, you don’t have to live the stories you’re told. You can question those stories. If you’re hearing, these statistics say you can’t do this, or you’re not part of this, that’s the story. The danger is listening, believing, internalizing. She was questioning, what story are you telling yourself? Once you start telling yourself the right story, things change.

Greg Lambert 37:06
Listening to her talk about the fortune teller, letting other people set the narrative versus you setting the narrative for yourself. We all do it. I can see the psychological effect if you’re not careful and let other people dictate the narrative. Great way to end the videos.

What do you think about on the plane ride home?

Marlene Gebauer 37:54
How do I better use AI to allow me to be the best leader I can be, practical. Also, there was a presenter, Natalie Cheshire from Harbor Global. She talked about the power of poetry, but what I took away is the power to be quiet, sit in quietness, not get wrapped up in the hubbub. Step back and allow yourself to think. It’s way too easy not to.

Then from Stephanie, you have the power to write your own story. You have to create your narrative. You don’t have to listen to a narrative if it’s not working for you. Be true to yourself.

Greg Lambert 39:13
It sounds enjoyable. You learned a lot. Was there something not presented, but in the way it was organized, that you’d want to see at other conferences?

Marlene Gebauer 39:36
I liked how it was broken up. Conferences are good, but there are points where you get bored. This started around nine and then it was five at night, and I was like, how did that happen? That’s the mark of a good conference, you weren’t even thinking, oh, I’m at a conference, you were engaged the whole time.

A lot was how she structured it. Music, high energy. Cat set the stage with facts. Different presenters on different things. There was a contest, you put an idea out there, they voted on who presented. There was vetting, high quality. Talks were short, so it kept moving. Breaks with spark cards and spark exercises. Lunch and networking. More speaking. Different workshops to choose from. Then final breakout workshops where everybody worked together.

Greg Lambert 41:11
So a lot of engagement.

Marlene Gebauer 41:13
A lot, and different types. Mixing it up. Terrific.

Greg Lambert 41:21
Awesome. Thanks to the six people who let you shoot video. Thanks to Cat Moon for hosting, sponsors, and everyone who worked on the conference. That is yeoman’s work. Well done.

Thank you, Marlene, for sharing your insights and experience with us.

Marlene Gebauer 41:54
It was fun. I hope word gets out to more people about how great it was.

Greg Lambert 42:00
Although the word should be, when registration opens, get in there fast.

Marlene Gebauer 42:08
Thanks to all of you, our listeners, for listening to The Geek in Review. If you enjoyed the show, share it with a colleague. We’d love to hear from you, reach out to us on LinkedIn.

Greg Lambert 42:19
What else?

Marlene Gebauer 42:20
And Substack.

Greg Lambert 42:19
And Substack. Yeah. I’m doing my story on Substack.

Marlene Gebauer 42:25
I hope everybody who’s been following the Substack story.

Greg Lambert 42:30
Well, take care. Thanks. Bye. You.