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consulting insights

Why I offer the first hour of consulting for free

Do not covet your ideas... by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org
Do not covet your ideas… by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org

A few colleagues have learned that I always offer my first hour of consulting with a new client for free, and have given me lots of advice:

  • But what if you only ever get one hour out of them?
  • You should never give away your skills, it devalues you.
  • People will take advantage of you.

The reasons that I give my first hour of consulting for free to new clients considers these and many other issues. I’ll discuss them here.

I may only get one hour out of a client, but if that’s the case, I was not likely going to get a lot of business out of them anyway, and they are likely to speak well on my behalf to their friends and colleagues if it goes well. If even one referral comes from any client, it is at least worth an hour of my time.

I have spent many hours volunteering my time doing my consulting, presentation, and training work, and it has come back to me a thousand times over in referrals, new paying work, experience, and good-faith networking. Volunteering also happens to bring me joy and happiness,all by itself. I am focusing more now on paying work these days, but I will never regret the volunteer hours I have put in.

I welcome people to take advantage of me, or try to. I think that if someone sits with me and sees what I have to offer them, I can make an impression that makes them think of me the next time they need graphic design, technology support, a presenter, a media consultation, etc.

Perhaps the most important reason for the first-hour-free clause is that I may not wish to continue to work with someone after hour one, and they may not wish to work with me. Everyone has their philosophies, concepts, experiences, and values, and they may sometimes make for uncomfortable partnerships. I’d rather not have to ask for money from someone who does not wish to work with me, and I’d rather not take money from someone who I’d rather not work with. It’s more important that we be able to amicably walk away, saying “I’m sure you will find success, thanks so much for your time!” with smiles on our face, cheer in our heart, and money safely remaining where it was.

This philosophy also acts as a standing discount on the remainder of our work together, meaning that if I work with someone for two hours, it’s as though they had a 50% off coupon.

So if you are wondering if I can help you, remember that you can find out for free, no strings attached, for the first hour that we work together. I promise.

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brand curriculum vitae insights teaching

On teaching leaders about organizational communication

20110816
Apple by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org

I have spent most of my career as an instructional technologist. When I accepted my first job at a university in this role, I was not entirely certain of what instructional technology was, but I was able to answer all the important questions.

In short, Instructional Design is the important work of integrating technology in a teaching and learning environment, and all that goes with that process: research, troubleshooting, experimentation, problem-solving, system administration, programming, design, and being creative. It is, without a doubt, the best job in the world for someone who loves this list of job attributes.

As it turned out, I was perfectly suited for instructional technology, also often called academic technology, educational technology, or instructional technology & design, because I am a versatilist (I know a little bit about a lot of things in my expertise), media producer, technologist, and teacher, and am passionate about these attributes.

From supporting teachers to teaching

In the last few years, I have been fortunate enough to experience the faculty side of this process as a professor in the graduate program I graduated from, the MA in Organizational Leadership at Rider University. I teach students in this program about change management, communication, media creation, media transliteracy, convergence, and effective use of social media. I was recently invited back to teach my third class in the program, and have been working on the syllabus. I like to think of success in course development as making a class that I would be very excited to take. I have done at least that here. I’m sharing the core topics from the course below, and if you have any thoughts about the lineup, feel free to share in the comments!

Weekly topics:

  • Getting started. Introduction to the class, WordPress account setup, and first posts.
  • WordPress best practices | WordPress Getting started codex | WordPress demo
  • Personal and Organizational Branding | Seth Godin lit review | Facebook Demo
  • Convergence, mobile technologies, and platforms | Google Glass lit review | Google Plus App demo
  • Creating, gathering, and sharing visuals | 3 tutorials for Inkscape | Inkscape demo
  • Effective Social Media presence for leaders | case studies for Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest
  • Virality, ethics, and balance | Kony 2012 | Basic concepts of headlines/Case study for American Apparel marketing methods
  • Basic web creation literacy and development | Codecademy assignment | Codecademy assignment review and discussion on practical use of code as literacy
  • Staying aware of trends, ideas, news, and contacts with social media platforms |social media dashboard lit review | Hootsuite demo
  • Legal issues for individuals, organizations, and society regarding new media | articles on firings, etc, Organizational  Social Media policy | best practices document from Princeton
  • Creating, gathering, and sharing audio via podcasting and other platforms | Stitcher assignments | Audacity Demo
  • Communicating, embracing, and navigating change with a comprehensive organizational communication plan | case studies | Google Drive demo
  • Creating, gathering, and sharing motion visuals | YouTube assignments | editing video
  • Critical literacy, Transliteracy project | presentations
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brand curriculum vitae insights

Should I eat this? [infographic]

Should I eat this? by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
Should I eat this? by John LeMasney via lemasney.com

I decided to make this infographic to show my own thought process when it comes to choosing food and as a way of showing this kind of design work in my portfolio. Most of my nutritional philosophy aligns with Michael Pollan, and these ideas are mostly cherry-picked from his writings, research and findings. I decided to choose a fairly complex structure for navigation to represent the fairly complex thought involved in choosing what to eat. The text is highly legible for easy reading, rather than uniqueness or specialty  as I wanted the ideas to be easily consumable. The color scheme is one I’d say represents natural, healthy, and fresh. If you like it or find it useful, please share it!

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consulting insights workshops

How to videoconference, broadcast, and archive for free: Google’s long game.

Cancellation of Hanover bars through a chroma ...
Cancellation of Hanover bars through a chroma delay line (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There was a time, not too long ago, when having your own television station was an expensive, unreasonable dream. With the arrival of Google Plus in 2012, there was a lot of comparisons made with Facebook, with the verdict generally being that Google was playing catchup, doing too little too late, and was out of its league. The issue is this: Google is playing the long game. They are adding Plus to your tool set simply by you using any of their other applications. If you have a Gmail account, use Google Calendar, or even just search while logged in with a Google account, Plus is there, waiting for you to use. It is, as the name implies, a sort of umbrella service to add a social layer to other Google services.

They are not following Facebook, and are in fact doing something quite different from what Facebook is, even though a lot of the features seem the same. You can make connections in both systems, add photos and videos, create groups of common interest, and have conversations. However, one set of features in particular sets Plus apart: Hangouts.

Google Hangouts are free. You need to install a plugin or app in Windows, Mac OS, Linux, iOS, or Android to take part, but aside from that there is no threshold to entry. Hangouts are a metaphor for being available for a chat, sort of like standing by the fence waiting for a neighbor or sitting on the porch waiting to chat spontaneously with passersby.

You can be more direct than that though, choosing specifically to invite people to chat with you, up to and including everyone on the system (public). The interactive chat holds up to 10 people, and people can drop in and out. You can chat by video or audio, and you can also share your screen with the screen sharing plugin. You can use addons to create titles and use other features. What is perhaps most interesting is that you can choose to put the hangout ‘on air’, meaning that you can broadcast and archive the hangout to the world via your YouTube channel.

Other systems have done and continue to do this, but not usually for free, and not usually with such a widely adopted system as Google Plus. I have used Google Plus hangouts on air to build a related series of video broadcasts with others about the juxtaposition of technology and design, art, customer service, and nutrition. I call the collection Neckbeard Networks, and you can find it, along with all of my other videos on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/user/lemasney

Tonight, Wednesday, March 20th, 2013, I’m talking to an audience at Princeton Public Library about this topic, and at 7 pm, I hope to see you there.

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curriculum vitae insights workshops

WordPress, Google Plus, Libraries and Waveforms

WordPress
WordPress (Photo credit: Adriano Gasparri)

 

This week will be an interesting one!

 

Tonight, March 18th, 2013 at Princeton Public Library at 7:30 pm, I’m giving the second part of a two-part WordPress Camp, in which I show people how to get started with WordPress. There’s a rumor that we will be having a Food Blogging follow-up class in the future, to look at the specifics of using WordPress to publish content about food, but this class is about introducing pages, posts, media, and tags in WordPress. I’m excited about this follow-up class because I’ve talked individually with a lot of the participants from part one, and it’s obvious that they are having lots of success. The session is free, and we’d love to see you. No registration necessary.

Elf in a santa hat by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
She feels in italics (Henry James) CC-BY lemasney

 

On Tuesday, March 19th, 2013, I’ll be talking to the Special Libraries Association (Princeton-Trenton chapter) about branding in Libraries. In the session, I plan to lead a discussion on what your library says about you, what you say about your library, and how you can migrate your current brand to the brand you prefer.

 

On Wednesday March 20th, I’ll be talking at 7:30 pm at Princeton Public Library about Google Plus Hangouts! This is an amazing, free tool that is part of Google’s Plus suite of products that allows for videoconferencing between 10 people, public broadcast to many more, archiving to YouTube, screen sharing, lower thirds titles, and more. The session is free, and we’d love to see you. No registration necessary.

 

I had a lot of great engagements last week, but one that stood out was a job in which I applied what I had learned in making this waveform sketch of me saying the word ‘open’ for a client who wanted the same thing, but of him saying ‘hiphop’.

 

If you can think of how I can help you to use technology or design to make great things happen, contact me at lemasney@gmail.com, leave a comment below, or like my page on Facebook (see the sidebar!)

 

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affiliations professional activities professional experience references research interests teaching experience technology

Just added to PPL Lineup: Google Plus Hangouts

Instagram Google+ Hangouts Screen shot
Instagram Google+ Hangouts Screen shot (Photo credit: Robin M. Ashford)

 

In this session, John LeMasney will show you how to use Google’s Hangouts feature to video conference with up to 10 people, share screens, broadcast yourself, and archive the recording, all from your computer, tablet, or phone. John uses the technology to create a series of shows on using technology in customer service, educational technology, and graphic design, known as Neckbeard Networks on YouTube.

 

Come and learn how to use this great free technology to connect with people about your favorite topics.

 

When: Wed , 3/20 from 7-8:30 pm
Where: Princeton Public Library Technology lab
Skill Level: Intermediate

 

No registration necessary

 

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