Fred:  I'm Fred Faulkner, a husband and father with a passion for marketing and technology. I work at a top 50 consulting agency where I lead alliances and marketing for the digital experience and technology team. On this podcast, I share my thoughts, opinions, and experiences in business and in life.

This is my view of the world according to Fred.

Hi everyone. Welcome back to another episode of According to Fred, the podcast. Today, I am excited to have yet another guest on the show. Today I have Matt Homan, the founder and CEO of Filament. What's Filament? Filament is an organization that builds better meetings, and we're going to get into that in a minute.

Matt Homan is I've known for a number of years and he is what he is basically calls himself is Suffers from having idea surplus disorder and I can confirm that 100 percent that that is exactly what Matt has idea  surplus disorder Um for as long as I can know him He's got a natural knack for helping other really smart people get through think through things and meet and learn with people Grabbing people together, just bringing people together for smart people and to do amazing things together.

And so with that, I'm going to do this one more time because that part really sucked and then I promise we will get into this whole thing one more time. I know.

Uh, Matt brings,

what's he saying? Hi everyone, welcome back to another episode of According to the Fred, the podcast. Today I am super excited to have yet another guest on the show. Today we have Matt Homan, who is the founder and CEO of Filament. Filament is an organization that builds better meetings and we're gonna get into that while we talk to him today and we'll get into that in a minute.

So who's Matt Holman? He is a man that I've known for a number of years and he suffers from what he self describes as idea surplus disorder and I can 100 percent agree that that is exactly what he  has. But the most brilliant thing about Matt is that he has a knack for bringing really smart people together to meet them, to help them learn from each other and to create better ideas that really transform, you know, either organizations or businesses.

So with that, I'm going to bring into the show, Matt Holman. Matt, thanks for joining me today. It's a pleasure to see you again. Hey, Fred. I am excited to be here. It's been a while. It has been a while, and you know, we've known each other for, gosh, probably 10, 12. I don't even know. It's been a number of years and from, I've been only been

Matt Homann: closer.

It's closer to 15, maybe even a shade longer than that, Fred.

Fred: It has been a while. It has been a while, but you know, the one thing that I've always appreciated about knowing you is that we always have great conversations because it is just. This idea of surplus disorder. And there's a ton of ideas you've had over the years.

Let's get into some of those things today. In fact, what sparked this whole conversation of wanting to actually talk to you today was a Twitter thread that you published, um, what last week, this week? I don't even know. It was, it was most recently when you went  on a little over

Matt Homann: in a world of Wednesdays, Fred, every day, there's no weekends anymore.

We don't know. We could have been a month ago.

Fred: So, so what the whole thing sparked the desire to kind of really kind of reconnect with you was this whole idea of what virtual conferences has become. And that is, um, we're not going to people in meeting in places anymore. And it's, um, it's kind of crazy, but you went on a tear, a 10 tweets, 240 characters at a time, 280 characters at a time tear about, you know, how to drive and get value out of going to these virtual conferences and, you know, And it was one of those things like, yep, we live in a world where virtual is now a new place.

But before we jump into the whole virtual part, I want to kind of take a step back and what makes the transition to virtual important to you. And that is because Filament is an organization that I said builds better meetings. And that is because you have a knack for bringing great people together. And Filament is a physical space.

So talk to me a little about what filament is. How did you  come up with the idea? Where did it spark from and what is the whole generation idea thing that comes to pound filament?

Matt Homann: Yeah. So thanks for it. Filament. I, I, I have to say film. It's an idea because we've got to be more than a space. Uh, we have a 20, 000 square foot facility in downtown St.

Louis I'm in right now. That's not a virtual background. That's real old brick. It's an old dress factory and we built filament. I, as you know, some even our earliest interactions, we started doing. Or I started doing kind of really creative meetings, conferences, retreats, off sites, whatever you want to call them, uh, where they were not driven by PowerPoint.

Uh, it was about getting smart people to do stuff together, uh, collaborate more effectively. And even as we were, uh, I was running another company that I own called Kendio that drew pictures of hard to understand things. We kept on working with people, uh, in meetings, I'd have an artist drawing live. We would facilitate a mix of large and small groups.

And started to realize that, you know, that methodology, the stuff that I've been using  with lawyers and law firms, I'm a recovering lawyer. Uh, there was really something, there was a there there. And so when I was looking for a space originally to host my Kendio team, because we'd grown to about eight people at a time, at the time.

I started, I found this amazing space we're in now. I'm like, wait, you know, if we could bring people to visit us. That's no longer a design and strategy company. That's a different business completely. And so filament, and there's a handful of these around the world, I think, right? None that really packaged the way we do, but, uh, pre COVID filament was a space that you would come to and you would buy the meeting.

We would design it. We would facilitate it. We would capture it live. We would tell you you couldn't use PowerPoint. We would do all of this work. Plus you were in an amazing space, uh, parking was included beverages like all the stuff that otherwise makes meetings hard. We handled both the logistics and all that stuff to it.

But what was amazing is that once we realized people were coming to us. We got way more permission.  So we were pretty innovative at the beginning with meetings, but when we'd have CEOs of fortune 500 companies here with their teams, even they'd be looking to us to say, Matt, what should we do next? Versus having to plan everything down to the 15 minute increments and so being on our home turf, we get a chance to be really creative and innovative, uh, and try stuff right.

So when people would come to us nearly every meeting, we're trying something new. It might be something that's a tweak of another, you know, Uh, tool that we've used, or we use worksheets, we use exercise, we use all these different kinds of methods. And so what Filament has been, has been, is it was originally a, we call it a meeting machine, right?

Because people come, they buy meetings from us, but we've got to be really smart, not only about meetings, but about the things our customers talk about, right? Because we're constantly in these rooms full of really, really smart people. That have no industry in common, right? So we work in financial services.

We just did something with a bunch of plant  biologists and genomicists or genomicists. Uh, we've done work inside legal. Obviously, we've done work in advertising, C. P. G, etcetera. And so we wanted to be good at meetings and we think we are. Uh, but we also got to hear the same people solve what are fundamentally the exact same challenges from all these different perspectives over and over and over again.

And so, you know, we've been in this Petri dish of really cool ideas. That we get to try out with bit more permission than we would if we parachuted in as a consultant, or we were decided to tell what to do. So that's what filament was. Right. And we still doing a lot of the work. I know we'll talk about that in a moment, but we have this weird mix of Space facilitator, consultant, uh, Sherpa, uh, food and beverage.

Like all of it is kind of baked in and, uh, whether it's strategy, whether it's innovation, product design, culture,  all of them are people problems. Right. And that's where, uh, that's why people come to us to help them work through them.

Fred: It's a great model in the sense that, you know, I've been through, and I know you have to been through how many meetings you've been in some boardroom in some place where some facilitator and nothing to knock any in house facilitator that might exist, but we've all been in those meetings where you're like, wow, that is like eight hours of my day.

I'm never going to get back or eight hours. I'll never get back in my life. And did we really get anything out of it? It was here, Jimmy or Sally or whoever pontificate and, you know, really run, you know, run us into like just boredom. You know, one of the first memories I have of us, you know, really even collaborating together was blog thing, right?

Which was the unconference, which was one of your early brain childhood, I think was probably a, a spark that ideated into what is now filaments. At the end of the day, we're at catalyst ranch was a great facilitation place here in Chicago. And, you know, basically I presented his ideas and there's a bunch of other people that presented ideas, but it was very  fluid and very creative because it was just an un, it wasn't a boardroom.

It wasn't, you know, some space like that or a conference at some, uh, hotel. It was, you had things like sticky notes and Play Doh and, and other things. And I've seen pictures on your site about some of the space that you have where it's open and, you know, People could probably just go like over here, we're going to talk about X, Y, Z, and anyone's interested in that, go talk about X, Y, Z.

And that's kind of that unconference field. While I'm sure filament doesn't follow the unconference approach completely because you need to have some structure and facilitation. How's that creativity with the unconference has brought into what now is filament from that perspective? Is that the creativity?

That you're talking about. Is it more than that or less than that? It's some of that.

Matt Homann: I mean, I, I think you've got to trust your audience and we tend to underestimate our audience is tolerance for novelty. And so, so many people dumbed down the meetings that they plan because they're afraid that someone three or four levels up from them on the food, you know, on the org chart or the food chain will will kind of roll their eyes  and think it's silly.

But as long as you're able to add purpose, That is connected to the reason why they're there to something that feels fun or otherwise might feel frivolous. If it were detached or detethered from the rest of the meeting. Uh, so yeah, like it's not just giving people a chance to talk about what they want to talk about, right?

But it's providing enough structure enough. Thoughtfulness to make sure that those conversations are curated enough with the ability for them to output the results of those conversations without feeling like we're all going to talk about this single question, like a table topic for the next hour, right?

We have way, we're way more sophisticated than that, but on top of that, we need to be thinking and thoughtful about, uh, how do you balance power in the organization, right? The CEO is right over there. Right. He's four levels above me or she's three levels. Uh, you know, three other divisions are here. Like we've, we've had that meetings.

And so small group conversations help with that. Uh, constantly shuffling people around makes a huge difference.  Having room for people to engage differently privately without all being around a gigantic 10 person ballroom table inside a hotel ballroom. I'm still convinced no one's ever had a brilliant idea.

Inside a hotel ballroom, but that sort of thinking through how we get them from point a to point B to point C, uh, because the unconference is uncomfortable for lots of folks, but it's more. And it's troubling because you don't know what you're going to get, right? People come to us in many cases, cause they need to be from point A to point B in this period of time.

And if we can, uh, we can promise, so we'll have fun and lots of great conversations. Uh, we have enough, uh, enough trust from them that we can say, Hey, point B isn't where we really needed to go. Let's go to point D or let's circle back here. But the unconference piece, the cool space makes a difference to get, like I said at the beginning, it gives you a bit more.

Authority, if that's the right word to play with, but really our challenge is  understanding and adapting quickly to, uh, the, we always joke about the elephants, the zombies, the squirrels, and the porcupines that enter the room, right? The elephant, the rooms, a gigantic thing in the back that everyone knows about, uh, the squirrels are the things that distract us, right?

Ooh, that looks shiny. Uh, the porcupine, the, uh, zombies are the issues that keep on coming back over and over and over again. And we can't seem to kill. On the porcupines are the things that are hard to share. And so part of our role is to understand what those are before the meeting starts, uh, balance them.

And in some cases it's just as simple as telling the boss to shut up. Yeah. Right. As an outside facilitator with just enough gray hair. Although it's probably been gray ever since you've known me. Fred, uh, we now have that a little bit of that power and it's more so because you're on our turf than maybe if we're sitting in on the top floor of the corporate headquarters in downtown Chicago.

Fred: Yeah, that's true. And, um, that is very true. And I think, you know, if you're going to spend the money to invest and bring outside  facilitators in, let them do their job, let them push the envelope. That's where you're paying them to do ideally. Right. You know, not just have a cool space. It's got beverages and, you know, whiteboards.

So I think that's right. I mean, that gives you the authority to kind of just push the push them a little bit and say like, Hey, you, you asked us to do this. This is what we, this is what we agreed here. Let's get you there. Um,

Matt Homann: the most expensive thing is the time and attention of your attendees, right? It's not the cost of the facilitators at the cost of the facility.

It is fun, but. Uh, we can get into what the authority meeting planners have versus not have is one of the challenges here. But ultimately, you know, if we're having million dollar conversations and we and that conversation gets you from a million to a million and a half because of someone else's insight, don't, you know, don't nickel and dime the facilitator, but it's not, it's not a, It's not a skill that many people know because their traditional model of a facilitator, someone with a flip chart, just writing down every, you know, they're back to the room most of the time, writing down  everything people say, and so that experiencing something, a really great meeting, we always joke about as much as I want people to love their meetings with filament, I want them to really hate their next one, like that's our measure of success.

Right. The moment that they go, man, we thought we could do this ourselves. It seemed kind of easy. Woo. Are we wrong? That's, that's our goal.

Fred: Well, you know, I think you have a little bit of a special sauce and, and that is the creativity from the perspective of the drawing. Now I've seen you guys at Clio cloud cloud conference.

I've seen you in action, some other, some other ways as well, but the drawing deliverable, the, the, the artifact that you kind of bring to the table, which is you have an artist there that is taking and listening and taking those ideas. And then. Making them concrete in a visual. That is something that I think is tremendously special.

So tell me a little about how that came into the whole formula of what filament brings to the table and why you think that's valuable.

Matt Homann: Yeah. I was working at a design company called explain for a while.  And, uh, explain would do infographics would do that. And so we were consulting at a very high level with, with senior executives and talking to them about what their process is, right.

What their culture is. Step one, step two, step three. And to the point of some kind of sort of be like, Oh, is this first step? Is this a person at a desk? Okay, we're gonna draw the person at a desk, right? No one understands Vizio, uh, any of these other process mapping tools. And so what I would notice in doing those sessions that even though we were trying to literally capture step by step by step in a somewhat creative way.

The visuals got people there way faster and they were easier to consume. You could have someone come into the room and in a moment, digest what we were talking about. And, and we also started to see that people would change their business model, their ideas, their process, because they've seen it for the first time.

And so watching some of these unbelievable talented artists and the artists are, it's not hard to find someone who can draw really well. I mean, it's not easy, but to then know someone who can synthesize in real time, who can listen and draw, who  can understand. The lingo and the business process and even make sense of most of the acronyms in near real time.

Uh, that's incredible. And for me, what it does as a facilitator is I no longer have to worry about capturing anything that's coming back at me. Right. It's, it's going back to law practice. It's very similar to having the court reporter, right? I don't have to be taking notes. I know the court reporter has everything down.

That's important. I get to focus on the judge, the jury, my next question, the next exhibit. And so as a facilitator, I get to do that as well. So even having that paired person to capture is really valuable. But then when it looks unbelievable, like we have a 30 foot wide whiteboard, about 25 foot whiteboard, that's about 15 feet tall.

Yeah. In a day meeting, that entire thing can be covered and people are not only amazed, but they then look at the pictures weeks later. Like they remember everything. It comes right back to them versus no one ever. No one ever reads the white paper. No one ever looks at the power point. No one ever, you know, looks at the notes.

Pictures are the novelty  also drives their effectiveness

Fred: and the pictures are beautiful. Your artist, you a phenomenal job, which, you know, even captures, you know, personality and how spoken, you know, is it an intense thing? Was it not as a joyful, is it, is it angry? Like, I mean, there's definitely components that bring out even You know, just not just visualizing what was said, but even an emotional component to it as to it as well Which I think is which is awesome.

Um, yeah, but

Matt Homann: he did don't don't talk about too much. We're still in pandemic time He's going to demand twice his salary

Fred: Well speaking of pandemic, you know, you have this great big facility and unfortunately you're sitting in that same room now because we can't, we can't get together. So how have you adjusted into virtual virtual land?

Because we, we all, I mean, I'm, I'm working from home for the foreseeable future, there's a lot of companies are still doing it. I mean, the tech companies are all saying permanency, you know, to that, which, you know, there was a little bit of a kink in some things, but how has. Filament and how have you guys adjusted to virtual virtual world?

Matt Homann: We had  a little bit of a head start only because we'd had two engagements. Two of our, our, our, among our last in person engagements, one was with Washington university, their, uh, safety team, the one who's in charge of All of the cleaning, all of the labs and dealing with crazy things that happen inside, you know, scientists layers, I suppose.

Um, they saw that like, this was just starting to emerge in China and they were all over it, paying attention to it, thinking about it, understanding what that meant for them. So even though it wasn't about pandemic responses, more of a strategy for their team, we literally understood the, the importance of it.

Then we got to work in Connecticut with a legal team, uh, focused on risk. And again, a couple of weeks later, and it was front and center. So even then we're like, we kind of got to figure this virtual thing out. No one knew how long it would last. No one knew what it would take, but we've pivoted. I think pretty well.

Uh, the challenge was getting our customers to pivot with us. So the  first couple of months, you know, I'm in this virtual meeting studio. I've got two gigantic televisions here. I've got a good camera. I've got a Google jam board. I've got a solid mic. I've got, I mean, a standing up, like I've got the tools.

We use zoom just because it's easy. We can talk more about tools later, but we have a handful of things that make the meetings better, but we realized, I think late too late that our customers didn't realize number one, that they were going to need virtual meetings. Right. So not only weren't they to quit, they weren't even equipped to think about it.

Right. Cause they had fingers crossed in the next three months. We'll be fine. Let's just cobble together whatever we can. And then the second thing they did, and most of us did this, uh, is they then just tried to replicate their in person meetings online. So if we had an eight hour meeting, it became an eight hour meeting.

And what they realized very quickly is number one, their in person meetings were terrible to begin with. So turning them into an online version of something that was already sucky, uh, didn't help, but it also, they were now using unfamiliar tools and  just being on a screen is different than being in person.

So many things disappear. The nuance, the body language, the, the ability to understand, And read the room and so it's only been, I mean, we're, we're now eight months or so into this thing. Almost nine, uh, there's gonna be pandemic babies like that, that will be conceived and born inside of this world, which is scary to me, but they've now kind of come around.

And so we've been doing, uh, we've been doing virtual stuff nearly since the beginning. But all of a sudden they start to realize this is really hard on. Not only is it hard, but, uh, we need to move and play catch up in some ways. And dealing with people virtually, uh, requires a bit of rethinking the entire meeting, the frameworks, the models, not just the tools that you use technology wise, but even how you engage.

And so now that we know we've got a pretty measure, you know, measurable head start.  More and more people are coming back to us. So the first couple of months were tough, but we're busy. We're doing some really cool stuff. Uh, the meetings were facilitating starting to get bigger and bigger because we realized just like in person, the model scales as long as you can use breakouts and so on and so forth.

So I was not optimistic in around, uh, April and may. Uh, but, uh, once June rolled around, we kind of realized that, you know, that's going to be the foreseeable future for everybody. So yeah, certainly. Person though. I really do.

Fred: Yeah. In person. I do miss the in person too. I, uh, we're actually doing some office moving, um, for where I work in.

So I had to actually go clean my desk out and I had been in my office and for months, you know, and I went to go clean out and stuff, cause I don't know what we're going to be in the new facility. And, you know, So I brought a bunch of stuff home, but it was like weird being in the space. I'm like, literally stuff was like, when we all left, I mean, there's still stuff written on the whiteboards.

I mean, it was like, we all thought like, eh, I'll be gone for two weeks. You know, you know,  here we are, you know, eight months later, I missed the in person stuff, like the zoom fatigue, I mean. It's real. Even we all know it's real, but it's real. I, you know, we have this whole remote learning thing going on with my kids.

I mean, my, my 10 year old has five different video conferencing solutions, depending on what class he's going to. And I'm like, you're too short than I have, you know, so depending on who I work with. So

Matt Homann: I know, I know it's been a bad day for when I hit for the cycle, when I get to do a zoom, a Webex, a Google meet.

And if I'm lucky, a telephone call, right? Like that feels like, Oh, Hey, I checked all the boxes today.

Fred: Yep, exactly. Exactly. But, and I agree, like, you know, the, just the body language, being able to see people, you know, the video only goes so far and that is for sure. Um, but I have found, and this is actually something that I want to talk about next from, you know, when you're more recent newsletters is this idea of like how to structure meetings now, because you're getting people doing like the more of the chitchat, like how are you doing this whole mental health thing that's coming into play where people are definitely having those conversations before the real  meeting kind of starts.

And so you have a tip out of one of your more recent newsletters. There's a top 10 list on how to kind of. deal with meetings better. And the tip that I, I like here that I'm going to read off and then we can talk a little more about how that kind of goes is, is this. So instead of making every meeting an hour, send two invites.

The first is 13 minutes of optional, quote, coffee and chat. And the second is 47 minutes of the actual meeting requires. Bonus, uh, by setting up your meetings at odd times, people are more likely to arrive on time. That is brilliant in many ways because of how often, even if you set a meeting for an hour, it's the first 10 to 15 minutes about the chit chat stuff anyway.

So why don't just call a spade a spade and, and just kind of set that expectation out of the gate and then say, Hey, for 47 minutes, we're going to talk about real stuff that needs to get done. Talk to me about like how that idea came into place and how are you using it? Are you seeing it actually be used in practice effectively?

Matt Homann: Yeah, so so the 13 minutes is just that kind of that that empties. That's a fairly new piece. The 47 minutes we've been thinking about for a long time and been sharing that idea even for in person  meetings for a couple reasons. We've turned our calendars, especially in big organizations into the easiest game of Tetris ever.

Our meeting, our meeting, our meeting, this one stacked on top of the other. And there's a little bit of a perception when you're, when you're all live in the same space that maybe you need to gap because you've got to walk across the building, but virtually we just keep on stacking them. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

And so what it means is no one has time. Also meetings tend to expand to fill the space that they're in, right? Just like all your stuff. When you move into a new house, magically, once you unpack the boxes, fills every place you have without buying anything new. All right. And so the 47 minute meeting is designed to do two things.

One is designed to buy you some time, right? That 30 minutes, whether you invite people for coffee and chat, whether you turn on the meeting or just wait till 30 minutes past the hour or finish the 30 minutes before the hour. But the second thing is, it's a 47 is a weird number, right? It's a prime number.

People can't add 47 more than three times in a row. Just by putting your meetings as  47 minutes and sticking to them, you almost all but guarantee yourself a gap between meetings because someone's like, Oh, I see a gap on, on, on a Fred's calendar from 1247 until one hell, I can't even do the math, right?

Like one 20, whatever the hell the one 24, whatever that is. Right. And so that is the other piece. And it's just, it's novel enough and it's fun. Uh, 45 minutes is a really bright idea. Like that's the easiest thing, but what we do, and this is the challenge with meetings generally in virtual specifically, is that we make it so easy to call meetings.

That the people do right? Uh, it's people can procrastinate, right? So I don't have this conversation and think about it till I've got this meeting in three days, right? By putting a meeting in the calendar, I now have punted and don't have to work on it till the night before. The other thing is that we tend to underestimate just how expensive meetings are, right?

So an hour meeting with eight people is an eight hour meeting,  right? That's an entire day's worth of a person. And all of these organizations, we're talking with one of our big employers here in St. Louis about this exact same thing. They have a hundred thousand employees, give or take that a hundred thousand employees, uh, one meeting like that, like that's a million dollars, right?

Step of the finger. And we give people every single, uh, restriction on how they might spend money for a company, right? If I want to get it, If I want to get a 500 chair, I got eight layers of approval and triplicate. Right. But if I want to put 10, 000 of meetings on the calendar every month, no one bats an eye.

And so that's about it

Fred: that

Matt Homann: way. That's why it's unbelievable. Right. So I, as I, as I think about not just shortening your meetings in the 47 minutes or 17, you know, it's for even shorter one, it makes that we start to realize that our meetings have to have more purpose 'cause we've cut the time from them.

Uh, but the most important thing you can  do to make your meetings better is to not have as many of 'em.

Fred: Yeah.

Matt Homann: Right. There's lots of these meetings that can be emails. There's lots of these meetings that not everyone needs to be there. Uh, even as an example of this, the, the math will be difficult for me late on the Friday if I have that.

If, you know, I'm a ma, I'm a a manager. I have a a nine person team, so there's 10 of us. That hour long meeting where everyone takes six minutes to report out, right? I give my six minutes. Here's what's up with me. And then you go and then you go and you go that hour long meeting. Everyone's only getting really six minutes of value from it, right?

Or at least sharing the rest of the time. They're listening. If instead we required everyone to write for six minutes and put in a document, right, what have you been working on? That's one easy way to get rid of it. Right. The other way is if I'm the manager, so that 10 person meeting is a 10 hour meeting.

If I have a six minute conversation, one on one with everyone on my team, right, that's 12 minutes of time. You're six minutes in my six minutes. But now I've that the load of that meeting is two hours versus 10.  And, and you put that out to people and organizations are rarely measuring it. They don't want to know how effective their meetings are.

Cause they're afraid of what the answer will be. They don't train on meetings. Uh, you get more Excel training and how to use the HR tool to apply for vacation. In big corporations than you do on how to meet yet. All of your day is taken up with meetings. And so that for me was kind of one of the epiphanies in doing the work that we do.

We were always thinking like our meetings are group meetings are great, but people just kept on complaining like, Oh my God, I wish my meetings at work could be like this. And so that's where, that's where a significant amount of our focus is for the next couple of years is really starting to build out not just the tools that we use, but the tools that people can use to make their own meetings better.

Fred: So let's talk about tools for a second. So clearly whiteboards, there's digital whiteboards that are out there. Like, how are you, what tools are you using to make those meetings more effective? And, um, then just, uh, my six minutes, you know, I'm up at the whiteboard, you have to sit here and listen, like  what tools are you using for the interactivity?

What tools are you using that are giving. Um, giving your clients more power to be effective. So you

Matt Homann: know that I'm a technology nerd, and so the answer I want to give is not the answer I'm going to give. There are, first of all, we've never seen more innovation in the meeting space in the virtual collaboration space than now, right?

This is the moon race, the equivalent when it comes to these meetings. So the tools keep on coming out to keep on getting better and better. And so my initial idea at the beginning was this is we'll start with zoom. And figure stuff out, cobble some things together. And then once the tools catch up, we'll do amazing things.

And we started to realize that with most of our customers, we would have to spend an inordinate amount of time getting them to know how to use these tools that they've never seen. One of my tips is that, you know, if you implement a new tool, one out of three people won't learn it, know how to use it if they don't use it regularly.

And so I was expecting at this point, everything bespoke, all of these cool tools and our kit is very similar to  what it was at the beginning. We're getting better at using all of them, but number one, zoom, uh, no, one's catching up to zoom, right? They're catching up in bits and pieces, but then every time, every month I see their update, it's like, holy crap.

They clearly have a billion dollars worth of developers working on this stuff every day. So they are, they, they are winning the same battle that Facebook and Snapchat are right. Every time we see something cool, we duplicate it or we buy a copy. Yep, exactly. So, so zoom is still okay. Right. And they've, they've cured some of the security issues they had.

Uh, it's still not great. Uh, but it's good enough. The other tool that we use that came as a surprise to us because we play with a lot of other things beforehand. We use Google slides, right? We use worksheets all the time in our work. And this was something we stole from some teachers. That's where I've been getting most of my cool, uh, virtual meeting tips is, is in these teacher conversations because they have no resources and have thrown into this, right?

So you find a handful of these creative teachers. They're going to give you great meeting ideas. And so with the Google slide, we take our worksheet,  right, uh, that we would have used in person, we print out on cards, nice heavy card stock, 11 by 17, we throw it as the background of a slide image, right? We put some text boxes on top of it and it's good enough.

And Google allows you to edit as a stranger. You don't have to have permissions. You don't have to be signed in. You have to have a Gmail account. And so for most, that works fine. Uh, we have a couple of customers who can't use it, uh, in that case, when they, when they can't even access Google, we'll turn it, the PDA will turn it into an interactive PDF or, uh, you know, add some forms to it.

Uh, it's not great, but it, but with a screen share, it's almost as good. The other tool that we, uh, are warming to, and we've used a lot, but it took a while to kind of really appreciate it. And they keep advancing as well as a tool called mural, M U R A L dot C O. Uh, they're, they're, they're competitor, which is just as good.

Sounds exactly the same. The competitors Miro, M I R O. I just wish they would freaking buy each other or Google buys one and Microsoft buys the other. I don't care because no one remember can tell which one you're talking about. It's an online whiteboard,  right? It's you, but posted notes on we use intentionally maybe a 10th of its features because again, we're often bringing strangers into the virtual tool.

So all we want them to do is be able to put a post it note, right? Up on a wall. We even pre populate the post it notes, type on it, move it around and all the other stuff we'll handle because again, if we've got someone for a couple of hours, I don't want to spend 30 minutes walking them through how to click somewhere and do something, right?

Cause they won't do it ahead of time. They won't read the tutorial. They won't watch the video. And then we'll play a little bit with things like Mentimeter or other polling tools of those zooms polling is getting more robust. Uh, there's a handful of other tools that we really are liking, but they're just not quite ready for prime time, uh, from potentially some networking, some chat roulette style, some, uh, kind of bigger conference type tools.

Uh, but again, the world keeps on changing. And the problem is that everyone so far has been trying to duplicate the in person experience. So I  find a dollar for every virtual conference tool that just tries to replicate round tables with chairs. You could click on, it's like, my God. We don't need that, right?

The vendor hall. I know we'll talk about in a minute is the same problem. And so we've been using the simplest tools possible because it's not worth the trouble with our clients. And the nice thing about mural in particular, you talk about our artist, he's drawing on his iPad and they're popping into mural in almost real time.

So you don't get quite that exact same experience, but it's pretty robust and it gives you another good artifact. That is shareable. The exports are great on those. So that's the toolkit. I, like I say, I wish it were sexier, but sexy When you've got a big global financial services company just means their it hasn't learned to put it in the firewall yet Or you know or to block it So the moment you plan for it and then three days later they turn it on again and it doesn't work.

Fred: Keep it simple. Stupid, right? Stupid, simple.

Matt Homann: I'll tell you Fred, I'm not to interrupt, but to keep it  simple, stupid. The other thing that we're using as a telephone, uh, you can break people up into breakout groups and say to them, pair up, right? One, you know, pair up in two person breakout rooms, trade a phone number, take a walk for the next hour.

There you go. Talk about what you want to talk about. Walk around your. Walk around your condo and throw a load of laundry in, take a walk. Cause it's beautiful outside. Take your dog out. The simplest tools, particularly the telephone we've managed to turn everything into automatically on zoom. And I don't know where that memo came from, but we weren't even automatically on zoom when we were all in person together, like we were doing stuff on the telephone and via email and slack and so on and so forth.

So sometimes even just going back to the things that feel now quaint. Uh, and traditional, uh, can give some, some extra value to people.

Fred: All right. So we've talked about virtual in meetings and what you're doing facilitation. Let's let's just do a quick transition to the tweet to kind of bring it full circle and what kind of spiked this whole thing, which was bigger virtual conferences.

I actually was  attending two this week. I've been in a couple other early, early this year. At your point, people are trying to replicate the in person experience with these online platforms and tools. I sponsor conferences, you've sponsored conferences, you facilitated a conferences, but we just can't. We can't do virtual the same way.

So something's got to change your, your whole tweet. I'll call it a thread, but really it was a rant, but really a thread was about how to create better value for vendors that are looking to sponsor. And I'll tell you from a person who has had budgets and looks at sponsoring conferences for lead gen and demand gen, like the virtual versions of it all does not work.

It just is, even though the ones I was just at, or I have interest as an attendee, I wasn't going into the. attending to the vendor spaces, because, you know, I know how it works. I get on some lists. I don't want to be on, you know, I get barking, you know, marketed to you, but there has to be a better way for vendors to get value out of these virtual conferences.

You had a thread on this. Let's talk a little about what your thoughts were as far as how vendors. Can how  conferences can make things more valuable for vendors so they will actually want to spend money to be sponsors. I,

Matt Homann: so I, I, yeah, I'm, I, I think that the, of the three legged stool, uh, we've kind of figured out the first two.

We figured out how to deliver information to people online. Now I would submit that we should have never been doing much of that inside conferences anyway, right? It's all ubiquitous. It's available online. It's mostly free. Why do I need to set shoulder to shoulder face in the same direction watching someone read a PowerPoint slide when there's a dramatically better explainer video on the exact same thing on YouTube, right?

So, and that's, that's a hammer to my nail, right? Like, that's the thing that I rail against because even the traditional in person conference, that delivery model is antiquated and not particularly useful and certainly not tied to how we learn as humans. So put that aside. We can do that. Uh, the second thing is.

The networking, right? The serendipitous bumping into the hallway. We can kind of do that. There's some tools that are getting better. There's  the chat roulette style. There's the walk around and see a face and get matched up with an algorithm that says it's AI based upon your, uh, interests like that's okay.

Uh, it's not great, but it's getting better. What we haven't done, and I have lots of reasons for this, but what we haven't done is we've not delivered value to the vendors because, and the vendors are the ones who pay for everything, right? Your ticket. To Adobe max would be 10 times what it is if we didn't have vendors, right?

Cleo con, and even because Cleo is putting it on, but still there's a huge amount of subsidies, not only for the conference itself, but for the organizations that are putting them on, which are primarily nonprofits. And so. This first step they were, uh, they basically put, and this is a brought over generalization.

I know it's not true of everyone, but they kind of put their person in charge of the virtual vendor hall who was in charge of the vendor hall. Right. And some would argue that there's very little ROI from a vendor hall generally. Right. Depending how much you're spending. I'm in the rough

Fred: once in a while, but for the most part, as  people come into the, take your swag, get a thing.

They're not really in a decision making authority. They're not unless someone really comes. Interested in looking and seeking a vendor that that your services satisfy, but of the vast majority of them, that is a sliver that you're trying to get to. Then the majority of people that show up,

Matt Homann: that's right.

And so you think about that, but you also, the reason you're there is when you have the booth, you now also get a sponsor, uh, exclusive cocktail reception. You get to have the nice dinner with your core customers. You get to

Fred: Propositions

Matt Homann: there.

Fred: Yeah.

Matt Homann: Sweet to demo. Hey, come up. Let me show you that. Let me let you meet the CEO, right?

Those things are valuable and they're also missing from these virtual events. And because we have people who weren't particularly, um, in tune, and again, this is a broad overallization, probably unfair, but they had not spent their careers thinking about the virtual versions of these things, right? So they just, a vendor comes along as a, you know, a technology project, Hey, we can  give you a virtual vendor hall.

Great. We've already had people pay for those. So let's just transition them there. And then what happens is you realize that so much of the value is the serendipity of walking past someone in the vendor hall. That's why I'm there. I don't need to buy anything. And so when I don't have that to happen, it doesn't matter.

I don't need to go. I don't want to just read a white paper. Right. I don't want to get sold to by clicking a button. I, and there's no way for me to understand who's solving my problems, right? That's a problem in vendor halls generally, right? Because they don't like, it'd be great if they, if the Dewey decimal system applied to vendors and I knew this is part of this, the vendor halls where these things were, but no one wants to be next to all their competitors.

Fred: Right.

Matt Homann: Uh, and so what I proposed, uh, and it's been something we actually proposed in person to a gigantic legal conference more than a decade ago. Okay. And they bought, they thought it was dumb, uh, because it was outside of their traditional model. But here's what I would propose. Uh, and we're actually going to convene, uh, this is breaking news.

We're convening a virtual vendor summit here at filament at some point in the next two months in legal, but we might  repeat it in other, in other verticals, just to bring the vendors together to start to design what they want, because the conferences aren't, aren't going to come up with it on their own.

So my idea was, you know, well before the conference, you crowdsource from your attendees and your mail lists. And from industry experts, what problems people are trying to solve, right? How might I do this, right? And think for your company, Fred, what some of those things might be, right? Ooh, that's clearly in our sweet spot, right?

You come up with those, you coalesce them down into a handful of what might be 20. It might be 50. It might be 200, depending upon the size of the organization and the number of challenges in the industry. You then allow the vendors to either bid. Or, uh, pay to give a minute pitch in these sessions. So the sessions all happen again before the conference.

Right. Right. Let's say there's 50 of them. They're 20 minutes a piece. No, one's going to go to all of them, but they're organized by the challenge. Right. So if I know, for example, that I want a social media management platform, like how might I manage this?  Um, and maybe there's a small, medium and large version.

I'm like, Oh, I'm going to go to that session. Right. So 20 minutes, each 20 vendors a minute, pitch, pitch, pitch, pitch, pitch, pitch. I get either online or, uh, with my little, uh, score sheet at home, click. I want to, I want to hear more about that, right? Ooh, that guy was funny. Oh, that sounds interesting. Or I want to hear more about all of them that now.

Then I jump in and now my next session with you or your team is five minutes. Right. And now they're, they're a little qualified. Then after that, maybe it's the cop. Maybe it's, they all send you something. Maybe we'll do video, maybe I'll do a demo, whatever it is. Right. But the commitment is to those first small slices.

And then what you're able to do is a couple of things. One is that the, you know, you're able to charge the vendors for their participation, their pitch. Uh, you're able to make some, have some fun with it by giving awards for the best pitch, the funniest pitch, the most innovative or creative, and you're doing these multiple times, right?

Cause you've got all of these little tracks, some vendors might want to present  in 10 or 20 of them, right? Depending upon if you're the gorillas in the industry, they might legitimately be able to solve for each one of those, but what the attendees get. Is the attendees get, and I'm not even attendees, everyone gets a chance to say, Hey, that's a problem we have.

Right, Fred, I don't know how many people are on your team, but you might say, Hey, none of us, you know, I'm, I don't want to go into the conference, but Hey, will you, Cindy, will you take care of this one? Julie, will you do this one? Bob, will you do this one? And so now your entire organization, to the extent they want to get to see the pitches,

Fred: right?

Matt Homann: Right. Here's some and build your, uh, Uh, build your path in if you need to meet with them at a deeper level, if you need to get more information, et cetera. But what you do with that, and this is just a small part of how you might solve for the vendor experience, but now the vendors attend the conference.

As peers, right? They're not stuck on the floor there. I mean, the vendors are the experts. This is something that people tend to forget. The people who are paying attention to this industry more than the people who  are in it are the people who are trying to sell to it and the right to

Fred: have solutions to solve the problems.

Yeah,

Matt Homann: they're trying to design for the next 3 or 4 years of this industry, not just. You know put the fires out that are burning on the desks right now and so Imagine if that little piece do you need an exhibit hall, right? Probably not Do you imagine if my exhibit hall is like my virtual exhibit hall is what challenges do you want to solve?

Oh, I'm going to click on those and see those boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom Learn more that and that is just one again. One tiny slice. We need to reimagine this entire thing because we've learned in virtual meetings, whether they're small of five or 10 people or gigantic thousands, the experience isn't working.

And, and it's not working for lots of reasons, but part of the reason is and going back to this vendor piece is that you don't even know what to measure, right? Like it used to be sitting in a booth. The more, the more cards I get, the more, the more leads I put in his hands.  Yeah. So

Fred: the food chain says, Oh, you came back with so many scans.

This clearly justified. The sponsorship fee or something

Matt Homann: as we think about our budgets, as we think about that, like this is a big problem and where I think we're going to land and this is a fairly bold prediction. I think the even once we're in person, the emperor has no clothes is finally been shouted out loud.

And if there are virtual versions that deliver value, and it's not just value to vendors, right? It's value to attendees. Oh, yeah. Right. If there are ways to deliver that value virtually, if there are ways to deliver without having to pack up 50 people and bring an entire cadre of people to Las Vegas, Orlando, etc.

Pay the folks in the, at the hotel. I mean, hotels are kind of like a casinos and strip clubs. They're designed to take every penny out of your pocket. Right? So that's why the garbage can costs you 225. That's why the, to  plug in your video screen costs you a thousand, right? That's why pipe and cost you 20 grand.

Like those, like it's all designed for a business model that doesn't work. And so people are never incented to change an industry. That they are good at, right? That's the biggest problem with change is like, I know it's going to be better, but I'm an expert in this thing that everybody hates. I don't want to be bad at something again.

And so that's where I think there's a huge opportunity. Lots of scariness that we're never going back to everything in person. We're going to have these hybrid events from now on. If you can find a way to deliver value to people who aren't getting on the plane and to the vendors who might not want to send a team, but are still willing to drop a couple grand here and there on engagement, I

Fred: think it's

Matt Homann: going to happen.

Fred: It's true. And the engagement and value proposition is definitely worth more as a marketer and as someone that sponsors conferences than, than the random, you know, I'd rather have 10 more qualified than, than  a thousand scans at. I'm only going to get the 10 more qualified anyways. So,

Matt Homann: right. And I think that this is why we're excited about the summit is I think it's an oncom, but on it's an, it's incumbent on the leadership of vendors to redefine how they're measuring success, right?

If I've got a budget, a marketing budget. I'm going to want to spend it. Cause if I don't spend it all, I'm going to get less next year. And, and so my job isn't going to be, uh, to reinvent stuff. Cause it might turn out that I'm going to lose my, lose my budget or my role will become less important. But it's the leaders of these organizations who are, who are spending not insignificant amounts of money convened and said, you know, let's figure this out because the organ, the, the, the conference organizers aren't going to get there first.

Fred: No, because they're still banking the money they're making from sponsors blindly spending big money for perceived value. You know, and,  and hopes that they're matching you correctly. And they're struggling. They've lost the years of revenue. Yep. They have like there or more. There's a lot of companies that like Adobe is already announced next year, which is our biggest one that we've always gone to Adobe summit's going to be virtual next year.

We're like, well, that, that's interesting. It changes my budget for next year. Cause I'm not going to spend the same dollar value because that's not going to be the same in person and a bunch of other stuff that goes with it. So. So yeah, I love the idea of this whole, you know, reinventing something so, which is kind of your, your heritage.

So you've been the one that's always kind of gone against the grain ever since I've known you. And this will start back to you mentioned your recovering lawyer. And that's where I met you in my, my past life in the legal, the legal arena. And you came on the scene with your blog when you're practicing law, uh, called the non bill Blower.

And, you know, if you know anything about legal services, everything's about the billable hours, right? So if I call my lawyer, these, you know, they say, Hey, it's a minimum hour charge, even if it's a five minute conversation or it's a half an hour charge or whatever it is.  And, you know, that is not always going to be a value dollar value proposition doesn't, doesn't equate that way in the same world.

And so you were paving the way of saying, look. How do you deliver legal services on a value proposition and take the our thing out of the mix? Um, and you've, you've perpetuated that a little bit, I think, in here, in the filament as well. But, um, one of the stories that I learned about non billable, what you did, and this, you wrote about this years ago, was, um, back to the value proposition.

You gave, and I, it was at your legal secretary, your legal assistant, I forget who it was. You basically gave them the option every year to nominate. Who do I fire as a client? Who does that? Who says, Hey, um, um, you tell me who isn't nice to you or who is the biggest pain in the butt to deal with, or because employee happiness is just as important as being, you know, the value proposition of everything else.

Tell me about that story. Because to me, that is like how you've set the tone of just who Matt Holman is and your  ethos of. The things you do.

Matt Homann: It's funny. Uh, I just two days ago, put the non billable hour back online. I finally cobbled it together from a bunch of backups into a new Squarespace site. Uh, so it's all the links are broken, but all the content is there, right?

And not all of them, but most of them are broken. So the story goes. It was secretary's day when it was still called secretary's day. So is this 17, 18, 19 years ago, perhaps, whatever it was, I was a solo practitioner, a small, my hometown in Southern Illinois and a secretary's day was one of those that kind of sneaks up on you.

Uh, at least it did then. And I remember listening to the radio. Hey everybody, good luck. Tell the secretaries out there. Can't wait to see what your bosses do for you. And it was a moment of like, Oh crap. Um, I, you know, I would do, I do what I always do and make a phone call. To the florist in town against small town.

And they're like, Hey Matt, did you forget it again? Like everybody does. And, and so instead I, cause I've been writing my blog then it's like, this must've been about 16 years ago. Uh, I just started my blog  and kind of thought, why don't I, because I've been talking about client service and valuable clients, and I've got this client worthiness index and some other things that I've, I've, I've just built.

I said, well, I've talked to Janelle. I said, well, why don't you just, why don't you fire a client? Right. Let me know. And now to her credit, she knew that she wasn't going to fire my biggest client. Despite me, she picked a guy who was kind of asked to her, right? The guy that I didn't really know. Well, I did some corporate work.

I knew him from around town, but apparently whenever I was. Uh, late for something and it was always my fault. Uh, he would blame her. Uh, he was sexually suggestive. He was just not a good guy. And, you know, he may have been a thousand, $2,000 a year, so he wasn't a huge client even then. And so I let him go and then it was so much fun.

We're like, Ooh, who else can we fire? Because now she was empowered and I realized that. The people who treat your team, especially as the boss, the lawyer, uh, you're treated differently than  your team. And if they're treating her badly, they didn't deserve my service as good as whatever it was anyway. But what's funny, Fred, and I don't know if I think I, I don't know that this is in the blog.

Uh, but I've know I've told the story before is it within a year, nearly every other legal secretary in my hometown sent me the resume because she told everyone. And so I've always thought about that in a sense that, and my, uh, my intuition when it comes to clients has gotten better. We still make mistakes from time to time.

But that was a fairly simple thing to do, um, that I wouldn't have had to do had I remembered to order flowers the day before, been a little bit more thoughtful as a boss, but it was lots of those little things. And I feel like filament feels for me a lot like law practice because I was a solo. I got to try stuff, right?

I've tried too many things. Uh, if you'd asked my secretary, uh, or my, or my spouse at the time, but, uh, We can do the same thing here. Like there's something really valuable about, uh, trying experiments, right? Little things  you can try, see if they work and then doubling down and trying again and trying again and trying again.

Too many of us, when it comes to innovation in particular, first of all, we call it innovation, which isn't a good idea. Uh, but we think it's gotta be earth shattering. And needle moving like, ah, if we just make it a little bit better, that's pretty good. And then we make it better. I always think about our evaluations.

The ones that, uh, my team loves are the ones that say, wow, I thought it'd be great. And it was amazing. Right. The moving from a nine to a 10, the ones I value most are the ones that I thought it'd be terrible and it was okay. Right. Like that's moving from a two to a six.

Fred: Yeah.

Matt Homann: Right.

Fred: That's more significant movement.

Yeah.

Matt Homann: I think about that ABA meeting. That I facilitated in that boardroom. That is, uh, there was so much dysfunction there. I can't even, we, we, we need to, I was

Fred: there. I remember I was there. It was about, it was about some website redesign that I had a big part in. Yeah. I remember that conversation and that was, uh, that was eye  opening, but the

Matt Homann: feedback that some of the feedback was the, Oh, I thought it'd be terrible.

And it was okay. Which was like, Ooh, that. Pretty good.

Fred: And there you

Matt Homann: go.

Fred: No one thought that was going to be a good

Matt Homann: meeting.

Fred: We remember that 21st floor boardrooms. We had all, all of them opened up. That was, yeah, the hourly

Matt Homann: lawyers in that room was probably out of the 500

Fred: grand meeting. Yeah, I guarantee you.

So going back to that, well, Matt, this has been an absolute joy to catch up with you and to talk about a lot of cool things, especially what you're doing at filament. Um, I really give you a lot of applause to not only doing what you're doing at filament and the whole model that you have, but now being able to transition it online.

You know, it takes a lot of, I think it takes a lot for a company to say we need an outside facilitator to, to help us advance our company and, and generate ideas and get us to the next level. Um, I can't think of any better company than filament that I've observed that can do that for organizations. So really happy that we've got a chance to talk about that today.

Matt Homann: Um, I appreciate that, Fred, I know I'm cutting you off, but like,  that has been one of the things that we didn't talk about that has been probably the biggest, one of the biggest insights is that as much as I don't want to be virtual, we now can work anywhere. That like, we're not tethered to people coming to St.

Louis or people whose businesses are here. And so I appreciate those kind words. And I'd be a terrible entrepreneur if I didn't say hire us for your next high stakes meeting.

Fred: That's right. So go to film it. Yeah. The filament. com. And then if you, if I absolutely also recommend you sign up for Matt's newsletter, um, On the filament, uh, you get the Monday morning meetings that they're great.

Uh, he's got, you know, a ton of great insights that the one insight I brought about the whole 1347 minutes came from that. Um, there'll be a link in the show notes. I got a little bit of a link here on the video that we've got going on, but, um, Matt has been an absolute pleasure to talk to you and catch up.

I really, you know, can't wait to see you in person again. Um, but you know, until then we will do virtual. Um, but again, thanks again for joining. This is, you know, pretty much. Amazing to talk about some cool things you could do, um, virtually and you've been super successful at it and  wish you all the best as you continue to work through digital virtual world, Diane.

So

Matt Homann: thank you, Fred and, uh, and, and kudos back to you. It's been fun to watch you as you reinvented your career, uh, got smart and got out of legal. Uh, so kudos to you. Uh, sometimes illegal, I feel like, uh, like Michael Corleone, the third godfather, right? Just when I get out, they keep pulling me back in. Oh, yeah.

Oh, I still

Fred: got my tethers in there every once in a while, too. So

Matt Homann: Me too, little bits and pieces. But, uh, it's been fun to watch you do what you do. The podcast is great. And, uh, give my best to your, uh, to your family. I, when I see them, I'm not on Facebook much anymore, but when I see pictures from time to time, you've got a, you've got a wonderful thing going there.

Fred: Oh, I appreciate that. We didn't get a chance to talk about you, you and your family, but I'd really appreciate that and wish your family all the best as well. It's going on. So, um, so yeah, so we're going to transition out and, um, so it's been really great to talk to Matt. If you are not already subscribed to the podcast, um, be sure to hit up and go to according to fred.

com slash podcast. that you can actually subscribe. I'm on all the major platforms.  And, um, really wanted to say thanks again. If you really liked what you heard today, hit the subscribe, drop a five star review, drop me a review if you want as well. If you need to get in touch with me, feel free to drop me out at according to Fred or according to fred.

com and looking forward to catch you on the next one. Thanks again for joining.