LinkedIn “Netiquette” — Part 2
About 6 months ago I posted a thread on LinkedIn ranting about peoples (mis)use of the ‘Connections’ feature of LinkedIn. It has proven to be one of the most virulent, commented on and opinionated threads in the land related groups on LinkedIn. To date it has 78 comments and 32 ‘likes’. Today I’m going to re-write that post, because I’ve gotten more perspective over the last few months and I’d like to clarify my thoughts. However, don’t expect to see me radically changing my views…. You can choose to connect with people on LinkedIn from a variety of places on ...
AAPL Annual Meeting 2013 – A Quick Recap
I had the opportunity to attend the AAPL Annual Meeting last week and I wanted to share some thoughts about it. I won’t go into too much detail on the the particular events, education or festivities — but if you’d to see more about it then you can check it out at the AAPL Annual Meeting website page. As some of you know, I don’t work as a full-time employee for an oil & gas company. This means that I had to make the decision to pay for the cost of attending this function myself. It was not inexpensive after ...
Social Networking 101
Most of you probably think this will be another article lambasting the improper use of LinkedIn and Facebook, or asking you not to be a bad twit(ter). Fortunately, I think many of you are getting the point and don’t need to be lectured on how to use (and not use) social media. What I want to talk about today is networking with your colleagues in a social way. Many landmen I know like to tell me about how they are really working on ‘networking’, or I will get an email telling me that they are ‘networking’ to get a new ...
Contest: A Year of WriteThat.name For Free! (Contest Over)
If you read the article I recently wrote about WriteThat.name, you’ll be expecting this contest. The folks over at WriteThat.name have volunteered to give away a free year of their premium service to one of our members. To enter the contest you should be using Gmail, Outlook (Desktop Version), or Google Apps Email. You need to do two things to get in the contest: Sign Up for Email Updates from LandmanInsider.com. You can choose to get an email whenever new articles are posted, or only once a week. Leave a comment on this page, so we know you are interested ...
My Newest Networking Tool – WriteThat.name
As some of you might now, I occasionally write about companies or products that you will like, do really cool things, or meet a need that I have. A problem I have had for a while is that through all the social networking and emails I’ve amassed a ridiculously sized contacts database in Gmail. The size isn’t the problem though, my problem is that I couldn’t possibly take the time to update all the contacts as people move between companies, cities, and phone numbers. Everyone knows that I think networking is important, and you can’t network too well if you ...
Gloom and Doom: What’s a Landman to do?
It’s probably safe to say that we have all personally experienced, or had a good friend who has personally experienced some downtime over the last few years. The United States is swamped in uneconomic dry gas, and even some of the wet gas is not worth drilling. Historic oil plays have been a place to hide, but by their very nature these plays require a certain amount of skill not all possess. I’ve seen a ramp-up over the last six months of experienced landmen who are looking for work, and I thought it was time to put some thoughts down ...
What Have You Done This Month to Better Yourself? A Challenge.
Over the last few months I’ve gotten so many phone calls and emails from great people in the land business who are looking for work. One of the first things I always ask them is “What have you done lately?” The answer I usually get is some variation of “well I was working for so and so and doing this and that and then the plug got pulled on the project.” Then I have to re-phrase my question, and ask them what they’ve done for their own professional development lately. More often than not I get a bit of silence ...
HAPL South Texas Social 2013 – A Great Event
I had the good fortune to attend the HAPL South Texas Social Thursday night (March 21, 2013), and I must admit that I had a great time (along with about 200 others). I’ve never been to Armadillo Palace, but it was a great venue. You’ll know you’ve found Armadillo Palace when you see the HUGE armadillo outside the building. The South Texas Social Committee, headed up by Joe Dichiara, did a great job. The process of getting a name tag and armband at the door was quick and painless, and they even had door prizes (yours truly won one!). ...
Landman Websites I Check Often
I thought I would do a quick post this week just detailing some of the places on the internet that I frequently visit. I also felt that it would be a nice thing to give credit to these sources, as they often give me inspiration for the blogs I post here. So without further ado, here is my list of places that I go: www.landpro.com/landnews.asp Paul Nielsen runs LandNews, and has done so for quite some time. If you haven’t ever met Paul, he’s a great guy and does the industry a wonderful service by running LandNews. He posts available ...
50 Ways To Leave Your Broker
One of the complaints I commonly hear is that newer landmen aren’t getting the diverse training that is necessary for them to be successful over the long term. The concept of ‘specializing’ is turning into having a landman with 5 years of experience who has only bought leases or only run title from disk. Regardless of my personal thoughts on using the number of years of experience, I think that it is the landman’s job to make himself a professional with a good background of work experience. What I see happening is that landmen get a chance with a broker, ...
