eDiscovery Daily Blog

• September 2, 2016

We wrap up our week covering the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) annual educational conference of 2016 (otherwise known as ILTACON 2016) by discussing some of the observations from this year’s show.  Here are a few observations that I have put together, based on my own experiences and discussions with fellow attendees at the show.

Venue

The show this year was held at the National Harbor Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in the Washington/Baltimore area.  The venue is sizable, but there were several ILTA placards around the conference which made it easy to find the location for sessions and the exhibit hall quickly.  Session rooms were good sized, though, in a couple of the bigger “Maryland” conference rooms, there seemed to be an acoustics problem and it was hard to hear some of the speakers.  Some of that could be due to speakers not fully speaking into the microphones, but it seemed to be prevalent for all speakers, especially in one session that I attended on Wednesday afternoon.  Nonetheless, the venue was enjoyable with a couple of restaurants in the facility (and several more within walking distance) for breakout meetings over meals, if you chose a different location than the ILTA-sponsored meals.  And, as always, meals were included for conference attendees and there were many taking advantage of that option, as you can see here:

Environment

As for the ILTACON environment, the show once again included some of the innovations and perks that make it stand out from the rest.  For example:

Laminating Business Cards: ILTACON once again had a station for laminating business cards (with a strap to attach to your bag to differentiate it from others) and it literally takes less than a minute for each card (so, of course, I had two made – one each for my CloudNine and eDiscovery Daily cards).  :o)

Catch Box: As they did last year, ILTACON had the unique “Catch Box” microphone to pass around to audience members for questions or comments.  Clever way to get the microphone passed around more quickly (and with a little bit of fun).

 

ILTACON App: Once again this year, ILTA provided an app that you could download to your iPhone or Android that provided all sorts of information, including maps of the exhibit hall and conference center, an activity feed, agenda for each day with details about the event (including date and time, location, speakers, etc.), details about the speakers and exhibitors and materials to download.  Probably the best show app of any of the shows.

TheFilament.com: Down the hall from the second floor session rooms, there was a big board with instructions to read from several thought provoking questions, put your answer on a post-it note and post it on the board.  The artists this time from TheFilament.com, a team of meeting consultants, then represented those answers in cartoon form.  In addition to the cartoon you see at the top of this post, here are a couple of others in answer to the statement “The thing about legal tech that drives me crazy is…”

Of course, in a sign of the times (pun intended), the conference needed to set ground rules for any Pokemon GO aficionados in the group…

Exhibit Hall

This year, there were more exhibitors than last year (195, according to the web site) and the exhibit hall was bigger, which made it seem less crowded.  Exhibitors seemed generally pleased with the traffic and the attendance and one noted that less available distractions than last year (when the show was in Las Vegas) made for more interest and traffic at their booth.

Regarding one participant’s experience, Shawn Gaines, Director of Marketing Communications at kCura, told me: “As always, the community at ILTACON is outstanding.  While there aren’t as many attendees as Legaltech New York, ILTACON’s educational focus makes for really in-depth discussions, particularly with folks we don’t always interact with.  For example, we hosted a CIO Summit and met with a great group of CIOs that we don’t always get the opportunity to garner feedback from and understand their greatest needs.  Booth traffic is always fine, but as a vendor, ILTACON is really all about what you decide to make of it.”

Sessions

As usual, there were numerous sessions (over 170, by my count) and several of them related to litigation support, eDiscovery and information governance (including the ones we covered over the last four days).  So, there was plenty of educational opportunities at the show.  I attended several good sessions, here are a couple that stood out for me:

Preparing an ROI for eDiscovery Services: A Litigation Technology Operations Workshop: The session was hands-on and interactive workshop, enabling attendees to create a simulated return on investment (ROI) analysis for eDiscovery services.  Great idea and great exercise.

Refining Your E-Discovery Reporting: This session walked through a case study covering various phases of the process (from receiving a document request to sampling custodians to discussing metrics for processing, review and production).  Terrific presentation and discussion about eDiscovery metrics.

Extracurricular

Of course, no ILTA experience would be complete without some enjoyable times outside of the conference.  My colleagues and I had a thoroughly fun dinner with Mary Mack and Kaylee Walstad of ACEDS on Monday and an enjoyable lunch discussion with David Horrigan of kCura on Tuesday.  Mary also led me to a wonderful Beer for Bloggers happy hour on Tuesday where I got to meet several interesting bloggers and other folks including Kevin O’Keefe of Lexblog, Gretchen DeSutter of Thomson Reuters and Bob Ambrogi of the Law Sites blog (and others).  Thanks to Lexblog and Thomson Reuters for sponsoring the happy hour – it was great fun to talk blogging, other legal topics and other topics in general!

So, what do you think?  Did you attend ILTACON this year?  What did you think of the conference?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.