The amount of Twittering at ILTA this year was pretty phenomenal. I know that some sessions were covered so well that you really, truly did not need to be there to cover the flow of the session.
I was sitting in an iManage session and following the tweets from the very popular session on Leadership, and felt like I was actually able to attend two sessions at once.
With all of this Twitter activity though, it can be hard to go back and read what was said. Lucky for all of us, Niki Black has been collecting up the best tweets from the various keynote sessions and she has archived them on her Legal Tweets site. I suggest checking it out if you want to see what was said on Twitter. You can also simply do a search using the #ilta09 tag on Twitter and find all the Tweets or limit the search by keyword or date.
I posted a few hundred tweets. What was everyone’s thoughts on the use of Twitter at ILTA this year? I know that I found a number of new people to follow and was told a number of times that people appreciated the coverage. Always looking for more feedback though.
What a difference 12 hours makes! Tonight's recap of the Tuesday sessions at ILTA09 turned out amazingly well. Everyone got into the discussion, especially on this mornings Gen Y Super Session and the discussion on Litigation Support, and the whole episode has a nice flow to it. This episode is quite a bit longer than the past two, and it is absolutely worth a listen.
Astute listeners will realize that my first item was the same thing I talked about in episode 2. I should not have made my notes on the same card, the search engine session was on Monday (not Tuesday) :)
We would love to hear your thoughts on the episode, and would love to hear our conversation continue in the comments here and online.
I promised this would be posted soonish, about 14 hours ago. Better late than never.
In episode 2 we talk about the best sessions from Monday and what we are looking forward to in the Tuesday sessions. We recorded this episode on Tuesday morning actually and had a few issues with the podcast recording. You will notice after the introduction that it jumps straight into Melanie talking. Don't try and adjust your settings, I just had a technical malfunction. Later in the podcast you can hear some a few people who were working in the room that we decided to duck into for our make shift recording studio. Technical difficulties aside, there is plenty of discussion still included.
Comments are welcomed and encouraged, we look forward to hearing from you.
Well I've finally found some time to actually stop, drop and write down a couple of thoughts about this wonderful adventure we call ILTA09!!! It's been fun getting here, so here goes!!
I have a laundry list of topics that I'm interested in, and I'm excited to investigate as many as possible during this conference:
Infrastructure and Systems: We've implemented several datacenters this year, as well as a couple of other large projects. I'd like to see what's on the horizon in the Systems and Operations world, what new challenges hang in the balance and investigate new trends in the field.
Project Management: Implementing large projects thrusts most functional managers into the wonderful world of Project Management. While we've made great progress in our PM initiative, I'd like to get as much information as possible focusing on PM from an IT systems point of view as opposed to an applications development point of view.
E-Mail Management, EAS and IDOL: There's been lots of chatter among my applications and e-discovery colleagues regarding this topic. I'm very interested to learn more about this topic.
Mobile, Remote and Wireless vs. IT Operations: Both tracks are on the same day......AARRGH!! We will have to be creative, thank goodness for great presentation materials!!!
There are many more topics of interest, but will save some for a later discussion..... Now, it's off to visit with vendors at the Exhibit Hall!!!
Tom Koulopolus, the founder of the Delphi Group, gave a very interesting Keynote address this morning to kick off the ILTA 09 conference. The topic was innovation and how to drive innovation in our enterprises with less.
A couple of main points stick out to me from his presentation.
Innovation shapes us, we don’s shape it.
This means a lot to me and the way I think about interacting online. I am constantly watching the way that the internet, and the social media space in particular, change and I adapt the way that I work with the web tools as those changes are made. This is not just simple UI changes, but very significant ways in how we share and consume information. RSS, Twitter, URL shortening, search and web analytics all have played a big role in how I am accessing and re-sharing information online. These innovations are driving the way that I act online.
Behaviors are very, very important. Watch them change, then you get innovation.
How many times do you hear people say, “we can’t do that here it is not in our culture” or “where do you think you work, that will never fly here”. Firm culture is often an inhibitor to change at a law firm, and it is this behavior that you have to watch in order to get real innovation in your enterprise. If you understand the behaviors and can adapt them to move forward you are able to affect real innovation in your firm. The idea of changing behaviors reminds me of an article I read a while back called the 10 Faces of Innovation. In the article, the author spends some time talking about the destructive force playing the “devils advocate” can be to innovation. Changing that one behavior in people can make a big difference in how people share and exchange ideas.
Social networking leads innovation because it creates risk and threatens the status quo.
How important is this for the legal industry? I already mentioned the discussion on the ethics of social networking, and it has continued to be a hot topic. In the risk adverse law firm, social networking is going to be all about fighting through endless reams of red tape. It is going to mean that lawyers at all levels are going to be sharing opinions and commenting on those opinions. It means that partners are going to look to the work done by associates on wiki’s and blogs and use that work in their own practice. It means that information about clients and people will start to filter out of their silos to everyone in the enterprise. That is quite a change for a law firm, it is not the status quo.
It is not about invention, its about the way technology forces us to behave. It's about creating value.
This is the hard one for me, as the IT guy I want everything to be about technology. However, so much of social media and networking is not about technology. Technology is just the enabler, and it can be as seamless in our lives as a pen and legal pad. It really is about making a connection through these tools in much the same way you do when there is no technology more advanced than a hand shake involved. I heard this a number of times today in the E 2.0 track, it is the connections you make that have the value not the path you took to get there.
I think at the end what I am taking away from the keynote is that the world is changing, people are changing, the way we see the world is changing, it is our job as professionals to look at all of these changes and ask what they are and why they are going to work (or not work) for our companies.
Let me leave everyone with one of my favorite videos from You Tube.
Conference officially kicks off tomorrow, but Sunday has it’s fair share of activities. I started the day with a trip into the city, and a whirlwind tour of three museums. I was able to get my shopping for the kids out of the way, one less thing to worry about.
The first session of the day was the new Communities of Interest meetup. I decided to join in with the other social networkers and meet a few of fellow twitterers in real life. The room for our meetup was closed, and there was some discussion on whether or not that meant we were supposed to be meeting virtually, but we decided to stay for a face to face discussion.
The discussion was awesome, and quickly turned to the issues around ethics and social media policy. Quite a firms have taken a serious look at creating a social media policy, and have researched the policies of other companies, firms and many (even all) of the various state bar groups. It was a very interesting discussion and one that I need to do some serious thinking on for my firm. It was mentioned that IBM, Intel, the New York Times and the AP all have good policies that can be used as a reference (I was not able to find links to the NYT or AP policies in a quick search). Some other searches that might be useful to those wanting to research more on social media policies can be found at Google News, Blog Search and Twitter.
There has been a good amount of talk about the social media aspects of this years conference. This is certainly the best year to not be attending conference as it will be so easy to see, hear and understand what is going on. The official conference blog had an article the other day about the social media aspects of conference which is a worthwhile read if you have not already. I think the big take away from conference, especially for those who are not 100% sure on the whole social networking thing, is summed up nicely in the article with this:
“I feel like I need a personal testimony before I can imagine ways to suggest employing it to the advantage of my Firm…”
Hopefully everyone leaves conference this year with a better understanding of social media and how it can be utilized. It will be interesting to see what changes are made in firms when we get to the 2010 conference, social media is here to stay.
How is social media/networking playing into your daily life, and your attendance at conference?
The four of us discuss the topics that most interest us this year, as well as a few sessions we are interested in attending. We finish up by promoting a few of the sessions we are presenting.
Considering this is the first time any of us have podcasted, I think the episode came out quite well (even with my inability to say the word implications).
We will be recording an episode each day, and look forward to any comments you have on the show. Download
The following ILTA sessions were mentioned in this episode.
