“Some people see things as they are never and ask why. I dream of things that never were and ask why not.”
For months, ILTA (the International Legal Technology Association) remained committed to its annual in-person conference in Nashville on August 23 through 27. As most of you know, the ILTA Conference is on the largest in the legal tech space.
As 2020 drug on and the pandemic got worse, we all saw most events either canceling or going virtual. ILTA stubbornly and almost single-handedly hung on to the idea that we would be back to normal by August. As March turned into April and April turned into May and June, most of us thought ILTA would cancel the whole thing at the last minute. That it couldn’t shift fast enough to virtual to have a worthwhile conference.
But on June 7, ILTA boldly announced the Conference was on, and it would be completely virtual. Could ILTA do it? Could it shift that quickly? (For those of you who have participated in event planning, especially one as big as ILTA’s annual, you know planning it on a three month timeline is well neigh impossible.)
The ILTA>On Virtual Conference
Last week ILTA held its virtual Conference reimagined as ILTA>On. What Joy Heath Rush, CEO of ILTA, and the ILTA leadership did was execute a remarkable pivot. ILTA was bold. It tried new things, most of which worked. It put on a conference that is probably now the gold standard, at least in legal tech circles. ILTA pulled it off in spades.
First things first. I am tired of hearing people begin a conference by saying this is the first and hopefully last virtual conference. Or, as Bradford
