September 8, 2021

My Take on ILTACon 2021

I had the opportunity a couple of weeks ago to attend my first ILTACon conference. I attended the in-person event, which was held in the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, NV. Attendees were required to show proof of vaccinations in order to receive badges and masks were mandatory (but more on that shortly). 

The conference content

I attended a number of sessions - some in-person to support the speakers, some streaming from my room while I worked on other things. Overall I thought the sessions I attended were pretty good. They were as a rule very lightly attended - the biggest one I sat in on was 29 people in a room that could have held at least a couple of hundred. 

The expo floor was almost completely empty every time I went in except at lunch, and even then the attendees seemed to be more focused on refueling than in speaking with the vendors. (Aside: the food was really good; I like the repeated takes on "shakers" full of salad and dressing.)

The size of the conference, even if everyone had attended in person, didn't really match the size of the venue, so it felt a bit like the last couple of peas rolling around in an empty can. There were more than 2,100 registered, but only about 650 attended onsite, and at least two large vendors, Litera and iManage, didn't send their teams to the conference either. ILTA has some wrap-up stats at https://www.iltacon.org/wrapup21

I found some of the discussions with attendees fascinating - some of the issues they described are things that I think many organizations have already solved or at least addressed. I felt a definite maturity gap between this audience and the ones I'm more familiar with through AIIM and even ARMA. After talking to a couple of colleagues there, I think this gap was even more pronounced between law firms, who still seem to be very paper- and dictation-focused, and corporate law departments who seemed to me to be further along in their digital transformation efforts. 

I mentioned masks earlier. As I noted, masks were required unless an attendee was eating or drinking. I'd guess at least half the attendees made a point of carrying something to eat or drink pretty much constantly so they could dispatch with the masks to some extent. This was also the case at the networking events at the end of several of the days - everyone had a plate of food and a drink, and masks were the exception. 

And who brought the dog?! I didn't see a service vest on it; while I love dogs in general, this one looked absolutely miserable every time I saw it including at several of the networking events. 

The conference venue

As noted above, the conference was held at the Mandalay Bay hotel and casino in Las Vegas. The first couple of days we shared the hotel with some kind of music festival. Despite signs posted all over the hotel, many of those attendees went mask-free or poorly masked - lots of chin masks on display. In fairness this was also true of the random people walking around the hotel - again, lots of coffees and bottles of water on display to justify the lack of mask. 

Lots of restaurants, multiple Starbucks on site, a nice shopping area in the mezzanine between the Mandalay Bay and the Luxor, so it was a nice getaway. Crazy silly ridiculously expensive though - my large black coffee was $5, and the little Starbucks breakfast sandwiches went for $6.95 each. Dunno if this is how Las Vegas is now, but it was a little eye-opening. 

Conclusion

I think ILTACON was a well-designed event for its attendees, who seemed to be much more focused on improving existing law firm processes and operations than on things like e-discovery or information governance. I think they did a fair job with producing a hybrid event and ensuring the safety of attendees. I don't know how the solution providers felt about the value provided but it didn't seem like very much to me. As for me, I may be willing to give ILTA 2022 in Washington DC another shot, depending on my employer by then, but at this one I felt pretty out of place and disconnected between what I do and what the conference seemed to focus on. 

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