I wonder if there are some of the big ILTA parties on Wednesday evening? It does seem somewhat like perfect planning that all my recommended session picks for Thursday start in the afternoon!

Day Four (Thursday 30th August) sessions

Going Mobile with WorkSite Mobility (Thursday 2pm, Hashtag #AUT2) 7pm UK time

I wonder if there are some new developments in WorkSite Mobility? I watched an interesting session on ILTA TV online yesterday where a law firm was discussing the benefits of the Netdocuments mobile offering, in that they expose a webdav interface so that iPad apps like iAnnotate can access the DMS directly. Be interested to see what HP Autonomy are doing in this space.

The Mobile OS Platform Roundup (Thursday 2pm, Hashtag #CTPG5) 7pm UK time

What I’m interested to hear from this one is whether the twitter view of BlackBerry’s in law firms is the reality. I know I’ve been a proponent of “BlackBerry is dead” online postings, but when you really look at it from an old school lawyers point of view, one who just wants email and a physical keyboard, is there anything else out there? Also is Mobile Device Management for other devices ready for a large scale implementation yet? It does feel we’re almost, but not quite there and it’ll be perhaps 1-2 years before the RIM death knell sounds. Wonder what the session concludes?

Top Technology Issues for Law Firm CIOs in 2012 (Thursday 2pm, Hashtag #TECH9) 7pm UK time

BYOD? Email Management (general storage management in fact)? What else is on the radar?

The Future of Data Delivery or: How I Learned to Stop Browsing and Love the App (Thursday 3:30pm, Hashtag #APP13) 8:30pm UK time

Should We Build an App for That? (Thursday 3:30pm, Hashtag #THO4) 8:30pm UK time

With Windows 8 on the horizon with its Marketplace, are we in Legal IT ready for the shift to Apps? Or will HTML5 keep us all in the browser? Or worse will we continue with our fat clients (that’s the PC client, not the one that pays your bills!) Should be two interesting sessions discussing “appification” of Legal IT.

The Virtual Desktop As a Mobile Solution: Is the Mobile Desktop Ready? (Thursday 3:30pm, Hashtag #CTPG6) 8:30pm UK time

I remember Larry Ellison talking about the network computer back in the mid-90s, there was a guy who had vision way beyond Mr Jobs! Here we are today talking about essentially what he was advocating nearly 20 years ago. Will be interesting to hear from firms who have gone virtual desktop internally (replacing the desktop in the office) rather that just mobile. Also how people are coping when the “desktop” goes offline.

Ramifications of Commingling Personal and Professional Data (Thursday 3:30pm, Hashtag #INFO11) 8:30pm UK time

Apparently “Commingling” literally means “mixing together”, I did not know that! But this is a key issue that is raised as a real risk by many clients and auditors. The demand that we as law firms separate corporate and personal data, but how do you do that? Will be watching this hashtag to find out!

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So that’s it for ILTA 2012 and my posts. There have been some good sessions by the look of it, I’ve been a bit disappointed in the quantity of tweets on some of the hashtags this year. But there have been some good blog posts from the conference and the ILTA TV live streams were very good. Maybe in future ILTA needs to really encourage bloggers to get posting and generate more online buzz?

Day Three (Wednesday 29th August) sessions

Office 2010 and Windows 7: One Year Later (Wednesday 11am, Hashtag #DASPG5) 4pm UK time

It seems that this year was the year of Office 2010 and Windows 7 (as predicted in my top 5 for 2011), we all stretched Windows XP and Office 2003 right to the very end. Or was it right to the point where Microsoft corrected the Vista mistake and completed development of Office (Office 2007 with the ribbon in some but not all apps anyone?).

For those yet to take the plunge, this looks like the perfect session where firms can tell their war stories so you can learn from them. For me I’ll be watching to see who took the docx route and learn whether they say this as a benefit or an extra pain in the rollout. Also be interested to hear in the session whether anyone on the cusp of a rollout has decided to wait for Windows 8 and Office 2013?

Tablets and Enterprise Content Management: The Tornado Strikes (Wednesday 11am, Hashtag #ECMPG1) 4pm UK time

I’m not in the slightest interested in the e-discovery angle of this session. But I am interested in how people have tackled the following “Tablets can also wreak havoc as users move and store content directly on the devices”. As the synopsis says “what policies and solutions have been developed to control enterprise content on tablets”. This is a real problem we’re tackling right now as I’m sure are plenty of others. The management of data and services on personal mobile devices is an emerging theme this year at ILTA from the look of the sessions, so it may be too early to get real war stories and solutions, but let’s watch the hashtag!

Play-Doh, Legos and Law Firms (Wednesday 11am, Hashtag #INFO7) 4pm UK time

First off I need to get something off my chest, the plural of Lego is Lego, it’s like Sheep! That feels better 🙂

I am really looking forward to reading the tweets from this session, the title has a real ring of TED about it (that’s www.ted.com not TED the movie!). The synopsis is equally intriguing, with the starting sentence “If you could build a law firm from scratch”. Will the session live up? I hope so.

An Email Archiving Nightmare: There Is No Magic Fairy Dust (Wednesday 11am, Hashtag #TECH7) 4pm UK time

The New Wave of Email Management (Not the Same Old Fruitcake) (Wednesday 3:30pm, Hashtag #ECMPG3) 8:30pm UK time

Unless the volumes of email start to drop off, I am coming round to resigning myself to the point made in the synopsis for the first session, “Email storage needs are growing and its unrealistic to make attorneys move email messages into a DMS”. However I don’t agree that keeping it all in a big archive bucket with retention policies is the answer either, after all there are valid reasons why a team in a law firm would want all their electronic document and email under one matter, the electronic file.

So I’m hoping the second session in particular will suggest some real alternatives, I’ve a few ideas myself but I don’t think anyone is doing them yet.

ILTA TV PANEL “Is It Time To Move the DMS To The Cloud?” (Wednesday 1:20pm, Hashtag #ILTATV3) 6:20pm UK time

The battle of the big three, apparently this ILTA TV slot will have OpenText, HP Autonomy and Netdocuments discussing this question. Should be interesting!

I think even if you’re not at ILTA you can catch it online here. http://www.livestream.com/ii3tv

Social Media and KM: What Can Your Organization Learn from the U.S. Military and Intelligence Services? (Wednesday 1:30pm, Hashtag #INFO8) 6:30pm UK time

If there is one session that should light up the hashtag, this is it. Looking forward to seeing whether this session can prove that you can get the key messages from a session across online.

Desktop Globalization: We’re Not in Kansas Anymore, Toto! (Wednesday 1:30pm, Hashtag #APP9) 6:30pm UK time

And finally on Wednesday there is a session where I have a fair bit of experience. However what interests me is that all the speakers are from US International Firms, in that the original origins of the firms stem from the US rather than the UK. So although I’m sure the challenges faced are very similar I’ll be interested to see whether the solutions are the same.

Continuing my daily look at tommorrows ILTA 2012 sessions from the other side of the pond. Here’s my pick of Tuesday’s sessions with a few comments.

Day Two (Tuesday 28th August) sessions

Make the Move: Autonomy’s Cloud for Information Management (Tuesday 11am, Hashtag #AUT1) 4pm UK time

This could be an interesting space in the next few years. Netdocuments had a bit of a head start with a DMS in the cloud, but HP Autonomy seem to be shifting into this space now. I can’t tell yet exactly how the Autonomy offering works, is it “hosted worksite” or something totally different? Also I can’t tell how wide the scope of this session is, will it include email archiving and/or consolidated archiving as well as the DMS offering?

Either way there are obstacles still to overcome regarding where you’re storing your client data, but once these are satisfied then the shift to cloud storage does seem attractive. Especially if the architecture behind is infinitely scalable. So be interested to watch this hashtag to see what comes out of the session.

Epona – DMSforLegal – Doc Management on SharePoint (Tuesday 11am, Hashtag #SPOT2) 4pm UK time

Ah SharePoint as a DMS. For big firms I think Clifford Chance have answered our questions. But for mid sized down Epona seem to be doing a good job in this space. I’m still sure that for all its clunkiness there is some room for SharePoint in the DMS space, especially with a light Legal skin over the top. It’s especially attractive for those using foundation (ie the freebie SharePoint bundled with Windows Server) to help reduce costs.

OneNote for All Your Notes: A Hands-On Session (Part One) (Tuesday 1:30pm, Hashtag #HAND4) 6:30pm UK time

OneNote for All Your Notes: A Hands-On Session (Part Two) (Tuesday 3:30pm, Hashtag #HAND4) 8:30pm UK time

Ah, my favourite piece of software in the last few years. I love OneNote!  The ability to chop and change your notes in as flexible a way as the paper notepad has led me to ditch the paper and carry my laptop into meetings. Outside of work I’ve my Windows Phone, my iPad and my home PC all sync’ing the notebooks up to my SkyDrive. Take notes from anywhere, any device and consume them somewhere totally different!

We just need to start to exploit in the workplace now, shared notebooks across departments in law firms. I know our Australian IT team use OneNote to share information across the front line teams successfully. Imagine if a lawyer could have his OneNote on their iPad or Windows 8 surface sync’d to a the team back in the office. Be interesting to hear use cases from this session.

Kraft Kennedy: Benefits of Microsoft Exchange 2013 for Law Firms (Tuesday 1:30pm, Hashtag #SPOT3) 6:30pm UK time

I have to admit I know nothing about Exchange 2013 and what it brings, so I will take a look at this hashtag in the hope that people tweet the key benefits over Exchange 2010.

A Preparatory Guide to BYOD (Tuesday 1:30pm, Hashtag #TECH5) 6:30pm UK time

Mobile Access to Your DMS (Tuesday 3:30pm, Hashtag #CTPG3) 8:30pm UK time

BYOD (Bring your own device), I now see this as being two distinct areas. First “I want my desktop” and second “I want an app to do…”. The ability to bring in your own MacBook for the former and your Windows Phone for the latter. The iPad can cross either depending on how you want to use it.

The first instance I suspect most firms have done or are in the process of doing, it starts with remote access which is then only a step away from the ability to bring in your laptop to the office and access your firms desktop. The second though is a little more tricky, especially if you want the experience you get on your own iPhone (think GOOD vs access to your own Gmail on your smartphone, the former brings security but compromises the experience). It’s new and I suspect we won’t see really traction here until Windows Phone 8 and iOS6.

I hope the #TECH5 session is more about the “I want an app to do…” though and also that finally we have a really well though out secure app with great user experience in #CTPG3!

IT: Putting the “Person” Back into Personalized Service (Tuesday 3:30pm, Hashtag #APP7) 8:30pm UK time

I read a great post recently, that although about rip-off Britain, showed a great example how poor customer service can be when you don’t think like your customer and don’t understand what they are after from you (see this article and look for the discussion with CrossCountry rail!)

Be interested to see how others are looking to re-engage IT with their customers in law firms.

I decided I needed some stimulus to get blogging again, so I’ve set myself a little challenge for the week. I’m not sure I’ll make it, but here’s what I’m going to do. I can’t make ILTA 2012 so I’m going to virtually join you all in Washington, the challenge for myself is a post a day for the duration of the conference. Each evening (UK time) I will pick out what I think will be interesting sessions from the following day and post some of my thoughts on the topic. Simple right?

Day One (Monday 27th August) sessions

A Winning Future with Windows 8  (Monday 11am, Hashtag #ETPG1) 4pm UK time

Be interesting to hear what people say are the benefits for Windows 8 in a law firm. I’ve used it for a few weeks now and initially I raved about it, as a consumer user it is excellent. If I had my email in Hotmail/Gmail, used social media, music & videos and played a few games then it’s great and the “metro” interface is simple and effective. However I progressed onto more “desktop” functions and the interface started to irritate me. And this is what I would call my “work interface”. The nub of the problem is that corporate applications are not designed for it and this for me will be the sad fate for Legal IT, vendors are failing to keep up with Office 2010 and Windows 7. The fundamental shift in thinking of the interface in Windows 8 means I can’t see it working in Legal IT. Which is a crying shame as on a tablet this OS will be fantastic!

Vendors please prove me wrong.

Office 2010 … Sans the Add-Ins (Monday 1pm, Hashtag #DASPG2) 6pm UK time

One simple answer for this, “Yes please”!! I would love to be in this session, this is the ultimate goal for Office in Legal IT. In our firm we’ve 18 or 19 add-ins that load within Outlook 2010 alone (depending on your persona), just to halve the number would be excellent. Sure with our latest i5 processor machines with SSD storage it’s quick enough for now, but 3 or 4 years into the life cycle? Please if you go to this session, tweet lots using the hashtag!

A Business Case for Lync 2010 Unified Communications (Monday 1pm,  Hashtag #TECH2) 6pm UK time 

Desktop Videoconferencing Apps: Finally Ready for the Enterprise (Monday 2:30pm, Hashtag #DASPG3) 7:30pm UK time

Doing these two together as they cover similar ground. The time is definitely now. We’ve had Lync for over a year now and it transforms your way of working in multi office law firms. It’s not just the video conferencing either, you get presence (being able to see who’s available right now), IM (use lots, cut down the email!) and the low call costs (think how much you save calling international using Skype, then multiply by the numbers in your offices and the calls you make in a day!). I’ve said before, Lync to me feels like email back in the early 90’s. It’s a internal corporate tool now, but in a few years it’ll spread out to your clients and firms start to “federate” with each other.

Using Your DMS for Knowledge Management (Monday 2:30pm,  Hashtag #KMPG3) 7:30pm UK time

Just be interested to hear how firms are achieving this. Is it through bolt on enterprise search engines? If so are additional taxonomy tools used to fill in the lack of flexible custom meta data with current DMS systems? I can see how it can be achieved using separate managed libraries, but are people leveraging the documents in situ, weeding out the mountains of irrelevant material and finding the knowledge they are after?

Matter Centricity and the Impact on Lawyer Efficiency (Monday 2:30pm, Hashtag #THO2) 7:30pm UK time

Really? Are we still talking about matter centricity in 2012? Come on own up, who’s not doing it?

The End of Training? (Monday 4pm, Hashtag #DASPG4) 9pm UK time

It’s time for YouTube isn’t it? I mean when you need to fix you home PC or need to learn how to do that function in a piece of software at home what do you do?

Google it, watch it.

A cheap HD camcorder and a low cost video editing tool, all we need is a vendor to offer cost effective YouTube type infrastructure for us to use inside the law firm (after all some training material we may not want to share on YouTube).

Autonomy, an HP Company: One Year In (Monday 4pm, Hashtag #SV4) 9pm UK time

All the vendors seem to have the following notes this year “This session is open to ILTA Law Firm and Law Department Members ONLY”, I know IP is valuable but really?

Anyway, yes it’s been a year so will be interesting to hear what is said. Or will the hashtag be redacted?