ALM's Henry Dicker, executive director of LegalTech
Heading to the Big Apple for the Super Bowl LegalTech New York? Well, aside from the most important advice that applies to events at both Met Stadium and the New York Hilton Midtown (wear comfortable shoes and bring very warm coats) here's some instant mentoring for newbies:
>> Coat Check: Try and map out your session attendance beforehand, and leave plenty of time to hit the show floor--you will learn a lot about current market offerings. Leave your coat in your room; the coat check lines tend to be longer than the lines at Space Mountain during spring break. --Patrick Oot, LTNY 2014 educational advisory board chair; senior special counsel for e-discovery at the U.S.Securities and Exchange Commission, Washington, D.C.
>> Be Prepared: The most important suggestion for getting the most out of LTNY is do your homework. Most of us come to the event with one or two specific areas where we want more information. In the early days, I would just wander the halls and figure I would see things that interested me. As the number of exhibits grew, I realized that this no longer worked, as I would return home and weeks later I found that I had missed exhibits from vendors that could have been quite helpful.
Study the list of exhibitors (w ww.legaltechshow.com) and make a list of companies and booth locations from whom you would like more information. Pay attention to the emails you are getting from vendors. If you get an email describing a product that seems to be related to an area of interest, note the name of the company and their booth location. Discard those that don’t relate to an area of need. I automatically discard those that contain nothing but adjectives (Greatest! Newest! Best!) and do not really describe the product or service they are selling. (A word to vendors that wonder why their emails don’t generate any follow-up: Show, don’t tell.)
You have a limited amount of time for the exhibit hall, no matter how long you are spending in New Your, so use your time wisely. --Theodore Banks, partner, Scharf Banks Marmor, Chicago.
>> Sprint: For newbies, do a lap of the vendor floors to get a feel for things, then go back and target those vendors that have products or services you are interested in. Take a look at the sessions. Balance session attendance with walking the vendor floor. Don't get overwhelmed the first day. And enjoy New York City! Go see a show and travel to Little Italy or Chinatown for some great food! For veterans, touch base with your colleagues, network, and go see a show and eat great food.--Chris Romano, CIO, Ward and Smith, New Bern, N.C.
>> Job Fair: Legal Tech is a cornucopia of career ideas and opportunities. If you're looking for a new job, a morning or afternoon of strolling the hundreds of exhibitor booths is the most efficient way I know of to gather ideas and connect with decisionmakers. In 2001 I got a job as technology counsel by chatting up the people at the less-busy booths--it turned out one was manned by the CEO, who was my new boss less than a month later. --Patrick Burke, counsel, Reed Smith.
>> Coffee Helps: Pop open your device, and hit the LTNY app that you have already downloaded, and hone in on all the cool stuff you can find. (fuel up on coffee first). Catch all the demos that you can squeeze in. Don't miss the keynotes, and keep an eye out for new vendors who might be LTNY virgins. --Jesse Londin, attorney (and author of LTN's App Bar column), New York.
>> Watch Your Step: There is an inch or so opening between the elevator threshold and the floor. It is slightly larger than my former wallet. Mind the gap. Also, the hotel staff is very kind about replacing keycards if asked nicely. --Adam Losey, Associate, Foley & Lardner, Orlando (and New York and the District of Columbia).
>> Break Things: Bring an instant cell phone charger, and head phones; avoid elevator rush hours at the Hilton; and follow my son Adam's advice from last year and grab the mouse from out of the demo'ers hands so you can try things for yourself (extra points if you break stuff).-- Ralph Losey, national e-discovery counsel, Jackson Lewis, Orland.
>>Take a Different Path: I always feel like a newbie! Everything about LegalTech New York is bigger than you might expect. Try pacing yourself in the exhibit hall, which goes on and on. Take your time, stop by and ask when you see something new or curious--even if it isn't meant for your size firm or type of practice, it can be a great way to get inspiration. The same thing goes for the education sessions. I often sit in on presentations discussing different software or in a different type of organization just to get new ideas. There is a lot of information to be discovered and you can often find unexpected gems by just putting yourself in the path of something or someone new. --David Whelan, manager, legal information, The Law Society of Upper Canada, Toronto.
>> Serve Yourself: Legal Tech is sort of like wondering into a server room: Lots and lots of great data. But you must have a plan or it may seem overwhelming. My advice: Download the app, sign up for the Twitter feed, read the guide, know what events you want to see, and where the vendors you need are located before you get there. Along the way between the things you want to see, I promise that you will meet amazing people, make new friends, see old friends that you never knew would be there. and have fun! Oh, and be sure to wear really comfy shoes! --John Jablonski, partner, Goldberg Segalla, Buffalo, N.Y.
Compiled by Monica Bay, editor-in-chief of Law Technology News, who has been to every LegalTech New York since 1998. (Her advice: Bring lots of Power Bars because you won't sleep and the Hilton no longer has room service.)
Known for its consumer products, Apple Inc. is working to make headway into the business sector. Its most recent step involves a partnership with software developer and integrator, Accucode Inc.
Colorado-based Accucode pioneered the “Hardware-as-a-Service” model in the retail, warehouse and transportation industries. Apple announced its agreement with the company last year, with the goal of bringing its devices under Accucode’s unique LaunchPad solution.
According to a press release on PRWeb, LaunchPad provides customers with fully managed iPad Air and iPad mini, 7-inch and 10-inch tablets including configuration, staging and deployment packages. The service includes next-day replacements with the iPad pre-configured specifically for the site, network and users.
“Consumer grade devices were not originally made for enterprise,” says Kevin Reynolds, director of product development at Accucode. “They have a short life span and when they break, they’re more often replaced than fixed.
“We have the skills and resources to image, deploy and support most mobile devices; and we do it with the accuracy and speed required to keep a working device in our customer’s hands.”
Accucode is one of Apple’s first certified re-sellers and partners in the Automatic Identification and Data Capture (AIDC) industry. The goal of the new arrangement is to make Apple products an affordable and viable option for businesses.
Sherry Karabin is a freelance writer and reporter based in New York City. Email: sherry.karabin@yahoo.com.
Tuesday was Data Privacy Day, an international day in the United States and Canada meant to “empower and education people to protect their privacy and control their digital footprint,” according to StaySafeOnline.org. And to celebrate, the folks at Hogan Lovells created five steps to take to do just that:
1. Check credit reports: A recent study found that five percent of consumers had errors on at least one of three major credit reports, according to Julian Flamant. It’s imperative for people to go over these with an intense attention to detail yearly. Everyone is entitled to a free report once a year, available athttps://www.annualcreditreport.com/index.action, he says.
2. Protect your mobile device: That doesn’t just mean buying a cute case for your iPhone. Lock your phone, purchase and maintain anti-virus software on it and don’t send sensitive information over encrypted networks, they say.
3. Control your online personality: And that means—put your settings all to private. “Be choosy: while it’s fun to share information, keep your online reputation in mind. And if you over-disclose information publicly, it could be used by identity thieves to hijack your identity,” warns Flamant.
4. Filter, filter, filter: Never, ever click a link or download an attachment from an email sender you do not know or cannot verify. “Be critical when opening those that get through to your inbox,” says Flamant and set your spam filters to high.
5. Surf carefully: Take time to read the privacy policy of websites and “treat your personal information like money” aka—don’t give it away freely!
Attorney Marlisse Silver Sweeney is a freelance writer based in Vancouver. MarlisseSilverSweeney@gmail.com. Twitter: @MarlisseSS. LTN: @lawtechnews.
LegalTech New York 2014 kicks off Tuesday at the Hilton New York midtown (6th Ave & 53rd St). Even the most experienced veterans can get overwhelmed at show, so here's navigating advice for vendor newbies and some reminders for show veterans.
Whether you’re a newcomer to LegalTech New York or a hard-core veteran, the question is—"What’s in it for you?" If you want to generate leads for your products and services, you must make and enrich contacts. If it’s your first time, try to set up actual appointments with prospects, customers, potential partners and consultants, rather than leaving things tentative. The show is so enormous that you may not cross paths unless you plan ahead.
Between appointments, walk the exhibit hall floors—all of them—and attend keynote sessions (and others if you can), to get a full flavor of the show. Tweet with the #LTNY hashtag to push out news and magnetize new followers. Both rookies and old hands can take advantage of free ALM events. The Editors Breakfast and Bloggers Breakfasts are at 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. respectively on Weds. Feb. 5 in the Petit Trianon room, and are great opportunities to mingle with reporters and editors who cover the legal/technology industry. Introduce yourself, learn what their publications cover, exchange business cards, and follow up post-show.
Actions you take after the show are important—write notes on the back of contacts’ business cards to record what you discussed with them and also anything you committed to send them (datasheets, articles, etc.). Be sure to send them what you promised. And please remember to give others—and yourself—a chance to catch your collective breath after the show before pelting them with emails.
First time LTNY attendees are often surprised at the pace of conference business and are not as prepared as they could be to make the show work for them. Here a few tips:
Multi-task: Often, vendor plans for industry events begin and end with "working the booth." To maximize your investment, take advantage of all the opportunities available to network and/or promote your brand. Connect, not just with clients, but also partners, media, bloggers and industry associations on-site (e.g., the International Legal Technology Association, and ARMA).
Scheduling is paramount: By now, you have surely glimpsed at the show schedule to see what is happening when. What about your own company’s schedule? Who is working the booth when? When are the executives onsite? Have you pre-scheduled product demos and client meetings? You get the idea. Without an internal schedule for your LTNY team, prepare for chaos, frustrated colleagues and lost opportunities.
There is no cone of silence!: You wouldn’t believe the things we’ve heard in the common areas of the Hilton during our 14 years of attending LegalTech NY. Consider the property a hot spot—you never know who is at the table beside you or is sharing the elevator, so be discreet!
Booth workflow: Designate a "traffic coordinator" in your booth to organize the flow of foot traffic and quickly qualify attendees who are interested in your product/service so you can engage them. Remember: Treat everyone with respect as they may later be hired by your largest client.
Tip #1 Have a plan and stick to it! There will be lots of different people walking by your booth. Before you get there, know specifically whom you want to talk with and what you want to talk about. It’s easy to get sidetracked and spend time talking with folks who will never have a reason to do business with you, while real, legitimate leads are walking past you.
Tip #2 Make certain everyone manning your booth knows your purpose at LegalTech and can speak intelligently about your products or services. If necessary, use one person to "direct traffic" to your more senior staff.
Tip #3 Pay attention and look like you’re happy to be at LegalTech. There’s no greater turnoff than walking past a booth with staff sitting down, checking their email, or talking to each other. Remove any tables that create a barrier between you and the attendees and make certain that all of your booth staff know and appreciate the investment you’ve made in the show.
LegalTech is the prime opportunity for legal professionals and vendors to meet, conduct business meetings, network with others and investigate new products. It is easy to get wrapped up in the buzz or lost, literally, if you are a vendor newbie.
• Plan ahead: Going to LegalTech is like a day in an amusement park with lots of people and rides. Set goals on what you want or need to accomplish at the show, then pick your “attractions,” make a plan and schedule yourself by the hour. Remember to schedule meals or they just won’t happen!
• Download the LegalTech mobile app: Its nifty tools provides the information you need and help keep you organized.
• Find your packages: Get to the exhibit hall early on Monday and make sure you have all of your boxes and booth packages. Bring tracking numbers, as hunting them down can be an all-day event! Note that poor weather conditions often delay shipments.
• Get your bearings: Use Monday to get the lay of the land. The exhibit hall is spread out over three areas and two different levels. Explore it, and find the keynote and session rooms.
• Track leads: Have a system and plan for gathering and tracking leads in your booth. (Here's our webinar on the topic.)
• Attend sessions: Before you arrive, scan the agenda and pick one or two programs that will give you a view into the world of lawyers and corporate legal departments. Learn about their issues and how they are solving problems with technology, which can help you position your product or services in the future. Better yet, participate in the session conversation and demonstrate your thought leadership on the subject matter.
• Interact: Go to the editors’ and bloggers’ breakfasts. The face time with important ALM editorial staff is priceless. Be sure to have talking points about your company ready.
• Tweet: Use hashtag #LTNY; harvest the Twitter feed to learn about last-minute happenings, session highlights and buzz.
• Wear comfy shoes.
• Network into the night: Go to parties or events with plenty of business cards in hand. Or if you prefer to not venture too far, just hang out at the Hilton Lobby Bar or Bridges Bar and you will see everyone…eventually.
Compiled by Monica Bay, editor-in-chief of Law Technology News. Twitter: @LTNMonicaBay
Every so often there are key words and phrases that get big play around the media, and before you know it, they are in use almost everywhere. These terms include irrational exuberance, outside the box, deliverables, skill set, metric, multitasking, bandwidth, selfie, spyware and more than a few others.
I’m sure during the last few years, you’ve heard those words and phrases time and time again… so much so that the meaning behind those words became dulled, if not lost.
There’s another term that has been gaining in popularity during the last year or so, and believe you me, it is one that will impact your very life — big data.
I know you’ve heard those two words — Big Data — before, and it’s been used by companies like Cisco SystemsCSCO-1.14%, Facebook, GoogleGOOG+1.98%,OracleORCL+1.67%, IBMIBM-0.59% and others. In this age where more and more things are connected, monitored and captured, what is big data? How is it used? What does it mean for business and for the consumer? How will it change things?
These are the questions we need to understand, and joining me today on PowerTalk to sort through all of it is Arnab Gupta, Founder and CEO of Opera Solutions. As Arnab points out, it’s not just you and me that are just figuring out what big data is, companies are in the same boat — they know they need to spend on it — and they are, but how do they get value from it? How do companies use it to make better decisions, work more productively and take better actions? How does a company go from spending on big data to making it a competitive advantage for their business?
Arnab and I not only discuss all of this, but he shares how he thinks big data will force companies like Oracle, IBM, SAP and others to expand and change their capabilities, lest they risk becoming the next Eastman Kodak (KODK) or the next Blackberry (BBRY).
Arnab, what is the pain point that Opera Solutions addresses?
Organizations are now starting to understand the potential that Big Data has to drive unprecedented improvements in their business. But they are struggling with how to turn raw Big Data into real value in their organization. Companies are asking themselves, “how can we reliably and efficiently find patterns in all this data that can help us predict what customers, markets, machines, and systems will do in the future? And once we find these patterns and make the predictions, how can we integrate this into the workflow, so that people on the frontlines can make better decisions, work more productively, and take better actions?” This is the pain point that Opera Solutions addresses – reliably and efficiently extracting predictive patterns from Big Data, and turning them into suggested actions, next product recommendations, scores, alerts, etc. that help front line employees do their jobs better.
What is big data and why do businesses and how fast is it growing? Do you see that pace of growth accelerating given what Cisco CEO John Chambers calls “the Internet of Everything”?
Simply put, Big Data is the explosion of digitized data – created by people, machines, sensors, etc. – that acts as an audit trail, capturing what is happening in and amongst humans, machines, markets, natural systems, and the like. The pace of growth will continue to accelerate as:
It becomes cheaper and easier to fit machines, the natural world, and people with sensors, equipment, gadgets, and the like that capture more and more of their movements and changes;
The science of machine learning continues to advance, making it easier to extract highly accurate anomalies and predictive patterns from this flow of data;
Organizations become more adept at using the output of machine learning algorithms to power “use case models” that truly drive greater efficiencies and effectiveness in their operations.
Companies that understand the potential of Big Data and are on the leading edge of extracting and using its predictive value will be huge winners. Just asWall Street investors value and reward “brand equity,” they will also begin to assess and value “data equity” – that is, what’s created when a company has access to unique data and is uniquely qualified to leverage this data.
In terms of how this will affect specific companies’ business, the impact will be ubiquitous and, in a funny way, so integrated into the “way things are” that it will be invisible. We no longer ask “how does the Internet impact businesses?” — the answer is, it impacts it on every level and therefore is just part of the status quo and the fabric of business life. This will soon be the case with Big Data, machine learning science, and the flood of predictive intelligence – it will just be part of life. The term Big Data is probably going to disappear, in fact.
