As we get closer to the end of the year, you are probably concentrating on your CLE hours for 2009, not 2010, but I recommend that you mark your calendar now for next year's ABA TECHSHOW which will be held March 25 through 27, 2010, in Chicago. This is the premier conference for lawyers interested in technology, sponsored every year by the Law Practice Management Section of the ABA. The panels for 2010 are still being finalized, but I understand that there will be tracks (with multiple sessions each) focused on areas including trial skills, mobility, smart phones, e-discovery, solo and small firms, large firms and corporate counsel, Macintosh, marketing and social networking, finance, and advanced IT. I'm especially thrilled to announce that I will be co-presenting two sessions geared to attorneys using iPhones, a session with Reid Trautz on iPhone apps on Thursday, March 25th that I suspect we will call "60 Apps in 60 Minutes," and a session with Ben Stevens on using an iPhone in your law practice on Saturday morning, March 27th.
I encourage all of you to think very seriously about going. I had never attended TECHSHOW or any other major legal technology conference before I attended the 2008 TECHSHOW, where I spoke on disaster preparation and recovery (a topic near and dear to all of us attorneys in New Orleans) and also on using a Mac at home when your law firm uses PCs. I also took the time to attend numerous other sessions in 2008, and I learned so much. TECHSHOW is set up so that there are multiple sessions going on at one time, so for each block of time during the day you can choose the topic that most interests you—and with so many compelling sessions, it is often tough to choose, as you can see here. TECHSHOW also features the famous "60 Sites in 60 Minutes" session that is always informative and entertaining. (Click here for some of the previous sites featured in that presentation.)
Besides the content, the other thing that I loved about TECHSHOW was that I met so many great people who I still keep in touch with, including a number of well-known legal bloggers. (I wasn't blogging myself back in March of 2008; iPhone J.D. started in November of 2008.)
I might not have ever attended in the first place had I not been asked to speak, and I had no idea what I had been missing over the years. So even if you have never attended TECHSHOW or a similar legal technology conference, do yourself a favor and make plans to attend next year. Any lawyer who has enough interest in technology to read iPhone J.D. will love this conference because of the amazing content and the numerous fun opportunities to meet new people. And, because there will be two full sessions on the iPhone, plus I'm sure we will plan a dinner and other opportunities to socialize at TECHSHOW with other iPhone users, it will especially fun for all of us who use an iPhone.
I'll post more details on TECHSHOW as we get closer, but in the meantime I encourage you to keep up with the TECHSHOW Blog, not just because information about the conference will be posted there, but also because conference speakers contribute content so there will be a lot of substantive information in that blog as we get closer to next March. Indeed, this year some of the best content from previous TECHSHOWs that is still relevant today will be posted to that blog. For those of you who know Quebec attorney Dominic Jaar, who is currently the CEO of Ledjit and who used to be a commercial litigator at Bell Canada’s legal department, Dominic is in charge of the blog this year and I know he will do a great job. If you use an RSS reader, add it to your subscriptions. Additionally, you can follow ABA TECHSHOW on Twitter.
I had to miss the 2009 TECHSHOW because of a schedule conflict, but I am really looking forward to the 2010 conference, especially now that I know that there will be two iPhone sessions. I hope that all of the attorneys who read iPhone J.D. make plans to join me there.
