I like to take pictures with my iPhone. When the lighting is good, the pictures can be really great. When the lighting is poor, and when I don't try to go out of my way to take the best possible picture, the quality is less than optimal but the pictures are still nice to have just for the sake of the memories. I say that because while I took a lot of pictures at ABA TECHSHOW last week, I didn't take any special efforts to make them great pictures ... and yet I've decided to post a few of them today anyway, because if you were at TECHSHOW with me, it might be fun to see yourself, and if you were not at TECHSHOW, maybe the pictures will give you somewhat of a sense of why so many people go back to TECHSHOW year after year. Click on any picture for a larger size.
The Sessions
I sometimes take pictures of the audience when I give a presentation, and I did so at TECHSHOW for my three presentations. On Thursday morning, I teamed up with Judge Hebert Dixon of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia for iPad in Trial / iPad for Litigators. Here is a picture I took of Judge Dixon and the audience when the judge was showing off using an iPad to give a wireless presentation.
You might notice that in the back of the room there is a large whiteboard. For some of the TECHSHOW presentations, MyCase hired Stephanie Crowley to produce live murals based on what we were talking about during the presentations. This is a fun idea that I had never seen before. Here is Crowley's drawing of my session with Judge Dixon:
My second session on Tuesday was with Ben Stevens of The Mac Lawyer. The session was called iGadgets and iGear for the iLawyer, and it consisted of Ben and I showing off our favorite iPhone and iPad accessories. I forgot to take a picture until just after the session ended, and I only took two pictures of the audience — which results in a horrible panorama — but I suppose it is good enough to get the idea, and to find yourself if you were in the room.
Once again, Crowley created a drawing of our presentation.
On Friday, I attended the Keynote address by Rick Klau of Google. Before he became an Internet celebrity, Klau was a regular presenter at TECHSHOW, so it was nice to have him return.
On Saturday morning, I teamed up with Reid Trautz, Brett Burney and Chad Burton for the 2014 edition of 60 Apps in 60 Minutes. (Here is a list of the apps we discussed.) Unfortunately, Crowley wasn't around on Saturday morning, but here is the audience.
As you can see, our room was pretty much at capacity with almost every chair taken, folks sitting on the side (you can just barely see one of them in the side of the picture) and folks standing in the back — more and more of them as our presentation progressed. I was interested to see what kind of attendance we had for our presentation because at the same time that we talked about iOS apps, there was another session talking about Android apps, another session talking about Windows 8.1 apps and another session talking about BlackBerry apps. To the extent that TECHSHOW is at all a cross-section of the legal technology community, what do the sessions tell us about what devices lawyers are using?
It turns out that legal technology consultant Adriana Linares had the same thought, so she took pictures of each of the four rooms. Here is the picture that she tweeted from our packed iOS session:
#ABATECHSHOW Crazy packed room for iPad Apps w 4 handsome gents. Is there an app for that? pic.twitter.com/cmqjazBZDr
— Adriana Linares (@AdrianaL) March 29, 2014
Here is what she tweeted from the Android session, which looks like it had a few dozen people.
#ABATECHSHOW Android Tips Session @jeffrey_taylor and Dan Siegel pic.twitter.com/iRIAYkx51w
— Adriana Linares (@AdrianaL) March 29, 2014
Here is what she tweeted from the Windows session, which didn't look to have much more than a dozen people.
#ABATECHSHOW Win8 Tips Session good job gents! @bschorr @TabletLawyer pic.twitter.com/2bFSe2shbY
— Adriana Linares (@AdrianaL) March 29, 2014
And here is what she tweeted from the BlackBerry session, which appears to have only three people in the audience.
#ABATECHSHOW BBerry Tips session with @DanPinnington doing what he can to keep the dream alive! pic.twitter.com/bukO13EiAv
— Adriana Linares (@AdrianaL) March 29, 2014
Unfortunately for BlackBerry, it gets worse. One of the three people in the BlackBerry session was Sam Glover of Lawyerist.com who explained to Adriana that he was in the room simply because he "needed a quiet place to work," and Sam tweeted that one of the other two people in the BlackBerry session was using an iPad to take notes. We've come a very long way from past TECHSHOWs where it seemed like almost everyone was using a BlackBerry.
Here is a picture of the audience in the very last session of TECHSHOW called 60 Sites in 60 Minutes:
And finally, here is a picture from the night before TECHSHOW started when Dallas attorney Tom Mighell gave a presentation at the Apple Store on Michigan Avenue on how lawyers can get the most out of an iPad. That is a huge Apple Store and it has a nice private meeting room at the top, which is where we were, in addition to the big theater on the second floor.
The Exhibit Hall
I didn't think to take very many pictures of the Exhibit Hall, but it was very active this year, and it seemed like almost every booth was showing off some sort of mobile solution for the iPhone or iPad — a far cry from just a few years ago. Here is Clio CEO Jack Newton showing how you can scan a document and then wirelessly send it to your iPhone to file away in the Clio document management system.
Here is the WordPerfect booth where they were showing off a new version of WordPerfect that works on the iPad, although you have to have Internet access for it to work.
One of the biggest topics at TECHSHOW was Microsoft's announcement mid-Thursday that it was releasing Word, Excel and PowerPoint for the iPad. There was a very small Microsoft booth at the back of the Exhibit Hall, but it was really just there to show off Windows Surface tablets. I tried to get them to show me how the Word app on Surface is different from the new Word app on the iPad, but they really had no idea. I found a few minor differences — for example, the Surface app checks both spelling and grammar while the iPad app just checks spelling — but the apps looked virtually identical.
People
It is often said that one of the best parts of TECHSHOW is talking to the other people who attend, and I certainly agree with that. Folks who I met at TECHSHOW gave me lots of idea of apps and accessories that I need to check out, and it was fun and educational to learn how other lawyers are using their iPhones and iPads.
Wednesday night, I had a really fun dinner with Ernie Svenson, Tom Mighell, Dennis Kennedy, Allison Shields, Philippe Doyle Gray, Antigone Peyton, Adriana Linares and Jason Marsh. Most of those folks are current or former TECHSHOW presenters from across the country (and in Philippe's case — from Australia), and it was a great group of folks to be with for the start of TECHSHOW, especially considering the dinner wasn't planned and just sort of happened as a bunch of us ran into each other.
On Thursday night, I hosted a dinner at Emilio’s Tapas (Sol Y Nieve) along with Brett Burney. It turned out that Thursday was National Paella Day — which I never knew even existed — so the tapas restaurant gave us free paella, WestlawNext and Lit Software generously paid for the meal, and everyone there had a fantastic time and a lot of laughs. In attendance were me and Brett Burney along with Casey Hall, Ian O'Flaherty, Julia Cornish, Jennifer Kooren, Tom Withers, Maureen Blando, Thomas Allen, Tim Sullivan and Robyn Elliott.
Friday night I attended the dinner hosted by Randy Juip and Ben Stevens. I didn't take a picture of the group, but Ben's wife Jenny Stevens posted this one on Twitter.
'Mac' and Cheese dinner w/ all the guys @themaclawyer @rajuip @iPhoneJD @Wolf_Pinther pic.twitter.com/ZFucZSZPuJ
— Jenny Stevens (@MrsMacLawyer) March 29, 2014
The one person not shown in that picture is the person who took the picture, and he did something that I've never seen done before at a steak restaurant. He ordered an uncooked steak. I'm not talking about a steak cooked rare, or even Steak Tartare, I'm talking about straight from the refrigerator directly to the plate. And he ate the whole thing. Yikes. I won't post his name because I don't want to be responsible for his health insurer dropping his coverage.
I'll finish the people pictures with four pictures from a very swanky party thrown by Clio. Here I am with Ian O'Flaherty and Tara Cheever of Lit Software (makers of TrialPad and TranscriptPad). I see that Tara is holding a MOBiLE CLOTH with an iPhone J.D. logo on it, perhaps to provide some extra warmth along with that blanket on that cold Chicago night. Thanks again to MOBiLE CLOTH for giving me so many of them to hand out to iPhone J.D. readers throughout the show.
Here I am with Adriana Linares and Ed Walters, CEO of Fastcase.
Here are Chad Burton and I preparing (ahem) for our 60 Apps in 60 Minutes presentation.
And here I am with Joshua Lenon of Clio.