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58 P E E R T O P E E R : I L T A ' S Q U A R T E R L Y M A G A Z I N E | F A L L 2 0 2 1 A S K I N G T H E R I G H T Q U E S T I O N S • familiar voices around a corner and the surprise of someone you didn't expect to be there but who then miraculously appeared. Angela Dowd, Director of Practice Innovation at Burns & Levinson LLP, who ended her service on ILTA's Board of Directors at ILTACON 2021), said she comes to ILTACON to better clarify the challenges she's having. She's not expecting answers but rather to hear that others are struggling with the same problems. She uses that as a lens to look at her firm's issues and see where her anxiety or vague concern about something fits with what others are experiencing. That gives her a clear picture of the gaps that can be dealt with and the things that are going to need additional research or maturation. She found that at ILTACON this year as she has every other year she's attended. This was only my second in person ILTACON as an exhibitor and business partner. I had a checklist of requirements to meet, starting with: • ensuring as many people as possible were clear on what Qualitest's acquisition of Olenick means in the real world. I think we accomplished that, showing that our individual histories of law firm IT leadership and my time at ILTA, and our years of consulting with law firms on quality assurance and engineering needs has created great synergies with a globally renowned testing and quality company. • Meeting clients in person for the first time in 18 months. We had a few formal meetings and many casual conversations. I felt so good to do that face-to-face (or at least mask- to-mask) and not on Zoom or Teams. • Thought Leadership – we have in the past presented Master Classes and spoke in multiple sessions. This year, I participated in one session that was in the "In Person Only" category. It was not Live-Streamed (see a bit about that session below). IT was good to do a bit of thought leadership, even to a smaller audience. • New Connections – we always hope to meet many new ILTA members and business partners, some of which may end up being business connections but many are just great people to meet and get to know. Met people at our booth, we met them at the lunchtables, we met them in the halls, we met them in the sessions and the networking events. Definite check mark on that one!! • Industry Trends, Education – I participated in all four keynotes, I think 12 education sessions and one of the Collaboration Kickoffs. There was not a disappointment in the education this year. Each session was so thoughtfully planned and executed. There was great value in them all. The conflicting sessions I couldn't attend, I've watched the recordings, also fantastic content there. For Trends, nothing compares with the G100 recap closing keynote on Thursday afternoon –"Strategic and Predictive Outcomes – What G100 Firms Are Talking About". Such a good way to close out the education portion of the conference. • Team Meetings – we usually take time at ILTACON to meet with our legal team together. Unfortunately for unrelated reasons, we ended up just as two badgeholders this year, so we didn't do the in-person team meeting, another casualty of COVID generally. We'll just have to do that next month virtually. The Bit about the Session: The In Person Only session I helped present was "Business Relationship Management: Building Bridges Between IT and the Legal Business". I shared the stage with Isodore Okoro as one of the "In person only" sessions – We had obtained video snippets from Karina Grunbaum and Mark Andrews of the Global IT Service Delivery team at Baker McKenzie, whose mission is to be "the voice of the customer and the face of IT". Both are passionate about building relationships between IT and the business. We had video from Skip Lohmeyer, Parker Poe's CIO, who has more than two decades of executive experience with law firm information technology, and has lots of info to share on this topic. Our final video snippets were from Dan Safran, president and CEO of Unbiased Consulting, an independent consulting firm that focuses on productivity and efficiency in law firms and law departments. Isidore and I wove the videos into the content we prepared on topics ranging from "Build Relationships / Be a Trusted Partner", to "IT

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