Peer to Peer: ILTA's Quarterly Magazine
Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/1533864
42 WHAT CAN 2025 EVOLVE ATTENDEES EXPECT? Ken: We have a wonderful volunteer committee planning 24 excellent educational sessions – 12 on Cybersecurity and 12 on GenAI. From a community perspective, I think everyone can expect to have a great time at Myrtle Beach this year. Myrtle Beach offers a wide variety of activities to enjoy during your visit. We are looking forward to some fun parties and time on the beach. Joe Sullivan, who has a unique story, was one of our keynote speakers in 2024. This year, Tarah Wheeler offers an equally interesting yet distinctly different perspective. Typically, we do not think of "hackers" as people who work to enhance companies' cybersecurity. The event itself is intentionally smaller than ILTACON, with a few hundred attendees as opposed to thousands. EVOLVE provides an excellent opportunity to network with people in smaller, more intimate groups during coffee breaks and other social activities. Josh: You do need to reserve your spot to attend EVOLVE early! The conference sold out this year before this issue of Peer to Peer was published. However, limiting attendance creates a conference setting for legal tech professionals to interact with industry experts and learn about the two hottest topics in legal tech. For the past two years, those topics have been GenAI and Cybersecurity. This year, we wanted to address a growing need within the community for more practical, hands-on learning opportunities in collaborative spaces. We have four incredible workshops planned for attendees. Those types of practical learning experiences tend to have a more significant impact in smaller settings where folks can ask questions and have more personalized interactions with the material. HOW HAS YOUR LEADERSHIP ROLE WITH EVOLVE IMPACTED YOUR INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCE WITH GENAI? Ken: Serving as the co-chair of the EVOLVE committee for our 2024 and 2025 conferences had a profound impact on my personal journey with GenAI. As the co-chair responsible for the AI-focused sessions in 2024, I attended all 12 sessions. Exposure to information presented by AI experts fundamentally changed my perspective on AI. My interest in AI intensified after the 2024 Keynote session with Zach Abramowitz, Cat Casey, and Kristen Sonday. They encouraged everyone to incorporate an AI tool into their everyday routines to increase familiarity with the new technology. So, I started doing that. My wife and I visited the Philippines over the summer. I had time to take some AI courses on LinkedIn. Now, I use it for tasks such as developing test data for IT systems and various types of research. As a professor, I am frequently asked to write letters of recommendation for students. I can respond to more of those requests because I can access the student's LinkedIn profile, gather relevant information, plug that into an AI engine, and generate a substantial portion of a personalized, professional recommendation letter in minutes. I also became involved in a student project, AI Lecture Assist (www.ailectureassist.com), over the past year. The project's vision is to create AI-powered tools that help professors work more effectively and efficiently by streamlining test and assessment creation and increasing lecture quality through storytelling. The student responsible for the AI Lecture Assist project will soon present this idea through the Seton Hall Pirates Pitch program. That program is funded and managed by the Entrepreneurial Institute. There is a real possibility that this project could lead to the establishment