Having been to more than my fair share of conferences over the years, I am convinced that a conference’s success or failure turns ultimately on one factor: the people.
I don’t mean how many people show up. I mean how they show up. Whether they bring enthusiasm for the topic, hunger for learning, openness to new ideas, willingness to share, and eagerness to network and interact.
You might say these are also the characteristics that define a community, at least a professional community.
If it is that people factor, that sense of community, that makes a conference a success, it is also what makes a virtual conference a challenge. Having now also been to my fair share of virtual conferences, that sense of community, that sense of the people, has so far been lacking. While some have had superb programming, regrettably, good programming alone does not a good conference make.
No one can deny that virtual conferences are a challenge, especially for those attending. Sitting in front of a computer screen all day listening to talking heads can be mind-numbing. The distractions of email and work are ever-present. Children clamor for attention and dogs demand to be walked. Gone are the random encounters and chance discoveries.
In short, it is hard to fully engage in a virtual conference in the way one is caught up in the swirl of away-from-home activity of a physical conference.
Such thoughts had me wondering whether we should even bother with virtual conferences. I appreciate and welcome the online training and thought leadership they offer. But why package it in the guise of a conference? Why not just stream it out in a series of programs over time and let the audience view it when they will?
A Palpable Sense of Community
But then came ILTA>ON, where the sense of community was palpable.
Last week’s ILTA>ON was the first virtual annual conference of the International Legal Technology Association. In prior years, the live ILTACON has traditionally been one of the largest, if not the largest, legal technology conferences in the world.
Last year’s conference had been the largest ever, with total attendance of some 1,850 ILTA members from all over the world, plus another 1,700 exhibitors, reporters, and others. Held at the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin, the conference occupied so much space that sponsors provided golf carts to transport weary attendees from venue to venue.
This year’s conference was on track to be even larger, slated for the popular Gaylord National in Opryland, just outside Nashville.
But then, of course, came the coronavirus. Organizers held out hope. In mid-April, I interviewed ILTA CEO Joy Heath Rush and asked, “Will there be an ILTACON in August?”
“ILTACON will happen, it absolutely will happen,” she replied. “Whether it happens in the way that we’re accustomed to, I think is the question.”
At that point, Rush anticipated that the conference would have both in-person and virtual components. But two months later, ILTA gave in to the unavoidable, cancelling the in-person conference and going for a fully virtual event, which it renamed ILTA>ON.
For an eleventh-hour pivot of such a massive conference, it is impressive what ILTA pulled off. Over five full days, there were, by my count, 82 distinct programs over 16 substantive tracks presented by some 200 speakers. Roughly 2,100 people registered to attend.
While most programming occurred during Chicago daytime hours, recorded and live presentations were staggered over an almost 24/7 schedule to accommodate attendees anywhere in the world. The first day’s keynote, by project management expert Stephen Carver on project failures at NASA, was broadcast live at 4 a.m. Central Time and then rebroadcast for the U.S. audience five hours later.
ILTACON is known for its over-the-top parties and social events, and while no one has yet figured out how to throw a really good party on Zoom, ILTA>ON had its own version of after-hours social events. There were comedians two nights, virtual variations on game shows Family Feud and Match Game, a virtual wine tasting, and even a tour of haunted houses.
Aiming to further facilitate online networking, ILTA>ON offered two ways for attendees to connect face-to-face away from the programs and presentations. Its Watercooler Chats were a series of scheduled informal conversations about topics that ranged from tech tips to favorite jokes. Another option, The Hallway Hang, joined attendees at random to talk about whatever they wanted.
So ILTA clearly pulled off an impressive feat of logistics on fairly short notice. But logistics do not translate to the sense of community I talked about earlier. And yet, as I said, it was palpable throughout the week.
One way this was evidenced was through the chat activity in Zoom during the keynotes and presentations. Picture a live keynote with several hundred people crowding into a ballroom as it is about to begin. As they file in, they are greeting old friends along the aisle or waving across the room to faces they recognize.
The chats were like that, especially with the morning keynotes, as attendees logged into Zoom and started sending greetings to the room and identifying where they were joining from.
The chats took on lives of their own, with people not only commenting on the talks in real time, but even sometimes going off on side conversations off-topic to the matter at hand.
Interestingly to me, the Zoom chats seemed to become a substitute for Twitter. In past years, ILTACON has been a conference with a good flow of Twitter chatter. But the Twitter chatter was noticeably sparse this year, was the Zoom chat was constantly alive with activity.
The chat activity was one tangible indicator of an intangible something-greater about this conference. That sense of community, that sense of spending time reuniting was old friends and making new ones, was pervasive. I heard it over and over again from the attendees and sponsors I spoke with: This virtual conference succeeded in feeling surprisingly like a physical conference.
Why was that? So many factors probably played a role. The programming was very good. The social events, I heard, were fun. The ad hoc networking succeeded in making new acquaintances. There was even the unique factor of live coverage all week produced by Litera.TV, for which I was fortunate enough to serve as a co-anchor with Caroline Hill, editor-in-chief of Legal IT Insider, during which we had many conversations with speakers and attendees.
But I would suggest that what gave this conference its palpable sense of community was ultimately something else altogether. It was that ILTA is an organization in which that sense of community was already strong and palpable.
Yes, ILTA’s members came to this conference full of enthusiasm, hunger for learning, openness to new ideas, willingness to share, and eagerness to network and interact.
But what they brought to this conference was something they already shared. ILTA’s strength and success as a professional organization has always been fueled by its members, many of whom are actively involved at local, national and international levels.
That sense of community at ILTA>ON was not something that sprang out of nowhere last week. It was something the attendees brought with them – and they would have brought it regardless of whether the conference was in Opryland or on the internet.
Robert Ambrogi
is a Massachusetts lawyer and journalist who has been covering legal technology and the web for more than 20 years, primarily through his blog LawSites.com. Former editor-in-chief of several legal newspapers, he is a fellow of the College of Law Practice Management and an inaugural Fastcase 50 honoree. He can be reached by email at ambrogi@gmail.com, and you can follow him on Twitter (@BobAmbrogi).