“People were talking about new partnerships, new approaches, new projects.”

I wrote this just 8 week ago in my “Springtime in eDiscovery: Legalweek 2022” post, which highlighted the ideas, lessons, and (most importantly) energy that came out of my first in-person conference after several years.

In those 8 weeks, I’ve also been to Reveal “Ring in the Spring” in New York and London, CLOC Global Institute in Las Vegas, and Relativity Fest London. And I’m doubling down — our industry has a desire to connect, create and transact that is really exciting!

Here’s what I took away from seeing literally hundreds of people over just a few weeks:

1. Refresh your Go Bag. If you take one thing away from this post, it’s to go check the aspirin, charging cord, international travel power adapter, surplus of business cards, notebook, etc.
2. Access Matters. Everyone is incredibly busy—usually too busy to respond to an email or phone call from someone they aren’t actively working with. But, if you’re next to them during lunch, bump into them at a happy hour, or grab five minutes between sessions, the people are present, engaged, and looking for new ideas.
3. Inclusion matters. I attended a great panel on the ethics of artificial intelligence in the face of biases from the training model. My main conclusion is that companies that want to leverage AI need to be deliberate about creating diverse and inclusive teams across the hierarchy. Of course, this puts extra pressure on women, people of color and the LGBTQ community to teach AI to take their perspectives into account. Always the sales guy, I have to ask how much of the value derived from the transformative impact of artificial intelligence will be attributed to DEI initiatives and their leaders?
4. Shout out to event organizers and sponsors. I know event marketing budgets and travel budgets dried up over the past few years. I could not be more impressed by the vision, energy and bravery it took to pull off 2,500 people in Las Vegas, or a full day in London with 1,500 people, or visiting a dozen cities in three months.
5. Automation is the future of how people will do data processing and analytics. When we started Rampiva, we knew it was a good idea because we’d been in the hot seat doing the grunt work. Five years later:
   • There are not enough people to hire our way to a steady-state productivity.
   • Automation upstream enables automation and analytics downstream.
   • Data processing and analytics are part of an ecosystem—getting that right is the difference between being able to solve problems or not.
   • Designers, managers, trainers, and consultants all become significantly more impactful in an automated environment with technical controls to enforce good process.
   • Those people on your team who put in the hours to save the day—they’re going to burn out or get recruited.

Thank you to George Nedwick, Cat Casey, Mike Gamson, Jenn McCarron, and everyone else who brought us together these past few weeks!