Ride the Lightning

ABA TECHSHOW 2019: It's a Wrap!

March 4, 2019

Congratulations to ABA TECHSHOW co-chairs Lincoln Mead and my husband John Simek! The conference was a great success and attendees were thrilled by the educational sessions, the Expo and the receptions/dinners.

As always, I enjoyed talking with both attendees and my fellow presenters. Thanks especially to my co-presenters, Jeff Richardson and Roberta Tepper, both of who were a joy to work with. Jeff and I did "Vetting Tech" and Roberta and I did "Time for a Digital Detox" – both warmly received by the audiences.

I was intrigued by the futuristic presentation from keynoter Betsy Ziegler, the CEO of 1871, who spoke on “The Future is Now.” I laughed when she said, “Humans now have a shorter attention span than a goldfish.” Yes, we all need a digital detox. The human attention span has shrunk to 8 seconds from 12 during the mobile revolution. Goldfish have an attention span of 9 seconds.

More from Betsy: “Opportunity is without boundaries. The world needs leaders to focus on problems that matter. The most successful companies worry about the future.” This was followed by “The seven words of a dying organization: ‘We’ve never done it that way before.’”

And tying it together, she offered a quote from Mark Zuckerberg: "If we don't create the thing that kills Facebook, someone else will." Think about that for a moment – her basic point is that change is moving so fast that we have to be prepared to kill what we have created to keep pace with change that will come. It does make me long for simpler times!

News from the Expo:

Fastcase has just launched version 7.4 of its legal research platform, the Venus release. The new version includes “turbocharged” results ranking, an expert witness directory powered by Courtroom Insight and JurisPro, and includes full ADA compliance, so it’s screen-reader friendly. You can access the new release (for now) by logging into Fastcase and clicking the FC7 toggle in the top right-hand corner – but this is the last beta release of Fastcase 7. Starting with version 7.5 (Tellus) this summer, the new Fastcase platform will be the default when you log in. Probably good to start learning to use the new Fastcase 7 now!

Tabs3 and CosmoLex have joined forces. Two venerable companies are now one of the largest players in the case management space. The combined group has over 110,000 legal customers and offers a complete billing, accounting and practice management solution for firms ranging from 1-50 timekeepers. I am a fan of both companies so I was pleased by this news.

MyCase showcased their focus on customer listening and rapid innovation with MyCase DevLab, a cool on-site demonstration featuring MyCase software engineers developing a new feature that had been requested by their customers: Text Message Reminders for Invoices. Conference attendees were able to watch the team at work – and see the working feature in action by the end of the show. Slick.

And in a private demo, one of Microsoft's gurus (my longtime friend Ben Schorr) showed me a really cool feature coming to PowerPoint in Office 365. Soon you will be able to do automatic subtitles and live translation. As you give your presentation, PowerPoint can transcribe your spoken words into subtitles on the screen, or translate your words into one of more than 50 languages. That's a pretty amazing feature – thanks for the head's up Ben.

Am I exhausted? You bet. But I'm already looking forward to ABA TECHSHOW 2020. Mark your calendars for February 26-29, 2020!

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