Our Main Takeaways from ILTACON17

Pablos Holman’s ‘Innovate or Die Trying: From the Mind of a World-Renowned Hacker’ Monday Morning Keynote

This is the room of attendees at Holman’s highly attended 9AM keynote and he did not disappoint! Being the first keynote TitanFile attended at the conference, the futurist, hacker, and inventor wonderfully set the bar high with his insightful and inspiring keynote, which brought together themes of technology and innovation perfectly.

Holman used anecdotes to perfectly express the advancement of technology and its opportunity to do amazing things. He explained the use of hacking to defeat malaria, a Monte Carlo simulation that helped eliminate nuclear waste, and the improvement in turnaround time for product updates. Holman provided the room with a sense in hope and inspiration in regards to human growth with technology.

The main lesson we took away from Holman’s remarkable talk was the powerful opportunity of technology. As humans have the power to set the stage for technology and how it behaves, we must set good examples for technology to follow. We must also expand our minds and become imaginative with technology, rather than assume its limitations. Overall, we must be smarter going forward with innovation. The best way this notion is described is with Holman’s main quote of the morning: “Vision without action is a daydream; action without vision is a nightmare.”

How to Network in the Legal Tech World

Being the biggest event of the year for the ILTA Community, ILTACON draws crowds of decision makers from legal and technology into one place. As a gold sponsor and vendor of this event, the TitanFile and Hitachi team was prepared to speak to so many high-level professionals everyday for the entire conference. Here are our three main rules when speaking and networking with attendees at our booth:

1. Talk less and listen more
   Most people love to talk about what they are passionate in, and most attendees at ILTACON are professionals where legal technology is their passion and their careers. When attendees are going from booth to booth, delivering the best conversation possible is what made TitanFile memorable. Being the best listener and being interested in hearing what attendees are passionate about creates a happy and memorable experience with TitanFile. It leaves a good impression on TitanFile and it invites more people to continue having conversations with us.
2. Become a question master
   The value of asking the right questions, along with being an attentive listener, creates a landmine of opportunities for successful conversations. When people ask what we do, we ask them what they do and what they are interested in. We ask them what they like, and what they don’t like. We ask what they would want to change, and what they would want to keep. The more questions we ask, the more we know about how our client base feels. We get to share and comment on their thoughts and feelings, and show that we care and that we understand. This technique allowed us to build powerful relationships with professionals that visited our booth.
3. Ask yourself, “how can I capture their interest?”
   Attendees must be interested in you first before they come to the booth and speak to you. We found that being eye-catching helped a lot in attracting attendees. This included making eye contact with passersby and smiling at them, wearing bright coloured clothing (like our lime green TitanFile t-shirts in the photo!), and giving out eye-catching prizes and gifts, such as light up pens and a personal drone. This attraction gave us the opportunity to hold their attention, ask the right questions, and have amazing conversations.

How TitanFile Dressed to Impress

At Monday’s opening reception, first time ILTACON goer, Sammi, represented TitanFile by strongly emulating this year’s theme: Galaxy. As a first timer, standing out and being noticed was a vital component of being remembered for the following days on the conference.

“Although I felt weird wearing such a funky costume in front of so many people, I know it made people notice the TitanFile logo painted on my dress and remember it. I wanted to be sticky and it definitely brought a lot of attention to our booth and to TitanFile,” Sammi remarks. “By the end of the night, I loved the encouragement and the conversations I had with so many people because they loved the weird costume I was wearing. It made me feel confident at my first ILTACON and it lasted the entire conference!”