This past week members discussed disaster recovery, ILTACON and more. I also have highlights to share from the American Association of Law Libraries conference. Explore curated sources on these topics including some from ILTA’s treasure chest.
Disaster Recovery
A member recently asked about recovery time and business continuity goals in a disaster. ILTA has helpful information on this topic from last year’s ILTACON and will have more at this year’s conference. From ILTACON 2015 consider “Disaster Avoidance for Core Applications (It’s Better Than Disaster Recovery)” and “An In-Depth Look at Modern Back-Up Strategies.” “Disaster Avoidance” will help you select technologies aligned with your organization’s business needs and ensure minimal downtime and “An In-Depth Look…” provides details and a strategic view “to recover what you need, when you need it.” In Jim McCue’s recent ILTACON 2016 recommendations he suggests two sessions on disaster recovery. In addition to ILTACON sessions, Mark Brophy, Clint Gandy and Eileen Kelly wrote an informative piece on developing a well-defined risk evaluation and business impact analysis to determine the recovery time objective (RTO) and the recovery point objective (RPO), “Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery, What You Need to Know.” Rick Varju likes to begin his disaster recovery planning process by identifying “the right people, processes and technologies required to map out your plan at a high level.” He then moves to disaster recovery prioritization to identify the most critical tools and services. See Rick’s examples and best practices in “Law Firm DR Planning: The Time Has Come.”
ILTACON 2016 – Your Peers’ Recommendations for Learning and Networking
It’s time to pick your ILTACON sessions. This past week several ILTA volunteers previewed great sessions to attend in different areas of focus. Even if you cannot attend ILTACON this year, you will want to take note and catch the recordings of these sessions after the conference. Chris Emerson shares top picks from over 60 sessions in his area of focus in “Business and Legal Process Improvement at ILTACON 2016.” Marketing professionals at ILTACON?! Cyndy McCollough details the benefits of ILTACON for marketing professionals and offers guidance on making the most of your conference in “The Marketing Technologist’s Guide to ILTACON 2016.” Chris Hunt tells us about a newly formed area of focus in “Enabling Change Through Technology Support Services.” Chris describe technology support services as “user support on vitamins” in his post highlighting sessions on best practices, helpful tools, cybersecurity training and managing change. Sheila Mennis gives us another set of recommendations with her list of must-attend sessions on marketing and improving your personal brand in “ILTACON 2016: Essential Guide for Marketing, Business Development and Everyone Else.”
SOMETHING EXTRA – Disruption and Design Thinking at the AALL Conference
Earlier this week I joined my law librarian friends in Chicago at the American Association of Law Libraries annual conference. The opening keynote by Will Evans, “New Models of Purpose-Driven Innovation in Knowledge Work” shared his philosophy for innovation using a lean start-up cycle and design thinking. He warned that when beginning a project we often state a solution rather than the problem. He gave the example, “the problem is not that I need a water bottle. The problem is hydration.” By stating the true problem we can find better solutions. Jean O’Grady of Dewey B Strategic and DLA Piper moderated a session with Andrew Arruda of ROSS (and author of recent Peer to Peer article on AI), and Brian Sheppard of Seton Hall University Law School called “Can Robots Be Lawyers? Meet ROSS, and Glimpse the Future of AI in Law.” Arruda shared the current capabilities and possibilities of AI and lawyers working together to quickly produce a consistent high quality legal work product. Sheppard discussed the hope for better access to justice for all. However he also expressed concern that disruption could cause a decrease in quality legal service if lawyers leave or never join the profession in fear of the AI takeover. Premature disruption could result in more harm than good. For instance, Sheppard noted that law school enrollment has not only decreased but has over-corrected in response to the changes in the legal market in recent years. Thank you AALL for a great conference with so many provocative sessions.
As ILTA’s content curator, I’m always monitoring the discussion forums to discover what topics are top-of-mind among the members. Each week, I focus on a few areas that spark your interest, and I provide some curated resources to assist your own information-gathering on the topics. If there are specific topics you would like assistance exploring, please contact me at joanne@iltanet.org
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