If you are a legal technology consultant or legal vendor and would like to be considered as a session speaker at ILTA 2011, now is the time to submit your topic ideas to the ILTA course catalog. Recently, ILTA's Peggy Wechsler hosted a webinar to explain the ILTA course catalog and to announce their new speakers bureau-inspired 'My Expertise' database initiative. While you can view the recording of the webinar here, we have also broken down the detailed process below.
ILTA Course Catalog
Here's how it works...
- You submit a session idea including target audience, topics, etc. via the course catalog submission form on the ILTA website. (Deadline to be considered for ILTA 2011 conference is November 30th!)
- The ILTA conference committee reviews all the submissions and selects the ones that will be of most interest to the ILTA membership.
- If your topic is selected, a conference committee member will contact you directly by March 15.
- If your submission isn't selected for ILTA 2011, it remains in the course catalog to be considered for future roadshows, regional lunch and learns, etc.
Some helpful tips:
- Think of your audience - When you are crafting your session description, think of it as a pitch. Keep in mind that the ILTA members are selecting and make it something that would pique their interest - not just something that your company would like to cover.
- Education, not sales! - Make sure that your topic and your session are educational. The ILTA Annual Conference is all about education and that's what they look for first. Also, of course, do not turn your session into a sales demo!
- Get Ideas - Look at the 2010 ILTA course catalog to get an idea of what other companies have submitted. Also use this to see what other companies haven't submitted and use that to come up with an original idea. You many also want to look at conference sessions that were offered at ILTA 2010 and past issues of ILTA's membership publication Peer to Peer for ideas.
- New Perspectives - Talk to your team and get some new ideas/angles.
- Be ready - Review the submission form before you brainstorm ideas.
- Diversify - Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Submit more than one idea and think in terms of serving the diverse ILTA audience segments and interests.
'My Expertise' Database
New this year, is the 'My Expertise' database. Where the course catalog deals with session outlines and topics, think of the expertise database as more of a speakers bureau. This will assist ILTA when they have a topic in mind and need to find a speaker. They will be able to look up an expertise area - for example, cloud technologies or marketing technologies - and find the names of everyone listed under that topic. The great news is this database will also be used by ILTA when searching for potential authors for their various publications. The database takes about thirty seconds to fill out but you must be logged into ILTA's site (create an account here). When you log in, the 'My Expertise' option will show in the right column.
This is something that ALL your employees can and should do. Depending on your sponsorship level, only some of your employees will show up on the site (bronze-3, silver-5, gold-10, platinum-unlimited), but all the employees you list will come up when ILTA searches the database.
Comments