Next week, a few thousand people will convene at LegalTech New York (LTNY) for 3 days of exhibitions, networking and legal technology sessions. To give an overview of what will be covered in those sessions, we have again created the LegalTech New York agenda word cloud, visually displaying the words/themes included in the event's agenda of sessions (minus days, times and people's names). FYI ... the size of selected words dictate how often they have been mentioned or referenced within the agenda (aka, how popular they are). [Click on image to enlarge]
This is the fourth year we have turned the event program into this type of word cloud, a visual snapshot of the main content themes and discussion topics. How does this compare to previous years? What topics made headlines in our word clouds for 2013, 2012 and 2011? Here are some musings on 2014 and past year comparisons:
- So 2014 is the year of information governance and data (not necessarily 'big')... proactive risk management. How can we properly (legally/ethically/affordably) manage and control data? What is the intersection with eDiscovery and big data? ARMA, which in 2013 put together several high quality big data sessions, looks to be focused on information governance education in 2014.
- Big data made a big showing in 2013 but didn't appear in 2012 or 2011. This year, even though there are a 2 dedicated 'big data' conference tracks, the topic itself appears a bit muted. Our conclusion: Most sessions and content themed big data on the agenda are actually eDiscovery related - see predictive coding, technology assisted review, etc. After all, the main big data track sponsors are eDiscovery folks. Include 'analytics' and 'metrics' and the slew of info governance topics and a more well-rounded big data picture takes shape.
- Considering privacy and security are on everyone's 'major challenges' and 'top priority' lists, the topics themselves are somewhat downplayed. We suspect these topics are central to most information governance discussions which seem to be dominating this year.
- What happened to law firm clients and corporate? Sessions focused on clients/serving corporate were a much bigger deal in years past ... a disappointing trend considering GC dissatisfaction with outside counsel is growing and not going away.
- Where did the big pricing discussion go? Remember AFAs? Session wise, LTNY seems to have moved on.
- The 'cloud' has officially left the building... but only in terms of being talked about and labeled. While everyone was talking about cloud solutions in 2011 and 2012, we couldn't find much talk of it in the agenda. Now, the true cloud focus is on real world applications beyond DR/BC and storage.
As a comparison, we have included the LegalTech NY Agenda Word Clouds from 2013, 2012 and 2011.
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