The 2010 ILTA Conference “Strategic Unity” kicked off last night with its typical relaxed excitement. The replacement venue, the new Aria hotel in Las Vegas, is enormous and it seems they’ve left no stone unturned in accommodating the ILTA organization. Despite outside temperatures well in excess of 100°, attendees and exhibitors enjoyed the cool indoor atmosphere at the opening reception.

Peggy Weschler, Program Director, was beaming as she informed me that final registration exceeded 1,100 attendees, a 37% increase over last year’s conference! Kudos to the staff of ILTA for pulling this great event together so quickly, following the tragic floods in Nashville less than four months ago. It’s great to have ILTA back on the West Coast (almost).

A Time for Change

While this year’s conference moves forward with ILTA’s historic peer groups, one of the biggest changes at ILTA is the restructuring of the peer organization. Recently announced, ILTA is moving away from its vendor specific peer groups and embracing topical categories. The new categories are:

Desktop and Application Services
Communications Technologies
Emerging Technologies
Enterprise Content Management
Financial Management
Knowledge Management
Law Department
Litigation and Practice Support
Professional Services
Risk and Records Management
Server Operations and Security
User Support Services

The Board of ILTA and their Strategic Relationship Liaisons really got this right! The new peer groups are topically aligned with the issues facing law firms, legal departments, and law practices. A quick glance at any of these categories reveals that the restructuring team has thought of just about everything.

The new structure should benefit members and vendors alike. Long time vendor-based peer groups will be replaced, evening the playing field for competitors in their categories. Going forward it will be interesting to observe how these new groups are accepted by the membership and vendor sponsors.