So I guess I’m doing a newsletter. It was this or a podcast.

Conference Chat

I’ve been thinking a lot of about professional conferences lately. Is our community big enough to sustain that many conferences? Is the ROI on time and costs and environmental effects really there? Can you believe conferences in the year of our Lord 2020 are still doing all white man panel line ups?

I am coming off of a year of a sabbatical from attending conferences. It just…was too much expense, too much waste, too much travel, too much seeing the same old same old. I guess I’m going back on the circuit. Now it’s just a matter of trying to decide which ones.

Right now I’m thinking:

• Legal Hackers Summit - This is invite only, but I’m invited. I mean, I’m sure if you asked you could snag one. I align more with the DIY punk rock attitude of legal hackers any other vertical in the legal world. Enterprise software solutions are for quitters.

• CALIcon - This is a maybe, dependent on whether or not I can get a presentation accepted. (I have an idea for one, I just need to submit it.) But it’s a good mix of technologists and the people that interface with users. Strong A2J and education emphasis.

• Clio Cloud - This is another maybe, dependent mainly on my work schedule. I really enjoy the Clio people, both because they push the tech envelope but also because they do it in a holistic way. It’s about more for them than lawyers making money, ya know? As part of it they do the Launch/Code Contest which is so smart. Plus they usually announce the results of their annual Legal Trends Report, which is honestly a huge public service on their part. I think I can get codes to save people money on registration. I guess we’ll see if I really lean into this “legal tech influencer” thing lol.

• SubTech - Another invite only thing - *cough* - but also probably not hard to get one if you ask. I’ve been wanting to go for a few years, and actually got an invite in 2016 but I was between jobs and my bank account and schedule were in too much flex to commit. One added bonus to this one is that I can swing through Cincy, pick up my Dad and drive there.

• Law via the Internet - This started off as a free law thing, but it seems to be branching off into A2J Tech, which works for me. This is a world wide conference so it’s rare that it’s somewhere that’s not a complete travel nightmare to get there. I should file this as a maybe because I keep seeming to have a several hundred dollar emergency every month but this might be worth the credit card debt.

Jesus, that looks like a lot now that I see it written out. I guess, also, all of this is contingent on Coronavirus response.

Let’s Fix PACER

PACER is a Gee Dee mess but it looks like there’s some moves afoot to start fixing it. The good folks at the Free Law Project has created a GitHub repo to track requests. Thread:

Cool Job Alert

Duke has an opening for the Director of the Ethical Tech Law and Policy Clinic. I worked at the University of Kentucky too long to ever be able to consider working for Duke, but I’ve met a couple of the people that work at the law school and they’re really nice. You know, for Duke people. ;)

Music for Sticking it to The Man

I have a weird relationship to music - I love it, but I don’t ever seek out anything new and when I drive, I tend to do so in silence. I actually prefer silence over anything really. (I’m super spectrum-y.) I used to have a Zune and I will die on the hill of Microsoft’s hardware and software with the Zune was far superior to anything Apple made.

Well my Zune died and I went through a period where I didn’t have any mass transit time, so I stopped listening to any music. I recently discovered that via my Amazon Prime membership I can have free access to millions of songs and it’s very similar to the Zune experience just using an app on my phone. I’m having so much fun looking up and reacquainting myself with songs I haven’t heard in years.

Sparked by a friend’s FB comment, I spent about 30 minutes trying to remember these guys. So so good and so much fun.

This Tweet

This Dog

Still a very good boy.

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I don’t know how frequent or long these things will be. But if you want to see what’s been on my mind:

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