Boot Camps Across the Country – Houston, Dallas, and Chicago

Migrated from eDJGroupInc.com. Author: . Published: 2013-04-29 09:00:33  It’s been a crazy busy couple of weeks for the eDiscoveryJournal team as we crisscrossed the country educating the industry on eDiscovery topics near and dear to our hearts.  I started out last week driving from Austin to Houston which allowed me to get caught up on two hours of phone calls (except for the “dead zone” right outside the speed trap town of Giddings on 290).  After picking up Mikki Tomlinson from the Hobby Airport and sharing some tapas at Mi Luna, we were ready for our first Legal Hold Boot Camp.The Houston Legal Hold Boot Camp was held at the lovely Hyatt Regency in downtown Houston.  We had a nice mix of corporate, government and law firm representatives that had experience with records management and generating policies.  It was an intimate group of about twenty people that had a vested interest in legal holds. Mikki (who I consider one of the top thought leaders and practitioners on legal holds) along with our facilitator, Brian Tully from Pierce O’Neill, did a great job of breaking down the issues and providing suggestions for the audience to take back to their organizations.  Our sponsors HP/Autonomy, LateralData (a Xerox Company), and Zapproved provided a great deal of sharing their experiences on what worked and did not work for the past clients.After the Houston program, Mikki and I drove from Houston to Dallas for that Boot Camp at the Hyatt Regency Reunion Center.  It was great having company on the long drive and Mikki and I had a lovely stop in the mid-point of the trip in Madisonville for a chicken fried steak at a local diner/cafe and a stop at Buc-ee’s, the world’s largest convenience store.Naturally I had to pick up a $30 bag of beef jerky for my youngest son, Jonah (he’s a bit of jerky addict which I suppose is normal for a 13 year old Texan) and Mikki got a big bag of black licorice. Definitely a unique Texas experience…thanks to Maury Altgelt from King and Spalding for the recommendation.

Ok..back to the Boot Camps.The Dallas Legal Hold Boot Camp had a bit of a different vibe as the group that day was very interactive and jumped into all the activities with a zealous desire to share ideas with each other.   Scott Giordano from our lunch sponsor, Exterro, did a great job of opening the program with a case study that set the stage for the rest of the program.  Mikki and our facilitator for the day, Jerami Kimnitz from Shook Hardy & Bacon, did a great job of engaging the group and the ideas were flowing all day,especially when it came to their take on the ethical issues around legal holds.  Scott already did a post on the Dallas Boot Camp on the eDiscoveryBeat blog, so I won’t cover treaded ground again, but the feedback from the attendees was impressive as everyone noted in their feedback forms that they learned something new.  Thank you to our other sponsors, HP/Autonomy and LateralData (a Xerox Company) for supporting this program and pitching in for the happy hour.Legal holds to me have mostly been theoretical.  The consulting groups that I’ve run in the past usually had experienced records managers that would jump in the trenches with clients, so I’ve never been personally in the trenches putting legal hold policies together.  One of the parts of the program that I personally enjoyed participating in, which helped get me out of my ivory tower, was working in a small group to define the ideal legal hold policy.  I had a couple of great groups at both shows and they really helped me understand the requirements for a legal hold policy, but at the same time, sharing the obstacles they encounter in their everyday jobs as they attempt to put together and implement policies.  This is why having a more hands-on educational experience is better than listening to talking heads.I dropped off Mikki at the airport after the boot camp and spent some time with my mom who lives in Plano (a Dallas suburb).   After doing my “good son” duties, I had the opportunity to catch up with my old friend, Chris Rohde with PureDiscovery in downtown Dallas over breakfast.  It was interesting to hear more about PureDiscovery’s direction and what they’re quietly developing in the area of concept search and analytics.  I’m impressed with their direction and hope to cover them in more detail in the coming months.  Chris showed me their new space they are moving into in the coming weeks which reminded me of a college commons area in a trendy loft area of Dallas..this is a good move for them as they have definitely outgrown their current space.So after a long week of traveling, I finally headed back home to Austin..but my suitcase didn’t stay unpacked for long as I was heading to my hometown of Chicago for the Predictive Coding Boot Camp with our adjunct analyst, Karl Schieneman.  I was excited to participate in this event as the feedback from our DC program was amazing.  The Chicago people didn’t disappoint, but we learned a great deal about the content for this program for future shows.Jen Freeman with our lunch sponsor, FTI Consulting, opened up the program with outlining why using predictive coding techniques is important to the evolution of eDiscovery and re-emphasized the need for more education in this area.  Karl naturally did a great job along with our facilitators Elizabeth Jaworski from Motorola and Jeff Sharer with Sidley Austin.  Unfortunately we weren’t able to get any of the judges that regularly participate in the Predictive Coding Boot Camps to attendin person or via phone due to a scheduling conflict, but we were able to show the discussion on video from the DC Predictive Coding Boot Camp from last week with Judge Waxse, Judge Fischer, and Judge Facciola.  It wasn’t quite the same thing as having the judges in person to answer live questions, but Karl and the facilitators were able to provide some insight to the attendees to their questions.  Karl is working a post to address some of those questions, so keep an eye out for that coming soon in a post.  Karl assured me that we’ll have one of the judges at least available by teleconference for the remaining Predictive Coding Boot Camps.The Chicago Predictive Coding Boot Camp was a success and I wanted to thank our sponsors Kroll Ontrack, kCura, UBIC, HP/Autonomy, and FTI Consulting for helping us put on a great program.  After the Boot Camp, some of the attendees headed to Timothy O’Tooles for a few drinks and camaraderie.  It certainly was nice going into a bar that had Bears and Cubs all over the walls…I definitely miss Chicago (the people and culture…but not the weather as my blood has thinned quite a bit since moving to Texas 13 years ago).After happy hour, I connected with David Lee from UBIC as this was his first time to Chicago.  David lives in NYC and had never tried any of the fine Chicago bar cuisine.  So David and I headed to Gino’s East for a DEEP DISH supreme pizza and nice pitcher of local Chicago beer.  I know Gino’s is kind of a tourist trap type of place, but hey…it was delicious.  During dinner, I shared my passion about the Chicago Italian Beef sandwich.  For those not familiar with Italian Beef sandwiches…they are an old bar food similar to a French Dip except the beef is stewed in a broth for usually at least 24 hours.  They take the very tender beef, put it in an Italian roll, and then dunk the whole sandwich in the broth (aka “wet”).  You can optionally add giardiniera peppers to make it “hot” as well.  So David and I headed over to Portillo’s to have a wet and hot beef sandwich at Portillo’s.  David can comment on his own opinions on the pizza and the beef,but it was nice to blow my diet with gusto.  With a full belly and contented smile, I headed back to the hotel because I had to catch a morning flight back to Austin from Chicago.It was a long couple of weeks with a lot of miles, but it was worth it to meet with other eDiscovery practitioners to share ideas and solutions to some of the most difficult decisions in our practice area.  Onto preparing for my NYC Bootcamp with Babs Deacon on “Selecting eDiscovery Service and Technology Solutions” on May 16.  Can’t wait to blow my diet in my adopted city of New York with a “slice” and a real Italian dinner!!!  See you there.eDJ Group CEO and eDiscoveryJournal Contributor, Jason VelascoDon’t miss Jason Velasco’s upcoming Selecting eDiscovery Technology & Service Solutions Boot Camps in New York and Austin. To learn more, click here!