For the first time in many years, I will not be at the Masters Conference for Legal Professionals, to be held in Washington D.C. from Wednesday 18 September to 19 September.

This is the result of a collision between a family wedding and holiday, a trip to Hong Kong and a London conference, all of which are crammed into the same few days. Something had to give and it is, alas, the Masters Conference.

The main reason that I usually attend is to take part in its International Discovery panel which last year I co-chaired with Amor Esteban of Shook Hardy & Bacon.

That panel is listed this year to take place on Thursday 19 September at 10:50 am. The panel description is here. Tom Matzen of iDiscovery Solutions is the moderator and the panel includes Damon Greer, formerly Director, U.S.-EU & Swiss Safe Harbor Frameworks U.S. Department of Commerce, whose views will be of particular interest as EU eyes reconsider whether Safe Harbor is safe at all in the light of the NSA/PRISM outcry.

I won’t pretend that I would rather be in Washington than on a Cornish cliff, but I will still be sorry to miss this and the other Masters Conference panels.