Relativity Fest again managed to retain the sense of being a family affair while actually being one of the largest eDiscovery events in the calendar. When the “family” for a CEO keynote is 1,560 users, partners and others, it is quite an art to retain the sense of shared endeavour and ambitions. Relativity CEO Andrew Sieja manages this very well, hiding meticulous preparation and practice behind an almost conversational manner. We got the stats indicating growth, a quick demo or two, eloquent representatives of partners who step on stage, do their bit and go, and a roadmap for future development.

The new partnership between Relativity and FTI was among those celebrated during he keynote:

There is a summary by Shawn Gaines of the announcements made during the keynote here.

I get to do panels with top-flight people at Relativity’s events. I moderated one on the United Nations of TAR with US Magistrate Judge Andrew Peck, Justice Peter Vickery from Victoria in Australia and Karyn Harty from McCann FitzGerald in Dublin, between them three of the common law world’s most influential people at promoting the use of technology assisted review in litigation.

I took part also in an international privacy panel moderated by David Horrigan of Relativity, along with Meribeth Banaschik, Karyn Harty again, Patrick Burke of Bennett & Samios, and Johnny Lee of Grant Thornton. I got the opportunity to pour some cold water on some of the GDPR myths and to urge a focus on practical and cultural change, rather than merely fear-mongering about fines. We touched on the GDPR, the Privacy Shield, security breaches and their implications, and the wider changes taking place as privacy and data protection seeps into US consciousness.

Some of the quotations from these panels made it into David Horrigan’s usual summary and the report of David Horrigan’s judicial panel is here

As always, Relativity organised a schedule of articulate people for our video interviews, mainly from Relativity partners, and gave us the wonderful Normandie Lounge to film in (I wrote about the history of the SS Normandie here).

This was a good show as always, combining technology with subject-matter knowledge and with plenty of opportunity to talk to people. Chicago is a great city for those lucky enough to get there early. My second-favourite restaurant, The Purple Pig, was welcoming as ever, and we had the chance to see the sights – among other things we did the architectural boat tour and saw Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate, below.

Come and join us next year from 30 September to 3 October.