How ILTA used VoiceVoice to provide networking, engagement, and peer-led conversation in their 2020 ILTA>ON virtual event.
The International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) is a volunteer-led, staff-managed association with a focus on membership. ILTA’s aim is to educate and connect peers in the legal sector through live local, national, and global events. With a strong focus on technology, ILTA’s offerings support professionals of every stripe in law firms, corporate, and government legal operations.
The Challenge
ILTA generates much of its revenue from hosting events for its members, which have traditionally been held live in-person. When the pandemic hit, all of their events suddenly had to be flipped to virtual. Based on focus groups of association members, the ILTA team knew that it was crucial for their virtual events to have “face to face networking opportunities.”
There are many options for broadcasting or presenting from the “main stage” during live events, but providing occasions for real networking and meaningful, enjoyable conversations in a virtual environment is much more elusive.
““We wanted to change from an in-person event to a virtual one but still keep that in-person feeling.”
The Solution
Providing unique, easy, virtual, interactive networking opportunities was a key requirement for ILTA in selecting a vendor to power their virtual events.
The ILTA team was figuring out how to move their largest in-person event of the year—the five-day ILTA>ON 2020—fully online when they were invited to attend a virtual roundtable on VoiceVoice. Dawn says that participating in the roundtables showed the ILTA team how the VoiceVoice platform could be used for networking: “We saw the potential for this technology and what it could do for our association.”
VoiceVoice is a new way to build community by connecting like-minded people in guided, face to face, live video conversations, without the host needing to attend each event. The host records (once) the facilitation elements for a purposeful conversation (such as agenda, video guidance, and activities). The platform facilitates up to millions of live small groups with the recorded guidance and allows those groups to connect, discuss, navigate together, and move into action at their own pace, on their own schedule.
Dawn continues:
“We were on a breakfast chat—literally just a group text about what we were having for breakfast. And someone asked why can’t we sit down and have breakfast with each other and talk about our bacon (our group is big on bacon). It sparked the idea to still have breakfast together, still have watercooler chats together, still have lunch together and the VoiceVoice platform provided that opportunity for us.”
The ILTA team created social events on the platform, such as “Hallway Hangouts” and “Watercooler Sessions,” with simple discussion prompts—group introductions, a “get to know you” question, followed by an open-ended “let’s just talk” segment—and invited association members to join and connect, meet new people either during pre-scheduled sessions or spontaneously, instantly, at any time, 24/7.
In total, the ILTA team created around 40 different conversations or events.
Tracie McCray, Digital Strategist for the Service Delivery Team at ILTA says:
“Like a lot of organizations, we are operating with a reduced staff due to the pandemic. Being able to set everything up on the VoiceVoice platform weeks in advance and then just having it run- that ‘set-and-forget-it’ was key for making this work.”
