Event write up by Teresa Vincent, regular attendee
This year’s Document Excellence Day was as great as ever. I came away with some useful tips and lots of food for thought. I imagine most of the attendees like me are trying to find meaningful ways of including a 3D Hubble space telescope in our future PowerPoint presentations!
Standard Style Naming Convention
The holy grail in document production and support. We enjoyed a great discussion on how ideal life would be with Standard Style Naming. Imagine, all our long, complicated, documents could be edited regardless of a particular firm’s house style and still retain our own brand identity.
ILTA
There was an interesting personal journey provided on becoming an ILTA member and the benefits that have been gained from ILTA’s vast network both of knowledge and people. Next London ILTA is on November 16 in case you missed the email.
Microsoft Word and Office
We were ‘wowed’ by some of the features in newer versions of Office365 – both in the translation tools and the 3D graphics that can now be inserted. There were probably some work-related new features too, but after seeing the 3D Hubble space telescope in minute detail via a PowerPoint presentation, I forgot about the rest.
Agile Working
We enjoyed hearing how a London law firm has already issued all its lawyers with the capability for agile working, this includes new laptops, smartphones and soft phones. It’s brilliant to think that this is actually happening right now. It was interesting to hear how this may change the way people work but in a very positive way. It was especially exciting to hear that in the not too distant future, possibly PAs and Documentation staff may also be able to work in this new agile manner. Definitely could help with to have a great work/life balance if done correctly.
Mr Meerkat
As ever we had an amazing presentation on security awareness and how pervasive information gathering has become in our daily lives (both personal and work). At times, scary and definitely makes you consider how much information is “out there” about you. What has this to do with Meerkats? Well, you’ll have to attend next year’s Document Excellence Day to find out – but you won’t be disappointed.
Is Automation Changing our Roles and Business?
After listening to the panel discussion – oh yes, in ways I wasn’t aware of. This was an excellent panel from both a law firm and a law firm provider on how they are implementing automation in their business to facilitate client requirements and needs. Will a law firm work differently in 10 years time? After listening to this discussion I think so and probably way before 10 years.
Office365
Well, to quote the singer Pink, “who knew?” – maybe I’m just not keeping up with the times but I thought Office365 was ‘just another’ version of Office. How wrong was I? There are a myriad of versions depending on your requirements. It was such an eye-opener to hear them explained and how important it will be to choose the right version to support your agile working (when it happens). Just make sure you get the one that includes the 3D images.
Legal Housestyle in a Global Environment
This session was excellent especially for anyone who works with/supports documents. We were treated to a summary of the 3 most likely “gotchas” when working in non-UK/US environments. The one I found best was “Why do some Tables of Contents not work once they come back from some destinations” – well now I know to check the TOC field code for commas or semi-colons! Easy when you know how and this presenter definitely knew how!
Best Practices in Document Control
You have to feel sorry for whoever gets the last slot of the day, but this was definitely a last but by no means least session. We were given some excellent tips on ensuring document control and security. Yes there are tools out there to facilitate this but it’s still a learning process for everyone involved to ensure that the tool is used correctly to make full use of the security and integrity that can be provided to our documents.
The Day
The day was excellent, well planned and covered a wide range of topics that must have provided something for everyone who attended. The facilities and personnel who staffed it were brilliant, everything ran smoothly, food was amazing, whoever made the afternoon scones deserves a medal – they were delicious. I’m already saving the date for next year. If you want to be there, join DEG, it’s free (www.docexcellence.com). Massive thanks to everyone involved in arranging it and sponsoring it, it really did deserve the word “Excellence” in its name.
Teresa Vincent
IT Trainer
Shearman & Sterling (London) LLP
