Each year Kraft Kennedy sponsors the annual ILTA golf tournament. It’s typically the Sunday before the conference and a great way to start your week. You can expect a great turnout each year and prizes awarded for top teams and best shots. Who knows, maybe you will get lucky and win our car giveaway on the back 9 – this year was a 2010 Porsche 911.

Here are some photos from this year’s event.

Additional photos can be found here. Special thanks to Cindy Mahoney for these great shots!

We would love to hear what you thought of the event. Thanks for playing and we’ll see you again next August.

The 2010 12th Annual ILTA Golf Tournament was a great success! Kraft Kennedy would like to thank our co-sponsors: WorkShare, Cypress Communications and Dell-Equallogic for helping to put on a great event. 

Over 60 people came out and we would like to congratulate the following teams who received trophies this year:

1st Place
Fernando Monteleone, Robinson & Cole LLP
Brandon Monteleone, Robinson & Cole LLP
John Sroka, Younts
Vito Squarciafico, Pullman & Comley


2nd Place
Chris Owens, Kraft Kennedy
John Sawyer, Partridge Snow & Hahn LLP
Dana Rotter, Holme Roberts & Owen
Frank Nelson, Linquist & Vennum PLLP


3rd Place
Joey Perez, American LegalNet, Inc.
Ken Levonaitis, McCarter & English
Mike Walls, US Army
Ted Glutz, Kraft Kennedy


Thanks to everyone who came out and we look forward to seeing you again next year!

It is hot, the end of summer, it must be time for ILTA. This year the annual conference will be held in Las Vegas and the theme is Strategic Unity. Kraft Kennedy will again play an active role in conference. In fact, we will have 13 management and technical consultants attending the conference this year.  We’re also a Platinum Sponsor once again.  We’d love for you to stop by and talk about technology, enter our raffle, or just say hello.  Here is where you can find us:

Exhibit Hall – Booth 310/312

Come by and see us at our booth. Just look for the Porsche Cabriolet. We will be right next to the car…..if someone didn’t win it in the golf tournament. Are you interested in the latest technology, like Office 2010, Windows 7, and VDI?  Come see us in Booth 310/212 where we’ll have desktops, tablets, and even iPads accessing our VDI environment utilizing all of these technologies and more.  How about SharePoint 2010 as a functional DMS?  Or a raffle for your chance to win Bose Noise Reducing Headphones. Our consultants will be in the booth ready to talk about whatever is on your mind.

Briefing Room – Bluethorn 3

Many of our clients are taking advantage of the opportunity to meet with our team of experts to discuss topics that are relevant to them. Our team has experience planning, designing and implementing the latest technologies for law firms and we welcome you to have that same opportunity.  Send Rob Brindell an email: Brindell@kraftkennedy.com to schedule a convenient time for you to meet with us.

12th Annual Golf Tournament

Kraft Kennedy will be sponsoring the 12th Annual Golf Tournament with co-sponsors, Cypress Communications, Workshare software and Dell/EqualLogic. The tournament will be held at Bali Hai golf club and you can register at www.kraftkennedy.eventbrite.com to play Sunday, August 22nd. There will be an 8:00am shotgun start. Breakfast, lunch and refreshments will be served as well as contest prizes and trophies to the winners. Hopefully this year, someone will win a Porsche Cabriolet if they hit a hole in one on the contest hole.

Look who’s Speaking

Kraft Kennedy’s technical and management consultants will be presenting at the following sessions during the conference:

Session Name: Successful Strategies for Deploying Desktop Change
Date and Time: Monday, 8/23/2010 10:30 am – 12:00 pm

Session Name: Tweaking the Windows 7 Desktop with Advanced Configuration Settings
Date and Time: Tuesday, 8/24/2010 1:30 pm – 4:30 pm

Session Name: Co-Managing Projects with Vendors
Date and Time: Thursday, 8/26/2010 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm

Session Name: Law Department Roundtable
Date and Time: Thursday, 8/26/2010 3:30 pm – 4:30 pm

Session Name: How KM Supports Alternative Fee Arrangements
Date and Time: Thursday, 08/26/2010 10:30 a.m. – 11:45 a.m.

Session Name: The Evolution of Project Management in Law Firms
Date and Time: Tuesday, 09/21/2010 12:00pm-2:00pm

Tuesday was a exciting day at ILTA 2009 with lots of great sessions and discussions throughout the day.  About the only part of the day that wasn’t so great was the turkey bacon served at breakfast, which had the texture of construction paper and the flavor of it as well.

The morning saw a number of really good sessions, such as the session entitled “G100 Recap: Weathering the Storm and Cloud Computing.”  A number of key points were raised, such as the acknowledgment that technology spending was sacrificed during the economic downturn during the past couple of years.  The panelists believe that IT will actually help lead firms out of the recession and allow them to complete projects to help overall productivity.  On the subject of cloud computing, it was said that most law firms will likely begin to get exposure through telephony systems where there is less of the privacy concerns of other cloud based applications.

If you’re interested in exploring cloud computing in greater detail, Kraft Kennedy’s John Tsiofas and Dave Carlson will be speaking on data center relocation and cloud computing at 11:00AM on Wednesday in the Maryland C ballroom.

Also in the morning was a great session called “From the Trenches: Office 2007 Deployment Lessons.”  Here three different firms talked about their experiences, both good and bad, in upgrading to Office 2007.  The general consensus from the panelists was that the ribbon bar, the biggest visual change in the Office 2007 suite, actually turned out to be an insignificant issue overall.  The larger concerns were around application integration with document management systems and add-ins to Office applications that cause instability and performance issues.  In fact, one panelist described the project as “The document management system project featuring Office 2007,” highlighting the importance of the integration between Office 2007 and the DMS.

Office 2010 may have some of the same challenges.  Feel free to stop by Kraft Kennedy’s booth (721/723) to get a first hand look at Office 2010 running in our VDI environment.  The VDI desktops also feature Windows 7 and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2, so stop by and check them out!

VDI, or virtual desktop infrastructure, seems to be a hot topic at the conference this year.  Firms are starting to recognize that there are many benefits that can come with implementing a VDI solution, both in terms of financial savings as well as ease of administration and management.  We’ve spoken with many firms at the conference already this year that are starting to look at VDI as an alternative to traditional desktop deployment strategies.  We think the release of Windows 7 is also helping to drive VDI interest and adoption, as is the acceptance of virtualization technology in general.

With cost savings in mind, firms are also talking about how to contain costs or continue to reduce them.  Technologies like virtualization are helping to reduce costs as firms work to extend their hardware investments.  Developing a sound technology strategy has also been a reoccurring topic throughout the day as firms are preparing for what is coming next and want to ensure their strategy makes good business sense.

Finally, the day ended with the “Tut After Dark” party and casino night and everyone had a great time.  Even the party is a great place to learn new things, such as this blogger learning just how quickly you can lose $25,000 at the high rollers craps table.  But hey, it sure was a fun four minutes of my life!