It’s not everyday you see a conference grow by more than tenfold in a matter of years.
But that’s Relativity Fest for you.
The annual conference, organized by Chicago-based e-discovery software developer kCura, gathers industry thought leaders and kCura clients from far and wide for a four-day series of sessions, panels, and workshops. At the conference, attendees provide feedback for kCura’s software, share knowledge and experiences, learn new skillsets, and celebrate with their peers in the e-discovery community.
At the first ever Relativity Fest in September of 2010, kCura managed to bring in 141 attendees at Chicago’s Hotel Sax.
This year the conference filled up the Chicago Hilton with more than 1,500 conference goers.
“Fest has gotten bigger and better each year,” said kCura’s Katie Johnson. “This year we brought in six times as many external speakers, including four federal judges and Sal Khan. 84 of the 111 sessions were brand new this year, and each attendee was able to take one free specialist exam to recognize their expertise in Relativity.”
As the event has grown is size and success, kCura said its team has met that challenge with an all-hands-on-deck approach.
“Hosting the event of course takes a lot of hard work from the entire team — there were 87 kCurians presenting, 75-plus working behind the scenes, and the entire company was really pumped and invested in making Fest and subsequent product release the best ever,” said kCura’s Chief People Officer, Dorie Blesoff.
At Relativity Fest’s reception at Union Station this year, attendees were joined by Blues Traveler and all of kCura’s employees to help celebrate the commencement of another successful conference.
“If Relativity Fest is a success, it’s because we have great customers and employees,” said Nick Robertson, VP of Product and Marketing. “We’ve been fortunate to build strong relationships with our customers. They’re willing to share what they like and don’t like about our product, what their challenges are, and what they want to see next.”
This year’s Fest was held earlier last month. At the conference, kCura unveiled Relativity 9.3 — the newest version of their software that boasts a suite of new features, including new and improved ways to interact with data, search, and customize your dashboard.
“Relativity 9.3 is going to change the way our customers work with their data,” said Andrew Sieja, president and CEO of kCura in a statement. “They now have a seriously powerful data analysis platform to visualize and interact with their growing data sets—and we focused on making it easy for any user. We’re excited to see how our customers are going to put it to use.”
In addition to Relativity 9.3, kCura also introduced its Relativity Academic Partner program in an effort to help law students learn more about legal technology.
Relativity 9.3 will be available to the general public on November 23.
