ConnectLive 2025: A Front Row Seat to Innovation and Connection

ConnectLive is the best opportunity to interact with and reconnect with the iManage community, whether it's us, our partners or our customers. And, for me personally, it's an exciting chance to talk with everyone and see what they've been up to. Find out what their plans are for the next year, especially in light of all the things that iManage is doing. It’s a chance to reconnect, and build out the plan for the future. 

ConnectLive is the one place where you get to experience the distillation of trends and innovations from iManage, its partners, and your peers across the industry. It's a chance to hear from iManage, but also presentations from other customers and partners. These sessions provide a forum for people to share what's been successful, what challenges they overcame and how, and what they might do differently if they had it to do over.  

What makes ConnectLive a “must-attend” event for legal and knowledge professionals is that it's the single point to get updates on everything that's happening with iManage. At ConnectLive, we distill what we've learned since the last event — both in terms of the “how-to” side of things, and understanding the overall company direction. Where it is we're trying to go from a technology perspective. 

This event affords people so many opportunities to network and have informal conversations that are relevant and valuable. In a way, ConnectLive is like the start of our year, in how it lays the foundation for understanding where the industry is now and gives you the resources to plan where you want to go in the coming months. 

Every year I catch up with people I’ve seen at various events for the past 20+ years — people whose very first project I may have worked on. And over the years we’ve all grown together, personally and professionally, so that it feels almost like a college reunion when I see them again. And even though this happens every year, it still takes me by surprise. The thing is, once you're working in this community, and you start building a history with people, it feels like you'll always have a place here. It’s a great feeling. 

That’s compelling — but it’s far from the only reason to go. One of the areas we plan to focus on this year, particularly with everyone’s hottest topic being AI — and more specifically, iManage AI — is how it's not just about getting the latest and greatest technology. It’s about going beyond the hype and helping people understand where they can apply these new technologies to benefit their end users.  

You see, AI doesn't solve anything on its own. And that’s true for any technology in our market right now. You need to do more than just check a box and say, “now we have AI.” You need to apply the technology in a way that’s impactful to your users.  

I don’t have to tell you that the legal and knowledge work industry is adapting to a very different technology landscape than we’ve known in the past. Leaders are starting to recognize that you can't just deploy new technology and expect people to know how to make the best use of it.  

Training and change management are essential ingredients for your success, but we are talking about more than practicalities here. We are talking about understanding the objectives your users want to achieve, knowing the value they are going to get from a new technology, and crafting targeted messaging around those two factors. We are talking about making sure they understand how to use what you’re providing to get the results they most want to see. And the results YOU most want to see. 

If technology is going to be effective and actually help people, we have to meet them where they are. We have to be clear about what this is going to mean to them on a day-to-day basis. How it will make their day better by making what they do faster, easier, smarter, or safer.  

This is what it boils down to:  

That’s what we want to focus on this year.