Sure, there are plenty of companies out there providing educational webinars and other online resources, especially since the pandemic began and in-person events and activities were put on hold due to social distancing. So, why should you care about one more?  Because, in addition to a great reputation for putting on excellent educational events, they’re offering something that few others offer: hands-on training workshops.

The Roundtable, by RPC Strategies, LLC, is new and not new at the same time.  Many of you may be familiar with the ESI Roundtable (ESIRT), which was founded by Melissa “Rogo” Rogozinski back in 2009 and conducted many legal technology educational events over several years. “It started with local judges, lawyers and me in Birmingham, literally sitting at a round dining room table over breakfast”, says Rogozinski.  “It reminded me of King Arthur and his Knights of the Roundtable, which is where the name originated.”

Having spoken at ESIRT events, I can share that the ones I was involved with were well organized and well attended, with excellent speakers.  So, what happened to ESIRT?

“I had to take a professional sabbatical in the Fall of 2016 because of personal, family and health challenges, so I had to shut down ESIRT as part of that”, says Rogozinski.  “When I was able to return in the Spring of 2019, I created a new company – RPC Strategies, LLC.  RPC Stands for Rising Phoenix Consulting, which was a name I gave the company to honor the ESIRT clients who ‘hoped to see the Phoenix rise again’ after I had to shut down.”

The RPC Strategies team provides “revenue strategy” services that help organizations maximize and align their marketing and sales programs, which is a challenge for a lot of organizations out there.  But people still missed ESIRT.

“Then, in the Fall of 2019, I was approached by a potential angel investor to relaunch ESIRT”, continues Rogozinski.  “I put a new Advisory Board together to help assess the need in the industry and was pleased to find that there was plenty of interest out there in seeing ESIRT restarted.  So, our team put all the pieces, scaling strategy and financial projections back together again.  The angel ended up with a conflict, but we decided we could bootstrap it, and here we are – in the midst of COVID – answering the call with The Roundtable!”

While The Roundtable offers forums and continuing education events with practical content, solutions and networking, their “crown” events are the virtual Hands-On-Training (#HOT) workshops (see what they did there?)  that provide knowledge education with a guest speaker, hands-on training session with a sponsor and plenty of time for collaborating and networking for all attendees.

The Events page on The Roundtable site shows a calendar of events which already shows planned events as far out as November of next year!  Not only that, but they have a Hands-On Training Workshop scheduled as soon as this Wednesday at 1pm ET with TrialLine, which is a cloud-based mediation, trial presentation and storytelling legal timeline software for law firms and attorneys that want maximum insight into their cases and which received a TechnoLawyer^® Top Product award for 2020.  There are still spots available for it, so you can register here.

The Roundtable also is looking for companies to sponsor their workshops (more information about sponsorship available here).  For companies with products looking for ways to reach audiences out there, sessions that combine education and hands on training certainly seems like a unique way to do that.

So, what do you think?  Are you looking for education and opportunities to get hands on interesting products? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by my employer, my partners or my clients. eDiscovery Today is made available solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Today should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.