And now a few words from our sponsor ...

I'm a week behind in posting this message, but better late than never I suppose. In case you missed it we held a little meeting last Friday and were happy to host about 30 of our Members and guests, along with such speakers as the illustrious Kenneth Gardner, Clerk of the Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, and representatives from Bankruptcy software manufacturers Westlaw, Best Case Solutions and EZ Filing. As promised there was food, drink and giveaways, including demo copies of software, etc. For those of you who may be wondering, in view of the light turnout at our meetings over the past few years (that is putting it politely -- many of you have not been turning up at all: what does it take to motivate you people?) we consider the meeting to have been a tremendous success. Those of you that have chosen to e-mail me with feedback have said good things, and I welcome any other comments (the good, the bad and the ugly). As usual, the unsung heroes of the meeting were the ladies at the DCBA, take a bow ladies, and Kathryn Harry, our recently appointed Vice Chair and all around good sport. She has been tremendously helpful and will make a great Chair next year. Also present to see how far we've come as a committee were the Chairmen from the last 2-years, Tom Else and Mike Davis, as well as Bar liaison and perennial Bankruptcy guru Kent Gaertner (not to be confused with the Clerk of the Court). I hope they enjoyed the experience as well.Okay then, I'll wind up with a brief plug for our upcoming Seminar on the same general topic area of CM/ECF. This time we would like to bring back the Clerk of the Court for an update, bring back our software speakers for a longer time, get some input from practitioner/users of the system, and if possible bring in a bonus speaker from the Bankruptcy Court. No date has been set yet but of course we will let you know. And a final, final note: this last meeting was attended by some who were not DCBA regulars (or even members per se) but had heard that we would be talking about a subject that was of interest to them. As Federal Court practitioners in a State Court bar association, our Members will always feel a little out of place at the DCBA simply because we are not Courthouse regulars the same way many other bar members are. Accordingly, I think we ought to reach out to other Bankruptcy practitioners in our area, whether in DuPage County, Cook, Will, Kane, etc. I would like to suggest that each of us consider contacting or extending an invitation to our practicing colleagues (and Judges and Court personnel) to attend our Seminar or come to a meeting. At the end of the day, it can only help our Committee by enhancing its reach and adding new voices to its operation. Anyway, that's just my input. Let me know what you think.Thanks for reading everyone. Now back to your regularly scheduled programs. Stay tuned for more Bankruptcy fun ...