FORUM ANNUAL MEETING - AUSTIN RECAP
By: Amanda Messa
Cheers to Austin and All the Great Things Ahead for Division 11
We just wrapped up another great annual meeting in Austin where many of us got to experience first-hand all of the things this city has to offer – including a thriving live music scene, vibrant arts and last but certainly not least, amazing craft cocktails. Here’s a quick recap of some of the fun and memories we made in Austin….
First, we kicked things off with an in-person Division 11 member meeting on Wednesday afternoon where we brainstormed about relevant hot topics and roundtable discussions for our upcoming monthly meetings. If you don’t regularly attend our monthly meetings, I strongly recommend you get these on your calendar and join us for some interesting discussions on practical issues we all face as in-house counsel.
On Thursday night, we enjoyed cocktails and conversation with members of Division 11 and the Cokinos Young firm at Standard Proof Whiskey on historic Rainey Street. We are grateful to Cokinos Young and Shelly and Dave Masters for all of their hospitality. We had a great turnout and it was exciting to see so many new faces in the room.
On Friday for
our joint division lunch with Divisions 1 and 6, we got to see Division 11
member – Brian Falcon – moderate an interesting panel on Multi-Party
Mediations. The panel featured Jennifer Grippa (Miles Mediation &
Arbitration), Hon. Nancy Holtz (Ret.) (JAMS) and Jason M. Rodgers-da Cruz
(Siegfried Rivera) and provided lots of great insights that we can use as we
approach dispute resolution matters for our companies.
And finally, I’ll end with a few personal takeaways from Austin:
- I
really like whiskey when it doesn’t taste like whiskey (the Itsy Spritzy
Spider at Standard Proof Whiskey may just be my new favorite cocktail)
- Division
11 members are FULL of fun facts that will need to be explored further at
future meetings (e.g. 2 out of the 3 members I had a drink with after our
Division 11 social event were Eagle Scouts and one of those former scouts
recently purchased a super cool light saber)
- Our incoming chair (Matt Meaker) has officially empowered me to implement fun fact trivia at our next social event – Note: there were at least 2 independent witnesses present when he made this commitment.
For those of
you who were unable to attend, you were certainly missed but we look forward to
seeing all of you in Kentucky in September!
