TitleBytes News & Happenings

MLTA Annual Convention Preview

John Bommarito
President-Elect

At the time I write this, we’re just about 6 weeks away from our annual convention held in Traverse City this year. This coming July 16-18, 2017 the MLTA membership will convene at Great Wolf Lodge in Traverse City for our annual convention.

This year, we will move back toward more of a “2 day” format. Starting off Sunday evening with our welcome reception, there is an excellent outdoor area which will host our welcome reception and dinner, as well as other fun activities to give attendees a chance to network and reconnect with each other. All around the grassy area in addition to the big tent for dining and the bar, there will be several standard yard games, a bonfire pit, a “cigar lounge” tent and hopefully some music entertainment. The idea Sunday night is to relax and socialize.

Monday we are planning on a formal session from 8/8:30 (breakfast) until noon. In addition to the standard annual meeting agenda items (voting in the new board, etc), we are planning on 3 speakers for Monday morning. U.S. Congressman Dave Trott will be giving us a view inside the workings of Washington D.C. Doug Duncan, Chief Economist for Fannie Mae will be discussing his economic forecast. Dan Mennenoh, current ALTA President will be discussing some national issues facing the title industry.

Monday afternoon, after the formal agenda, we have a variety of social activities to participate in. The PAC will be hosting 2 fundraisers. The first option is a 2 hour cruise around Grand Traverse Bay and will include drinks. The second option is a winery tour with stops at Brys Estate and Bonobo wineries and of course includes tastings. Each activity is $100 per person. Make sure you reserve your spot today as they are both filling up!

Monday evening will see our usual formal dinner. Afterwards, I’m pleased to announce the return of the MLTA Room Crawl! Since we have the entire 4th floor of the hotel, all 4 suites on that floor up have been sponsored as hospitality suites and will play host to our room crawl stops. Thanks to RamQuest, Fidelity, Capital Title and First American for hosting a room crawl suite!

Tuesday morning’s agenda we’re nicknaming “Technology Tuesday” and after breakfast, we have 3 fantastic speakers lined up. Justin Tucker from WFG National Title Company will be highlighting some new pieces of technology that title agents may find useful for themselves or for assisting their customers. Also, Scott Montgomery and Dan Kilpatrick from Open Systems Technologies (OST) will be presenting on various risks of today’s technology including hacking, data security and things they see when conducting systems penetration testing. We should wrap up Tuesday’s session around 11am, before the noon hotel checkout time.

I’m also excited to announce that the MLTA will “test-driving” an event app (for both iPhone and Android) at this year’s summer convention. We did a beta-test with the MLTA Lobby Day group and the feedback was constructive and positive. The app will contain some useful features such as a schedule of events, speaker bios, contact info, a map of the area, and it will app provide members another way to interact with each other and our vendors. But don’t worry – Marcy Lay will still have hard copy event packets available when you check in. As we get closer to the event, you will receive an email with instructions on how to download the app and set it up for our event.

Various advertising, sponsorship and exhibitor opportunities are still available so please contact Marcy Lay at laym@krkm.com for more information. Don’t forget to check out our website (www.milta.org) for more info on this and our other events throughout the year. Registration is open for the summer convention so make yours today.

See you all in Traverse City!