Attending the CBA conference in Montreal

Another two weeks, another update, but this one a little more focused on how we spent most of last week in Montreal for the CBA Immigration Law Section conference.

For those who don't know, this is a yearly event where hundreds of immigration lawyers get together to network, learn, eat, socialize and of course, complain about how much harder it is to practice immigration law in Canada these days (thanks to backlogs, complications, etc.).

Because Visto.ai is built for Canadian immigration firms, we've made sure to attend the last few years, and we always have a great time.

This year it was in Montreal, so Visto CTO Alex Ghattas and I hopped in his car, along with good friend Erica Herman , for a roadtrip from Toronto to Montreal. The drive was surprisingly smooth as we arrived late Wednesday afternoon.

It was a whirlwind of a week, here are some highlights:

• Wednesday night: we had dinner with the amazing Eddy Ramirez and Nicolas Urena who know the best spots in the city, then I met up with Ronak Patel for a nightcap and discussion about the international student space in Canada. Suffice to say, we had lots to discuss...
• Thursday: breakfast with my uncle, a morning meeting/lunch to onboard a new team onto Visto, attended the CILA: Canadian Immigration Lawyers Association networking event from 2-4pm, then met Jorge Alejandro Torres Gomez for a latte/fun chat, followed by a tapas-style dinner then quick drink with my cousin before bed
• Friday: the CBA conference began, which meant spending the day (730am-5pm) at our booth talking about immigration tech, AI and automation with the best and brightest in the industry:

Then 2 of my great aunts took me for a delicious dinner (great Chinese restaurant on Decarie) before an early bedtime.

• Saturday: back at the conference for 730am until it started to die down around 2pm when we jumped back in the car and headed home for Toronto.

Not only was it a great event, but I got to catchup with and/or meet tons of people in-person. I can't link everyone because there were too many for one post, but it was great to chat/catch up with, among many others: Paul Monson SOUAD OUARED, MBA Marc Pavlopoulos Emily Lukaweski Kareem El-Assal Sarah Fagan Alexandra Callinan Rema Aljajeh Rebecca Godinho Avi Gomberg Trupti Panchal-Smit, J.D. and many, many more!

While I love my work-from-home setup, there's still nothing quite like meeting and chatting in person. There's an added energy that you don't get over video calls, and I think it's important to make sure you're mixing in enough of it or things can get stale really quickly.

Do you agree?

As always, hope you're enjoying following along on our journey and have a great week,

Josh Schachnow

Immigration lawyer and CEO @ Visto.ai