Court Technology Services 2025-2026 Annual Review
When you’re in the thick of a big project, it’s easy to fall in love with the forward momentum of the project, the goal of getting it done, and the process of bringing all the pieces together. It can also be easy to lose objectivity and get lost in the proverbial weeds, be impatient with your collaborators (who are on their own timelines), and worry/stress about surprises. It’s even easier to lose track of the enjoyment of the process.
Throughout building this book (over about four months) all of those things happened, AND something new – or at least something that hadn’t happened in a while – I stopped to enjoy the work: the process of editing/writing copy, embracing AI in accelerating the work, pitching the flow of the book to the team, collaborating with our Deputy CIO’s on their content, and especially crafting new diagrams. Towards the end of the process it dawned on me that this piece of work is the best thing I’ve done to date. Not saying that boastfully, just taking a moment to remember that feeling. So, with that said, here’s some highlights from the book.
The book presents one connected story highlighting CTS’ accomplishments. 136 pages profiling more than 60 projects, plus numerous custom vector graphics (my fav) and white-paper type strategy pages.
Hero spreads:
Four of my favorite spreads from the book. New graphics and charts, all native vector (Adobe Illustrator - the 'real’ AI ;) artwork.
136 loaded pages:
The thumbnails don’t do it justice, but its a good overview of the breadth and depth of the work. Somewhere just over 36,000 words. Next year, I’ll be updating the format to some degree - gotta. keep it fresh.
Last big push:
As we were getting close to finishing the book. an idea came up to include a wider view of the projects included in the book. When I say close to finishing, we were less than two weeks out from the press date. This is one point where AI truly enabled us to make this happen. Using a mix of MS CoPilot and Claude I gleaned out the critical information we wanted to include, and cross-referenced details and dates from the team and then built it out in InDesign for ‘real’. Working closely with our CIO we pulled it together in a visually interesting and insightful way that gives a bird’s eye view of what the Court Technology Team achieved in the 2025-2026 fiscal year.