It might be time to try in-person public Drafting Clearer Contracts presentations using an innovative model that worked well before the pandemic.
Used to do in-person public Drafting Clearer Contracts presentations in partnership with some other organization. My partners arranged premises (usually at a hotel) and were responsible for marketing and sales. I got a cut of the proceeds.
Because of the pandemic and, more broadly, Zoom, those days are over. Holding events in a hotel is expensive, and that expense is passed on to participants. And participants seem to be in no rush to travel for a presentation if instead they can stay where they are and participate online.
But there’s another option.
In the 2010s, I did a few public presentations that were hosted. My arrangement with the hosts was that they would make a meeting room available for one of my public presentations, they’d have people greet the participants, and at their expense they’d provide lunch and refreshments to all participants. In return, their personnel could attend the presentation at no charge.
I did this with, among other organizations, Maersk Line (in Copenhagen), SAP (in Walldorf, Germany), ECE Projektmanagement, the shopping-center developer (in Hamburg, Germany), the law firm Roschier (in Helsinki; see the photo above), and the law firm Akin Gump (in Geneva, Switzerland). I didn’t try it in the US.
It might be time to use this model again if I’d like to do the occasional in-person public presentation anywhere in the world. It would offer some advantages:
- It’s easier to pay attention and participate if you’re in the same room as everyone else. (In particular, humor works better in-person than it does online.)
- You’d have the opportunity to network, if that appeals.
- Because I wouldn’t be using hotel facilities, I’d be able to charge less than what my partners used to charge for my public presentations.
- Everyone would get a copy of A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting. For those outside the United States, that means they wouldn’t have to pay the expensive shipping costs they’d be charged if they were to buy the book themselves.
Of course, for those who don’t live close to the presentation venue, those advantages might not be enough to convince them to incur the cost of traveling to the presentation and staying a night or two at a hotel. But maybe there would still be enough people interested to make this worthwhile.
What do you think? And would your organization be willing to act as host?
