[Mick]

My wife went into a grocery store, and was chatting up the manager (from a safe distance, with a mask on).  The store had installed plexiglass shields separating the clerks from the customers in the check-out stand.  She was commenting on how they seemed like a good idea and looked pretty nice.  The manager replied something to the effect of "the plexiglass shields are going to be a permanent fixture".

There are a lot of things, big and small, that are going to change permanently as a result of COVID-19.

BC

I've had a similar experience on the business side, BC.  Our business used to depend on live events (we do over 100 per year).  Webinars was considered to be bit of a backwater, but appropriate for certain types of law (no one will go to a live event in which the topic is how to get a divorce, for example).

Was also thinking about the Harvard study which indicated that we'll be social distancing through at least 2022.  So I decided to reinvent our digital event experience to get as close to an in-person event as possible, though I'd been wondering how much society has changed; e.g., will we get any attendees?

Our first augmented webinar was a few weeks back. One of our partners chose an obscure topic, and gave us six days from invite/list creation to the event.  He invited 450 people.  I told him he might get 45 attendees, not to be surprised if he only had 20 attendees and if he was lucky, he might get 60.  We had 180 RSVPs, 162 attended, 159 stayed for the entire webinar.  More than a dozen substantive Q&A at the end.  Similar experience for the next three webinars.  And no one misses the in-person events.

[Mick]

My wife went into a grocery store, and was chatting up the manager (from a safe distance, with a mask on).  The store had installed plexiglass shields separating the clerks from the customers in the check-out stand.  She was commenting on how they seemed like a good idea and looked pretty nice.  The manager replied something to the effect of "the plexiglass shields are going to be a permanent fixture".

There are a lot of things, big and small, that are going to change permanently as a result of COVID-19.

BC

I've had a similar experience on the business side, BC.  Our business used to depend on live events (we do over 100 per year).  Webinars was considered to be bit of a backwater, but appropriate for certain types of law (no one will go to a live event in which the topic is how to get a divorce, for example).

Was also thinking about the Harvard study which indicated that we'll be social distancing through at least 2022.  So I decided to reinvent our digital event experience to get as close to an in-person event as possible, though I'd been wondering how much society has changed; e.g., will we get any attendees?

Our first augmented webinar was a few weeks back. One of our partners chose an obscure topic, and gave us six days from invite/list creation to the event.  He invited 450 people.  I told him he might get 45 attendees, not to be surprised if he only had 20 attendees and if he was lucky, he might get 60.  We had 180 RSVPs, 162 attended, 159 stayed for the entire webinar.  More than a dozen substantive Q&A at the end.  Similar experience for the next three webinars.  And no one misses the in-person events.