[Mick]

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.

Your experience seems to be confirming my intuition that I would not want to be invested in or work in the conference, hospitality, and travel industry. I can't see air travel, car rentals, hotel bookings, conference bookings, and related enterprises rebounding to their same levels any time in the next 3-5 years, now that people are discovering that a lot of money can be saved and relatively minimal lost, COVID-19 aside.

So let's take that a step further.  For the past few years, our work force has been clamoring to work from home.  All of our offices are in areas which are negatively impacted by traffic congestion.  Who wouldn't want to save a few hours per day by avoiding the commute?  Management was loathe to implement the broad policy because in their collective minds, we would work harder at an office than at our homes -- in spite of the fact that what we do is project-based, and it's difficult to maintain oversight in an office in any event.

Well now we have no choice, with shelter in place.  And management has noted that we've become more productive on average. Not only that, management is reviewing how much we spend on rent, utiliities and other costs associated with having large offices.  The grand social experiment has been thrust upon them.  So to extend your original thought, I wouldn't want to be in the commercial leasing/commercial building/commercial building ownership businesses either.

I think we'll have permanent offices, I just think they'll be much smaller than in the pre-pandemic era.

[Mick]

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.

Your experience seems to be confirming my intuition that I would not want to be invested in or work in the conference, hospitality, and travel industry. I can't see air travel, car rentals, hotel bookings, conference bookings, and related enterprises rebounding to their same levels any time in the next 3-5 years, now that people are discovering that a lot of money can be saved and relatively minimal lost, COVID-19 aside.

So let's take that a step further.  For the past few years, our work force has been clamoring to work from home.  All of our offices are in areas which are negatively impacted by traffic congestion.  Who wouldn't want to save a few hours per day by avoiding the commute?  Management was loathe to implement the broad policy because in their collective minds, we would work harder at an office than at our homes -- in spite of the fact that what we do is project-based, and it's difficult to maintain oversight in an office in any event.

Well now we have no choice, with shelter in place.  And management has noted that we've become more productive on average. Not only that, management is reviewing how much we spend on rent, utiliities and other costs associated with having large offices.  The grand social experiment has been thrust upon them.  So to extend your original thought, I wouldn't want to be in the commercial leasing/commercial building/commercial building ownership businesses either.

I think we'll have permanent offices, I just think they'll be much smaller than in the pre-pandemic era.