Get the right few dozen people
into the same room

01An event is not about the crowd

What a launch actually delivers is not the photographs. It is how many outlets wrote the next day, and from what angle. What a closed-door roundtable delivers is three people coming up to talk to you as it ends.

So we ask first: when this is over, who should remember what? If there is no answer, do not hold the event yet.

02Why a closed roundtable beats a conference

• Keep the room under twenty people so everyone gets a turn.
• The topic has to be one real question, not "industry trends" — the kind of subject anyone can say anything about.
• Seating is set in advance. Who sits next to whom decides what happens in the room.
• No livestream, no press release. Candor requires that nobody is recording.

03Proportion at a listing ceremony

A listing ceremony is the company's two brightest hours, and the easiest two hours to ruin. What we have learned: shorter run of show, fewer speeches. The exchange's part cannot change. What is left goes to two things: one photograph good enough for a financial page, and ninety seconds of film from the room.

Money spent on set dressing is better spent on the camera crew. In three years nobody remembers the backdrop; the film is still in use.