I’ll See You At The Catalyst Center!
Tuesday, 10/09, 9:21AM | The Catalyst Center
I'm incredibly excited about our progress on the creation of The Catalyst Center. For those who don't know what it is, it's going to be our hi-tech permanent event facility and our global operations hub for the hundreds of projects we'll be taking on annually. One of the hardest things we grappled with as we've gotten through our first 24 months is the logistical headache of doing events. Because we constantly have to do them at different homes and offices around town, we're always having to spend a lot of time coordinating the set up, breakdown, food and beverage stocking, and transportation of all of our A/V equipment to new event locations that are never ideal for doing high-end multimedia presentations. They're also not cheap. Rentals cost a lot, as does valet. We've minimized these expenses by purchasing our own A/V equipment with member donations (Thank you Jonathan Segal & Betty Thomas!). Lawrence Bender further assisted by not only giving us use of his house once a month until we could get our own permanent event facility, but also picking up the valet costs (the approximately $20K to date) for every event we've done there (we're about to do event #10) - for this we owe him a HUGE gratitude.
Having our own permanent facility is going to completely reshape our capabilities. No longer will we have to spend time setting up or breaking down. 100% of our staff's time will be focused on crafting the content of the actual presentations. Every member will receive custom briefings before each event with videos filmed by the staff introducing them to the topic so that members come to events at an intermediate knowledge level (nothing is stupider than having experts fly in from half away around the world to do "Intro" presentations for Hollywood professionals). We'll have multimedia presentation systems, high-end projection and sound equipment, and seating for 300 vs the 90-person capacity of Lawrence Bender's living room. We'll have a web rsvp system similar to the Arclight Cinema where you'll select your seat location for the next event in advance along with a customized gourmet meal. You'll come through the front entrance, sign-in with either fingerprint or retinal scan and your name tag will automatically print out of a sticker machine. You'll have a drink with fellow industry members in the georgeous bar lounge, and then transition into the main event room. Every seat will be wired with keyboards to enable members to submit their speaker questions throughout the event into a consolidated que. And we'll be doing high-end filming of events for distribution to those who can't make it that night. It will be a seamless experience.
It will also house an Intelligence Gathering Lab where we'll be keeping tabs on the world's innovations, tracking the marketplace, and measuring the progress of our projects, as well as a small green screen room for film production. It will be a brick-and-mortar home for exciting conversations on world affairs, innovations, and social change... an intellectual hub for our community... a Centcom for our social projects... and undoubtedly a "cool" experience.
Here's a promo packet on The Catalyst Center
