A few months ago, I was at Selena Soo's Rich Relationships event in Austin.
Three days. Maybe 30 people in the room. And Selena, to her credit, didn't say much that was new. Her content was basically identical to her New York event six months earlier. Same frameworks, same stories, same breakout format.
People called it the best event they'd been to all year.
I kept thinking about that on the drive home. Same content. Different result. What was actually happening there?
The Room Was the Product
When I got home, I talked to Tim about it. He'd traced the attendee list back through 2-3 degrees of personal connections — most people were there because they knew someone who knew Selena, or who knew me, or who knew Tim. There was no sales page that could have cold-converted these people. No ad campaign that would have worked.
The curation was the product. Getting the right people in a room and getting out of the way.
This is something I've believed for a long time but rarely say out loud: even if Selena had said nothing the entire event, just designed the table assignments and rotated them every hour, people probably would have walked away saying it changed their lives.
The content is almost beside the point. What people are buying is access to a room they wouldn't otherwise be in.
What AI Is Actually Doing to Events
Here's the thing about AI: it's great at content. It can produce a blog post in seconds. Summarize a podcast in minutes. Write a personalized follow-up email in a few keystrokes. The per-unit cost of digital content is collapsing.
Which means digital content is heading where websites went. In 1990, having a website was a differentiator. Now it's table stakes. Everyone has one. Nobody's impressed.
I think we're watching digital content go the same direction in slow motion. The newsletter, the podcast episode, the LinkedIn carousel — these are all heading toward “table stakes.” Necessary but not sufficient.
The thing that doesn't get cheaper with AI is a room full of people who actually want to be there.
You can't automate the chemistry of a dinner party. You can't AI-generate the feeling of being in a room with 15 people who are all working on interesting things.
And here's what's counterintuitive: as AI makes digital easier, the scarcity of in-person goes up. Supply of digital content is exploding. Supply of well-curated rooms is not.
My Own Bet on This
When I moved to Austin in 2014, I started hosting dinner parties. Professionally I was doing fine. Personally I felt kind of stuck. I knew a lot of people by name and job title but didn't really know them as human beings.
I'd read a book called “30 Lessons for Living” that made the case that happiness comes down to the quality of your relationships. So I started hosting small dinners. Ten people. One conversation at a time, no side chats. I'd moderate for three or four hours.
Two years later I'd hosted about 50 of them. That's where my actual network got built. Not through LinkedIn, not through cold outreach, not through content marketing. Actual rooms.
I still believe this. Which is why over the past year I've shifted heavily toward live workshops. The feedback loop is instant. The energy is different. And critically: people who wouldn't clear their schedule for an online course will wake up early and drive across town for a full day workshop.
I had a woman at one of my workshops tell me she'd been on my email list for two years but never bought anything. After the full-day workshop, she hired me for consulting. She said she needed to see how I taught before she'd trust me with her business.
You can't replicate that with a recording.
This Is Still Early
I want to be clear about the timing. Most people are still not using AI in their daily work. And most event organizers are still trying to compete on content quality — better speakers, better slides, better handouts.
The people who figure out room curation as the actual product are early.
If you run workshops, dinners, or any kind of in-person gathering, this is the moment to double down. Not because the market is crowded. Because it isn't yet.
The crowd doing interesting in-person things is still small. The window to be known as “the person who hosts the best room” is wide open.
The Simple Takeaway
AI makes digital content cheaper. That means in-person events get more expensive — in the good way. The value of a well-curated room goes up as everything else becomes abundant.
Stop competing on content. Compete on curation. Get the right people in a room and let them talk.
That's the whole game.
Want to see how I run in-person workshops and events? I host AI workshops every six weeks in Austin. Details are on the Productivity Academy page.
