I had an email out of the blue recently from an overseas magic club asking me whether I would be interested in providing them with a Zoom lecture as part of one of their weekly virtual meetings. Although it wasn’t a full length lecture they required it was still about 40 minutes.
I replied that I would be happy to put together a varied selection of my close up ideas to present to the members and I offered to do it for a reduced lecture fee, given that my normal lectures run for up to 2 hours.
The enquirer replied that they had had several other Zoom lectures and that they hadn’t paid for any of them, but they would consider me again should that situation change.
This example brings up an interesting question about whether clubs should be required to pay for Zoom presentations, as clearly this particular society saw it as something they expected to receive for free. And I would ask, why?
The way I see it, a professionally presented lecture of a creator’s own ideas deserves to be paid for irrespective of the means by which the content is delivered to the recipients. In other words, a Zoom presentation can offer the same quality of content as the lecturer would deliver live in the clubroom, and as you wouldn’t expect a quality performer to present a live lecture for free, why should his Zoom lecture be valued any less?
Before COVID-19, few people outside the corporate world would have known about or considered using video conferencing as a means of social interaction. Yet social distancing created a sudden need for video contact by just about everyone, and the Zoom company made their platform available for free at the basic lower level. Within a few weeks millions of people were using it, and because it was free, it quickly became associated in people’s minds with costless communication.
However, away from the knitting circles and family quiz nights that Zoom made possible during the lockdown, when you start to use the platform for serious content provision, I think the rules regarding payment need to be looked at.
It’s one thing to provide some free Zoom material to get people through a crisis, but moving forward past that time, if Zoom type events are going to become a regular means of transmitting magic content, there will have to be payments made.
Already there are individuals who are offering Zoom lectures to clubs, and they will certainly require a fee. The good news for the societies is that it’s going to cost them a lot less than paying to transport a lecturer physically to their clubroom, especially performers from overseas. But there will be a cost, nonetheless.
For the lecturers themselves Zoom style presentations are both good and bad. On the one hand it means they can reach audiences anywhere in the world without the hassle of the travel, but on the downside, they can’t use sales of physical props so easily to boost their income.
My feeling is that those who put together a quality Zoom lecture (and not something filmed in their kitchen!) will do well and so should be paid properly for their efforts.