The very first World Conference of the Professional Speechwriters Association—the one where we didn’t know for sure if anyone would come—was in New York, in June of 2014.
Since all the subsequent World Conferences have been in D.C. in the fall, that first one stands out for all 60-ish people who participated in it.
The conference hotel was a golf shot from McSorley’s Ale House, so we spent a lot of time in there. But the first conference dinner was at a little Italian restaurant that had a beer garden.
It was a wonderful night, the first time I fully realized from the gleeful roar of the conversation that these speechwriters needed each other, and understood that they would come back year after year, just to be together.
And if our first-ever virtual World Conference next month won’t look quite like that brave first night in New York—
—I do hope it feels like like it.
Exactly like it.
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