The word forum did not begin as a feature on a message board. In Rome it was the open ground at the centre of the city, the place where news arrived before it arrived anywhere else, where arguments were settled in public and business got done within earshot of everyone who mattered. Two thousand years later the word still carries that weight. Nobody calls a casual chat a forum. It gets attached to the serious gatherings, the ones with a programme and a guest list, the ones where an industry talks about itself in front of witnesses.