Nathalie Reuter: Paperjam Club events attract more than 18,000 people every year. Why are you now proposing a “New Deal” to your 1,300 member companies and potential new members?

Julien Delpy: The Club is starting its 13th season and is obviously evolving with the creation of different formats. Covid has affected us all, and this period has led us to question the Club. The idea of the New Deal is to work around several major pillars to launch a programme with new concepts and ideas, such as Paperjam Circles: circles of entrepreneurs and leaders of a new kind dedicated to training and personal development, reserved for business leaders from member companies.

Membership will be by co-option and adhere strictly to gender parity. Our ambition is to mix not only different generations, but also entrepreneurs and team managers, experts and business sector leaders. The language of delivery will be English and/or French, depending on the preference of the members, and the events will be limited to 22 people. When we share our corporate problems, it is important that this be done in a confidential setting, which is why we have a code of conduct and guidelines.

The Paperjam Circles programme will be available in four different formats, including: six trainings on a theme per season, four breakfasts with a guest speaker the day before or the day after the Paperjam Club conferences, an annual meeting between the members of the various Circles, and a study trip to meet entrepreneurs abroad--a business trip to Paris in 2022, and to Tel-Aviv in autumn 2023 have already been scheduled.

The Circles will have a president and a vice-president, a male-female duo who will guarantee values, plus a professional facilitator who will coordinate the agendas.

Two years ago, an Advisory Board was set up for the Club comprising some 20 personalities from different sectors and professions--SME owners or members of the management committees of large companies--to discuss, exchange and reflect together. The composition of the board will change. What governance model do you envision?

With the New Deal, we are going to set up Paperjam Boards, working committees of a new kind, to allow for exchange between peers, so that they are connected to the Paperjam editorial team and the programming department of the Club, to take stock of the past year and anticipate major trends.

In 2021 we will launch three Paperjam Boards, for the Financial centre, for Tax, Audit, & Compliance, and for ESG. Each will have between 15 and 20 experts who are members of the Club. Each Paperjam Board will have a president and vice-president, a duo who will be responsible for the agenda and also serve as a guarantor of values.

The Board chairs will automatically be part of the Advisory Board, who will consult on the Club’s annual programming. Ultimately, the idea is to have about fifteen of these exchange commissions.

How will the New Deal affect the Paperjam Talks and Paperjam Shows?

Among the major changes we envisage is an update of the Talks, of the news treated live during the 10x6, the Club Talks, the Round Tables, and the Live Chats in partnership with Paperjam’s editorial team. We realised that these detailed interviews correspond to another way of consuming news.

The first Live Chats in English were launched in late summer, and for 2021 the goal is that our content be half in English, or at least translated. Eventually we will be completely bilingual.

Our luck is that Delano is growing. The editorial team is being significantly strengthened and the magazine will be a monthly publication starting in January 2021. The Club will therefore organise an event in English on the eve of publication of each edition of Delano magazine. Delano Live events are 100% in English, and currently 50% of our workshops are also in English.

On the Paperjam Shows side, the Paperjam Top 100, the Start-up Stories, the 10x6 and the Media Awards (organized in partnership with RTL) have proven to be a real success. The great novelty will be the 2021 launch of the Recovery Awards. The idea is to see which companies have been most successful in handling the post-Covid environment. In 2022, we will hold the Finance Awards, ESG Awards and Digital Awards, and in 2023, we have scheduled Talent Awards (for HR), Marketing Awards and Legal Awards.

Each year, you organize more than 150 training courses. Since the beginning of the health crisis, some 70 webinars and digital events have taken place. With the New Deal, how will the training offer evolve?

The Club has long been paying a lot of attention to training through workshops, with a wide choice in key areas such as management, personal development, human resources, operations, commercial negotiation or marketing.

In the New Deal, the place of training has been further developed with the Paperjam Academy. This will be a further education centre with an even richer portfolio, even more varied, still eligible for financial assistance from the State for training--a portfolio featuring all our workshops. But my team will also be launching advanced trainings, short cycles of two to five days.

In 2021, for example, middle management training will start, and an e-learning platform LMS (learning management system), a real virtual training centre, will be created. This will start with 50 hours of training available on demand, and in 2023, 500 hours will be available to Club members without restriction.

Executive training with the Solvay Brussels School of Economics & Management will continue, with for example, the MBA Essentials, an accelerated eight-day course designed for executives, who are called upon to take on even more important roles in the company. Today, we already offer 150 trainings per year, plus three executive trainings.

Will the training be free?

All workshops and digital trainings are part of the Club subscription. As long as a company is a member, it can train, certainly with limits, all its personnel. A large company can train up to 20 people over half a day, so 160 people per year with our workshops. That is quite significant!

On the other hand, training with Solvay will come at a charge. But we offer a preferred rate for member companies.

Can I become a member of the Club as an individual?

You can only become a member as a company, not as an individual. The Paperjam Club is first and foremost a business club, which does not prevent individuals inside companies from doing things on a personal basis.

We are here to help business development, locally, to allow stakeholders to meet and to give an image of Luxembourg beyond the Grand Duchy.

For more information about Paperjam Club’s New Deal, click here.

This article was originally published in French by Paperjam. It has been translated by Delano.