In this era of instant communication and dislocated chirruping - an era when one of the most popular methods of interacting with others just gives you 140 characters to encapsulate the subtleties of any particular thought - you might think an event that consists of a large group of people sitting around in a room talking about a serious subject for 90 minutes would be a tough sell.
Happily, not for Yana Peel. As the Hong Kong chief executive of Britain-based debate organiser Intelligence Squared, she's one of the more visible people involved in the revival of the oldest intellectual sparring format of all. Speakers propose and oppose a motion, there are questions from the audience, and then there's a vote, and that's it.
With debate titles ranging from 'Money Can't Buy Happiness' to 'The World Needs Less Democracy, Not More', and speakers including A.C. Grayling and David LaChapelle, no one could accuse the debates of being intellectually lightweight. And yet, despite the superficially old-fashioned format, despite any Hongkongers' chronic time poverty, despite - or perhaps because of - the challenging subject matter, the events have been sold out from the start.
Technology might be reshaping the way we communicate, but, says Peel, that new shape has a gap in it. Our communication has become less personal, less human. We're less often challenged by something we don't want to hear, and therefore less likely to change our minds, to listen to reason - the hallmarks of civilised debate.
'I think the abolition of the town hall meeting has created a need for this environment, to recreate something that's happened since ancient Greek times,' Peel says. 'After you finish school, there's no environment in which to challenge your own views. Ironically, in this era in which we're all on Facebook and so on, there's this hunger for live events.'
With modern media and communications technology, 'there's a confirmation bias', she says. 'We often turn to the media to seek out the view we want to read. You either watch Fox or you watch Al-Jazeera. There's no opportunity to have your preconceptions challenged and see the other side. But people come to our debates with an open mind. My goal is to get two sides of an argument out to people as much as possible.'