ABSTRACT
Think tanks make a conscious effort to target their audiences with a range of lectures, seminars, conferences, expert meetings, and individual or group briefings. These seminars, conferences, and briefings may be on the record and open to the public or invited guests or off-the-record and closed to the public. For example, CSIS reports that it stages around 700 events of this kind every year; the newly established CAP reports that it organized 150 on-the-record events in 2005; and AEI produced over 200 of these meetings in 2005.1 These events are often used to examine key policy issues, float policy proposals for members of Congress, the executive branch, and the media, and provide an important forum for policymakers and the public to offer feedback.
