I loved my bagel cart - It was compact and yet held everything it needed to, so it stood almost unnoticed in the corner until it was called into service. It held a tray of cutlery, small plates, cream cheese and a toaster, and cups, half 'n' half (ie cream) and sugar, and a cafetiere on the second level, all without seeming cluttered.
Part of my routine for these progress meetings was to start the day at the local shop at the end of my road buying an assortment of freshly baked bagels.
When the filmmakers arrived, we would have a brief discussion of the day's goals, and then, almost symbolically, the emergence of the bagel cart would signal that the session had officially begun.
One of the realities of a long critical session of any kind is a decrease in energy at the point that important creative decisions have to be made, so having something to address that is important. It also allows people to jump right in intensively (and eat whilst we preview and discuss) if they so desire, or to use it as opportunity to take breaks throughout the session without leaving.
What I noticed, however, from somewhere in the middle of the decade (2000-2009), was that fewer people were coming over. Instead of a director or producer and their teem leaving the editor for a few hours, and driving across town to sit with me and immerse themselves into the world of music and visuals, people were requesting that I simply send the cues to them online for them to be slotted in and allow the filmmakers to stay where they were.
This trend continued to the point where I moved to Santa Barbara (95 miles from where I lived in Los Angeles) and drove in to meetings, and no-one really noticed.
At the point that we packed everything for shipping to the UK, unbelievably the solid, dependable well-designed wooden bagel cart went in the yard sale. It's services were no longer required.
This is one significant way that the business has changed. Although there is absolutely no substitute for meeting people and face-to-face contact, I now work for filmmakers in other countries (and continents) as easily as those in the same postal code. As a result, opportunities have opened up in ways that were simply not possible previously. If you want to write for a Production Library in Los Angeles, you can work three streets away, or you can live in Europe. If you want to live in the UK, score a film being made in Canada or the US, and record the score in another country entirely, you can do so without any of the principals having to meet one another.
The result of this technology-based change is, of course, that there's a lot more competition than ever before, but that is simply a reality of the digital world that has to be accepted. The power of music to move people and underscore the dramatic needs of a performance or a piece of visual art has not changed. It might even be argued that it's more important than ever.