5 Tips to Creating a Great Panel Discussion

As a kid I loved watching the NBC pre-game show for their coverage of the National Football League (NFL) and for years I simply figured it was nostalgia of a time when I was falling in love with football. Bill Simmons, a columnist for ESPN.com, shed a bit more light into my memory of NBC's coverage showing how pre-game shows in the 80s and early 90s were made up of a couple of people giving full on analysis of the upcoming games. This weekend turn on CBS, Fox, NBC or ESPN and you'll see four, five and even six people all sitting behind a desk talking football. These panels of analysts shed little light on the actual football game and end up being confusing and wholly void of entertainment. Sitting in the audience watching panels at conferences has become a similar experience. Typically these panels are comprised of three to four subject matter experts and a moderator; at BlogWorld Expo I saw panels with four and five people, plus the moderator. Many of the participants on the panels were smart individuals and people that I have known or read for years. Yet in the panel setting they simply could not provide valuable information. When you have that many people on a panel you create inefficiency and the negative results include:
  • Quick sound bites that do not provide useful information and leave you wanting more details.
  • One panelist who hijacks the conversation.
  • No time for questions and answers.
  • A group of people agreeing with one another, or if there are disagreements, no time to truly have a fruitful debate.
It is hard to create a solid panel these days, particularly in the social media echo chamber, but it is not impossible. Having participated in and moderated panels I've made many of the mistakes above, but hopefully learned some lessons along the way. After sitting on the B2B Social Media Panel at BlogWorld I started to jot down five rules for creating a solid panel for a conference (many of which Kipp Bodnar, our moderator, achieved):
  1. Choose Strangers:
    2. The easiest way to get a panel together is to gather people you already know, perhaps colleagues or friends. Unfortunately this creates a panel filled with people agreeing with one another and providing many comments that are inside jokes. Additionally you start seeing, and hearing, the same people saying the same things at different conferences. By choosing strangers you eliminate these dangers, introduce some fresh blood into the process and potentially providing the audience, and the moderator, with some surprises. A stranger, of course, isn't someone you simply pull off the street. Look for a blogger you have read for a long time or a contemporary at a competitor. The resources are out there, so make the effort to put together a group of people who are not intimately familiar with one another.
  2. Choose Proven Experts:
    3. The key word, as always, is "proven". Thought leaders without practical experience on the topic at hand are immediately discounted by the audience. Too often, panels are full of smart people who love to provide businesses advice, yet have never sat in the same chairs of their audience. People want to hear about what the panelists have learned after implementing programs or practices, the good and the bad. They do not what to hear from panelists who have great creative ideas but have never actually done the work themselves. This is a familiar call here at Dance With Strangers, but remember to pick people who have dirt on their hands.
  3. Create an Outline, Not a Script:
    4. Being prepared is paramount of course, but going too far will create a static round of questions and prepared answers. Provide your panelists with details on the topic and how you will structure the conversation, how you want them to introduce themselves and perhaps the kick-off question. Otherwise keep it loose and you are going to provide the audience with a more entertaining conversation and you will also keep your panelists on their toes throughout.
  4. Keep Your Panelists On Their Toes:
    5. Now be careful here, your panelists have agreed to do this panel for you, so you're not in the business of putting them on the hot seat. If that is your goal you should suggest a one-on-one or debate-style presentation. However, you do want panelists who are engaged throughout the session and provide them with questions that energize their answers before they even start speaking. The first start is what I mentioned above and not scripting out the conversation, but the other element is steering the direction of the conversation in a way that was perhaps not expected, but you know will be more helpful for the audience.
  5. Read Your Audience, Not Your Twitter Feed:
    6. A few weeks ago Jeremiah Owyang argued that we need to integrate social into our presentations whether they are keynotes, panels or something in between. The reason many give is that you need to be able to answer questions being asked on Twitter or redirect the conversation based on critiques being voiced online. As long as you can see the audience this is wholly unnecessary and in fact creates a panel and moderator that seems disinterested. During BlogWorld Expo I saw panelists typing away on their iPhones or laptops and on several instances needed to ask the moderator to repeat a question because they were so busy Tweeting. However, while at the MILCOM show in Boston a few days later I sat in on panels that were also discussing social media, this time the use within the military, and the panelists looked the audience in the eyes the entire session. It makes a huge difference! If you want to gather questions from Twitter you can do that at the end very quickly. Put down the iPhone folks and provide the audience with the information they came to hear. Agree? Disagree? Did I miss something?