Six tips for moderating a panel without boring your audience to death.
The panels hosted by conferences and festivals are, by and large, pretty boring. The intentions are always good but the execution is so often terrible â and so the level of boredom during your average panel ranges from mildly yawn-inducing to excruciatingly dull. You can gauge the level of boredom by watching for the percentage of heads in the audience that are bowed down towards cell phones instead of looking up at the speakers. Granted there are always Twitter & text addicts in any crowd, but if a panel is doing its job then most of the audience should direct its attention to the front of the room, not towards the tiny screen hovering over its collective crotch.Â
The problem isn't that panelists have nothing interesting to say, it's that they are simply bad at saying it â and much of the blame should fall on the moderator. In the same way that a great film director can coax amazing performances from mediocre actors, a good moderator can shape a panel conversation into something both informative and entertaining. As with film, the bad moderators outnumber the good.
Personally I've only moderated a handful of panels, and I don't claim to be great at it. But having participated in (and watched) dozens of panels over the years, I have been able to identify what good moderators do â and the things I strive to do when I'm entrusted with the success of a panel. There are plenty of other articles about "how to be a great moderator," but they mostly boil down to "be prepared" and "don't let the panelists introduce themselves." Here instead are my favorite rules for making your panel experience memorable and fun.
1. Not everyone can be a great moderator.Â
Like any performance skill, moderation requires finesse and experience. Good moderators read the audience and the panelists and identify those opportunities where a quick word or a well-placed question can keep a panel on track or steer it in an exciting new direction. What you're aiming for is conversational judo â redirecting the energy of the panelists and audience into something delightful for everyone, with a minimum of apparent effort on your part. If it's your first time moderating, just concentrate on not embarrassing yourself by talking too much, and try to ask questions that will give all of the panelists an opportunity to speak.Â
2. A great moderator is (almost) invisible.Â
The worst moderator I ever saw began his panel by reading a post from his blog. A post that he'd printed out. On paper. And it was three pages long. His reasoning was that his blog post on the state of the industry would make a great springboard for comment by the esteemed panelists. The message? "I'm important. Talk about me."Â
The audience left the room in droves.
As a moderator, you should be an authority on the subject of the panel, but the audience should only be able to tell that by your occasional comments and questions. Your role is to guide the panelists into an illuminating discussion of the topic at hand, not to display how smart you are. This isn't to say that you can't answer the occasional question, but you should only do so after you've given your panelists the opportunity to express that information or opinion themselves.
3. Â It's a conversation, not a presentation.
Ideally your panel is a conversation between everyone in the room with a few noisy participants- the panelists. If you can't manage that, try to encourage conversation between the panelists themselves. The dullest talks are those in which the moderator asks a question and the panelists go down the line, answering the question in turn. (Warning signs are phrases like "I agree with Jim, but I'd like to add. . . .") Get the conversation going between the panelists by asking little "mini-questions" in between answers.Â
Expanding the conversation to include as many people as possible into the conversation is one of the best ways to convert a disaster into a triumph. When your panel has only a few attendees (as occasionally happens when you're scheduled against a keynote speech or a celebrity appearance), turn off the microphones and invite the audience into the front row. A run-of-the-mill panel can become an intimate workshop that the audience will never forget â all because you had the presence of mind to adjust to the reality of the situation.
4. Whenever possible, start a fight.
This is my favorite piece of panel advice, and something I strive to do every time I'm participating on a panel. As humans we're geared to tune into conflict. The audience loves it when sparks fly. Take advantage of that by finding ways to turn your panelists against one another. Not in a mean way, of course, but in a way that illustrates the honest differences of opinion between industry professionals. So long as those opinions are genuine and you stick to challenging ideas (rather than just making ad hominem arguments), encouraging panelists to butt heads is one of the best ways to turn ennui into excitement.Â
5. Pretend you've never met.
Having a meeting before a panel is standard operating procedure, but make sure it doesn't alienate the audience. There's nearly always a moment during a panel when a panelist will say: "Like Courtney said, before the panel. . . ." This makes the audience feel like they were excluded from the real conversation, which took place backstage. It's one thing to be prepared, it's quite another to make the audience feel excluded from the "real" conversation. Do your best to make sure the panelists never refer to a prior conversation, or the audience will feel like they're missing out.
6. Be funny - or at least have fun.Â
Humor is key to a memorable conversation, but if you're not a stand-up comic, don't try to be one. Instead, listen to your inner voice of subversiveness and let it out where appropriate. If you're having fun without being mean, the chances are that your panelists and audience will have fun too. If you're not having fun, what's the point?
Extra credit reading: 10 Tips for Moderating a Panel by Jared at PornoKitsch.
Pay attention to tips 4, 5, and 10.
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