Welcome to the third video in this short e-course on How to moderate a lively and information
panel discussion.
I'm Kristin Arnold and I'm a high stakes meeting facilitator as well as a professional panel
moderator, and today's topic is step one in our five-step process.
It's about clarifying the starting conditions.
Here's what typically happens.
You get a phone call asking you to moderate a panel, or maybe you are the meeting char,
or maybe you're a meeting planner and somehow somebody has decided that we're going to have
a panel on this day, this time frame.
It might be part of a larger event and you're being brought in somewhere in that planning
process.
Maybe at the beginning, maybe a little bit further, so usually what I recommend is wherever
you are, you sit down with the meeting chair, the planner, whoever the sponsor of this event
is and you ask a couple of questions.
And as you're asking these questions just take notes.
What is the event?
Now, maybe this panel is part of a larger event and maybe that larger event has a theme
associated.
Make sure you know what the dates of the larger events are because you want to really participate
in the entire event, the location, all that kind of stuff -- you know about that.
Who's the sponsor of the event or are their several sponsors?
If it's within your own organization, that's pretty obvious- it's your company, but sometimes
if you're working with an association or a user group or a larger value chain type of
organization, you might have a different sponsor or many sponsors of the event, and/or the
panel.
So ask some questions about the event: what's the dress code of the event, who's going to
be there, how many people - that kind of stuff.
You then want to go into the next level which is about the panel.
Has the panel title already been decided?
What are the objectives of the panel?
Who's going to be there?
What's the audience size going to be?
Anything that the meeting planner has already decided, you should know.
Or, if the meeting planner or the chair has some ideas, like they're expecting it to kind
of go in this direction, it's a good thing for you to know because if they're thinking
in this direction and you decide to go over here, you might have a pretty angry meeting
chair later on.
So, you want to have a conversation to get a real clear picture or vision about what
that panel looks like.
What's the panel format?
Are they expecting it to look a certain way or is there a lot more latitude to get a little
bit more creative?
Because there are some specialty formats you can use that kind of mix it up more than the
traditional standard format.
You might want to ask about the logistics of the room.
Is the room already been decided?
Is there going to be AV support?
Are there people to support?
Room monitors?
Get a sense for what that logistics piece is.
Now, this is really important and this part a lot of people just go, "Yeah, yeah, whatever."
Who's in the audience?
Now remember, your job as a panel moderator is to get the audience's needs met through
the panel format.
If you don't have a clear picture of who's going to be in your audience, how are you
going to prepare a panel format that's going to get their needs met?
So, ask very specific questions and if you can actually reach out to your audience members
to get the involved even before the panel, that's even better because then you're going
to be able to make sure that you craft a process that's going to get them to where they need
to go at the end.
You want to ask some very pointed questions about the audience: what their demographics
are, what are their expectations.
Maybe reach out to a couple of heavy hitters and ask them—heavy hitters like, big well-known
names in the organization that everybody knows and knows what's going on and knows what the
issues are with that particular topic -- call them, interview them, find out what it is
that you need to know in order to make sure that you deliver on your promise.
Oh!
You want to know what the promise is.
What are they advertising?
So, make sure you get your hands on those promotional materials as well.
At this point, you're having a great conversation, you're writing down lots of notes, this question
can be a little problematic, and it's: have you already invited some panelists to participate?
If they have already identified panelists and have invited and confirmed panelists,
you really don't have that much latitude.
Surprisingly enough, sometimes you do have a lot more latitude to get creative and I
suggest that you aim high.
You aim for those experts, those practitioners, those rising stars, those people who are really
going to provide value to your clients.
Ask about panelists.
Who's been invited?
Who's been confirmed?
Who would they like to see?
Who would they not like to see?
Because sometimes some panelists have a track record of not being all that great so you
don't want to invite them either.
You also want to ask the meeting chair, how and who is going to evaluate the success of
this panel?
Are there going to be evaluation forms?
Or is it going to be the buzz in the hallway?
Is it number of twitter postings?
How are they going to evaluate the success of that panel?
Those are kind of some of the key things that you need to be asking and just write down
everything that you hear.
Just ask great probing questions, so that when you get to step two, Selecting and Inviting
and confirming the panelists, you're going to pick panelists who are going to really
add value to that topic, and in step three in the process, which is about planning and
preparing, that's really where the most of your work is done is in creating that agenda,
that format that is going to meet the needs of the audience.
So, that is the conclusion of our third video on this short course on How to moderate a
lively panel discussion.
See you on the other side.
We've got number four coming at you with Select, Invite and Conform the Panelists.