9 Ways to Stop Your Conference Panel From Sucking

Each year, hundreds of assorted geeks will get the chance to speak on a panel at SXSW, many for the first time. I've witnesses some truly inspiring and thought provoking sessions at SXSW. However I've also had to sit through my share of turkeys, from the mind numbingly boring to the painfully embarrassing.

Here are my top 9 ways to stop your panel sucking.

Keep your introductions short and sweet. Nobody wants to hear your life story.
Create drama. Panels suck if everybody agrees, so don't be afraid to argue.
Plan your panels in advance. Don't tell your audience you met for the first time that morning.
Alternatively keep it spontaneous. Don't tell your audience about the great discussion you had over breakfast.
Make your responses snappy. Don't hog the mic and don't waffle.
Don't try to be be smart, cute or wacky if you're none of those things.
Be interesting. Try to entertain and inspire as much as educate.
Keep the pace going. A good panel will live and die by it's moderator.
Audience questions need to be short and to the point. Cut people off if you need to.

A great panel requires a great moderator who can help keep the conversation floowing, be a foil for the other panelists and help create drama. A great moderator takes on a choric role, and becomes a stand-in for the audience, asking the questions they want tyo have answerd, but in a much more targeted way.

On the subject of questions, I generally try and avoid audience questions as so many of them start with the questioners life story, before turning into a long series of statements which are only relevant to the person asking the question, sucking all the energy out of the conversaiton.

"Hi, my name is XXX and I'm an YYY from ZZZ. I guess mine isn't really a question so much as a comment, but... [insert long, laboured explanation of a super specific thought or sittuation]"

As a moderator it's your job to set the ground work for audience questions. If you can, have the audience share their questions via Twitter, or some other medium. That way you can tighten the questions up and ask them on the audiences behalf. If you are going to accept live questions, make sure people keep them brief, and don't hesitate to jump in to speed things up, wrap things up, or summarize if needs be. It may feel a litte rude at first, but remember that your audiences time is preccious and not to be wasted. If in doubt you can always say that it's "a great question, but it also sounds super specific to you, so why don't you come up after the session has ended and talk directly to the panel."