How to run a good panel

This is a 2018 update to some notes I wrote in 2003. There are a couple of tweaks to allow for technological developments in the meantime; otherwise, they’re still good.

A panel, in this context, is an event where several (typically expert) speakers are on stage in front of an audience and have some kind of facilitated conversation with each other and with members of the audience.

Panels can go very well or very badly. Increase your chances of success by preparing carefully and running the event in a disciplined way.

Pitfalls

Panels can be great, but can be awful. Sometimes:

• Panellists take a long time to introduce themselves and their views on the topic, which can be very dull and limits time for conversation;
• Panellists use the introduction as an opportunity to promote themselves and their companies, which can be embarrassing — it’s not good form;
• All the panellists share similar backgrounds and/or views — makes for an incestuous discussion;
• The topic is sufficiently vague that all the panellists have wildly differing interpretations of it, such that there’s little common ground to discuss;
• One panellist is a huge star so everyone just directs questions to her/him and ignores everyone else;
• The facilitator knows nothing about the topic and does little more than invite people to speak.

The following formula is not the only way to do it, but it works. Adjust at your peril.

Putting the panel together

• Choose a topic in the form of a statement or question to which the panellists can respond.
• Invite panellists of roughly equivalent stature (eg, don’t put Bill Gates on a panel unless it’s with George Lucas and the Dalai Lama).
• Invite panellists with different backgrounds (eg, an engineer, a lawyer, a historian and an economist).
• Invite panellists that are likely to disagree on the topic.
• Ask the panellists to submit a short written biography by way of introducing themselves.
• Tell the panellists that they will have five minutes to present a point of view about the topic at the beginning of the session, after which there will be discussion. If there are a lot of panellists, or the session is short, make it two minutes.
• If you will have a screen, invite the panellists to use slides if they wish (it’s often better not to, so don’t insist). Give them a strict limit to the number of slides. Three slides in five minutes works well. Allowing only one slide works for any length of introduction; it’s quite good discipline.
• Ask the panellists to submit in advance short written summaries of their points of view, one-sentence “elevator pitch” versions of their them, and two good questions each that they would imagine an intelligent audience member would ask in response.
• Remind the panellists that they do not need to allow introduction time in their [five] minutes.
• If you have time, arrange a 20–30-minute call with each panellist. Your facilitation will be much smoother with the benefit of that advance discussion.

Setting up for the event

• Make sure all the panellists have microphones or easy access to microphones, if it’s that kind of event. If not all the panellists are around for a sound check, get other people to sit in for them. See below for a note about panellists who cannot be there in person.
• Record the panel if possible so that it’s easy to create other material from it. The gold standard is to record audio from every microphone separately (remember to have a microphone for the audience) and to have a camera for each panelist, and one roving camera. This sounds over the top, but it gives you amazing flexibility to create outputs from the session in various ways. Less sophisticated set-ups are fine, however.
• Regardless of the complexity of your recording set-up, test it properly.
• If you have a projector, get the presenters if possible to give you their slides and put them on one machine. If this is not practical, have at least a switch that (better) allows each computer that will be used in the panel to be plugged in simultaneously or (worse, minimum) have one that allows two computers to be plugged in, so that you can swap computers on one side of the switch while the other side is being shown to the audience.
• Did I mention testing?
• Decide on how you’ll do audience participation. Three common methods (which can be mixed):
• Have one or more audience microphones. These can either be on stands, with audience members wishing to ask questions queuing behind them, or can be handed around by helpers.
• Ask for questions to be written on cards which are collected by helpers and passed to the facilitator. Good for big audiences + allows remote questioning easily.
• Use a on-line question collection. Sli.do is the most popular. Glisser is also good. Both are reliable, and allow the facilitator to see questions being asked. Do not be tempted to project the list of questions or (eg,) a Twitter stream behind the panellists — it’s a massive distraction.

Running the event

• The facilitator (who could be a panellist; if not, she/he should be familiar with the topic) introduces the panel. Key things to say:
• “Our panel today is on [topic].” Say this first — it gives people who are in the wrong meeting a chance to get out with minimum disruption
• “Our panellists will have [five] minutes each to give a point of view on this topic.” So now the audience knows this — keeps the pressure on the panellists
• “Our first panellist is [name] [biog summary up to 30s]” The facilitator introduces the speaker using her/his biographical notes, so the speaker shouldn’t do so again.
• Repeat above for each panellist.
• Time the panellists ruthlessly. If it looks like they’re going to run over, give them a visual signal at two minutes and interrupt them at one minute saying something like “One minute left [Bob], if you could sum up…”
• Police the panellists ruthlessly. It’s OK if they’ve changed their opinion somewhat between submitting it and the day. If they deviate from giving their point of view about the topic, feel free to call them out.
• At the end of the points of view, thank the panellists, make complimentary noises about the diversity of opinions and remind the audience (using the one-sentence summaries from the panellists) quickly about the respective points of view.
• Say that you’ll shortly be opening up to questions from the floor, so please have your questions ready (judge the audience mood; if they’re a bit quiet, encourage them more). Remind them about the online tool (eg, Sli.do) if you’re using one.
• Get the Q&A ball rolling by asking a few good questions (use suggestions from the panellists, if you like) to which all the panel are likely to respond. Don’t let anyone hog the answer. NB if the audience isn’t brimming with questions already, careful choice of these initial questions should be able to stir up some passion.
• After a while, open up to questions from the floor.
• Give some warning about time towards the end (eg, 5 minutes to go)
• At the end, wrap up by reminding the audience of key points in the discussion (means keeping track quite assiduously of what’s being said by all). If a panellist has changed position during the session, point that out.
• Thank the panellists for contributing and the audience for coming and also for their valuable contributions.

Remote panellists

It’s better to have all your panellists physically present. There are two formats that work quite well if you can’t. In both cases, all the other parts of the method are unaffected.

One remote panellist

If there’s one person who can’t make it to the venue for whatever reason, you can use Skype or FaceTime to get them in. If you do this, it’s important for the remote person to have a view of the panel and to be able to hear everyone. Also, try to make the person appear physically on the panel by putting the monitor in the right place — don’t make the remote panellist’s face appear 3m tall on a projection screen.

If you have access to a telepresence robot, use it:

Panel on Algorithmic Authority at CHI2016, with a telepresence robot panellist

The facilitator can operate slides on behalf of the remote participant.

All remote panellists

Having more than remote panellist using the above method is a bit of a faff. If you really need to do it, it’s probably better to make it a fully remote panel. Get everyone connected on a Skype group video call, or a Google Hangout.

Make sure the remote users have a good view of the facilitator and, preferably, the audience. Project the Skype call/Hangout nice and big.

For slides, it’s best to have a second screen. Since you shouldn’t have too many, the facilitator can drive them.