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Conference organizers: please stop with panels

Written on 19th March 2008 27 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Setting up panels: why are conference organizers doing this? So you have four entrepreneurs on stage, all really good in what they do – I assume. You ask a moderator to do her job. And here we go: an entrepreneur gives a mediocre answer, the others are just nodding. The moderator tries to spark a fire, yet the only daring thing the entrepreneurs do is trying to speak louder than the other. In my experience, it often goes like that.

Same thing with today’s panel: Simon McDermott (Attentio), Rodrigo Sepúlveda (Vpod.tv), Andrej Nabergoj (Noovo) and Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten (From the blog you’re reading now) are all skilled entrepreneurs. Some of them are even gifted speakers. Moderator Colette Ballou from Ballou PR is doing the best she can – making jokes, asking daring questions. Yet like aways, the result of a panel isn’t noteworthy.

I rather see these businessmen give four well-prepared short presentations. Discussion can follow afterwards, or on a backchannel (like the coffee break). Only then they’ll manage to share their expertise in an exciting and fairly thorough way.

Oh, I was just about to press publish, yet I wanted to share this cool quote: “starting a company is like having sex for the first time. You don’t know how it works, , it takes very long, but you’ll discover along the way”, stated Rodrigo Sepúlveda. Boris’ reply: “There’s one difference, if you have more sex you take more time.”

Left to right: Andrej, Rodrigo, Simon, Colette and Boris

27 Comments »

About the author: Ernst-Jan is blogger and co-organizer of BLOG08, who previously worked in New York to cover news at the United Nations. Next to writing, he's also a singer in the band Christina Five. Follow him on Twitter or read his personal blog Dutchproblogger.com .

27 comments/trackbacks to “Conference organizers: please stop with panels”

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By Bas van den Beld on Mar 19, 2008

Couldn’t agree more. Most of the time a panel is just a bunch of guys who know each other already chitchatting about what’s going on.

I prefer no panels at all, and if you do want one, create a real discussion between two opposites.

The only ‘panel’ I liked in that matter was at LeWeb3 with Andrew Keen and Emily Bell. But only because they disagread so much.

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By pixites on Mar 19, 2008

as I tweeted yesterday: try http://unconference.net/
The name “unconference” arose to describe conferences that step outside of the more traditional model — that is, presentations selected months beforehand, sponsors buying speaking slots, boring panels of talking heads, and high fees.
(hoping next web will be rocking in this respect;)

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By Eric Bun on Mar 19, 2008

Interesting and I agree totally. Most of those guys are not used to get in a real discussion with their competitor entrepreneurs. In order to get the discussions going you have to bring two people together with two different mindsets. Moreover, a discussion between a democrat and a republican is far more interesting than a discussion between two democrats.

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By Eric Bun on Mar 19, 2008

@ Pixites, I do like that blog! I’m thinking on selecting a few examples of how it not should be done and I will publish the results here.

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By Ewout Wolff on Mar 19, 2008

Agree very much. It’s too easy to drop a question that vaguely has to do with the subject of a conference in a group like that.

Much better is when you know the opinion of people on a panel, that do not correspond at all. Then ensueing discussion will show the public that there’s 2 or more sides to an issue. But this takes more preparation and therefore difficult.

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By Rebecca Rijnders on Mar 19, 2008

You’re absolutely right. Ofcourse as a programme manager you try to avoid one powerpoint presentation after another, so a panel is tempting, but indeed: it hardly ever works, unless the moderator is sharp and provoking. For e.day I tried things like a Barcamp, but then with Dutch people it’s hard to get the motor running… ;-)

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By Jonathan Marks on Mar 19, 2008

Add my name to the list of “Ban the Panel”. When rating conferences to clients I mark down organisers who just chuck panels together with the idea that “more is good”. I want to be part of a conversation, not watching people in a very uncomfortable situation, who have usually met each other for the first time 5 minutes before the session. The body language speaks for itself!

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By Ewout Wolff on Mar 19, 2008

@Rebecca,

Sorry to hear that the Barcamp doesn’t work for us Dutchies. Can you elaborate what the reason for this is? Especially as I was about to organise a BarCamp (seriously)

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By Jonathan Marks on Mar 19, 2008

@ewout. Depends on the profile of the people attending. Barcamp works with the grassroots programers, but I don’t thats the profile of the Next Web. Not sure they have 750 Euro….completely different culture.

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By Patrick de Laive on Mar 19, 2008

On the spot! The first time I organized The Next Web I had never been to a conference before (nor did Boris) so we jumped in fresh. We do not have panels on The Next Web because of the reasons you mention here.

But there is a downside for conference organizers by not doing panels. If you do a panel, you have multiple people on stage, but the main reason (I guess) why you would include panels in your agenda is that it looks like you have a lot of speakers on your website.

If you look at leweb3, they have around 60 speakers, but almost all are in a panel. We have ‘only’ 11 keynote speakers and some people just go for numbers and not quality.

For organizers it is a tough decision. In the end quality prevails quantity…

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By Ewout Wolff on Mar 19, 2008

@Jonathan – can you elaborate why programmers would be more inclined to a more active role?
And is this just the Dutch, or is this a European trait: leaning back and not being bothered to engage in a (formal)conversation at these venues?

@Patrick: good for you. ;-D Would it be an additional good idea to let people ask questions to speakers before the actual conference? This would give better matches between demand and supply & more meaningful discussion. E.g. via this forum/blog.

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By Rebecca Rijnders on Mar 19, 2008

@ewout: I think Dutch people in general are somewhat “shy”, you will hear that from stand-up comedians as well. For e.day this year I would love to have an unconference or ‘crowdsource’ session, but I’m afraid the moderator (and some bloggers you hear all the time ;-)) will be the only one speaking…!

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By Patrick on Mar 19, 2008

@ewout I think that is a great idea. We’re going to experiment with this during upcoming conference. Khris Loux will give a keynote where the audience can decide the topics he should address. The audience can vote and react on topics before hand and even during the presentation. For us it is also an experiment, but I’m really curious how this will work out.

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By Daan Jansonius on Mar 19, 2008

I disagree. I agree with Eric though, it does depend on the people. If you just get a few people argeeing with eachother on everything it will get boring, so it’s up to the organisers to match the right people with eachother.

A presentation usually looks at something from a personal perspective, whereas during panels there is the opportunity for critisism and discussion. Again, this depends on the people and the panel host.

Discussions are always better when people disagree with eachother as it shows you the other side of the fence and makes you think about your argument even more. This will either strenghten your belief in your opinion of will force you to rethink.

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By Jonathan Marks on Mar 19, 2008

In conferences I am currently involved in (invitation only events) we do produce the sessions in advance, i.e. talking with the speakers and shaping what we want the audience to take away. We also can hear whether the speaker is OK for a keynote (only a few do well in languages other than their mother tongue) or whether it is better for them to be interviewed by the host. That\’s my complaint about many of the sessions I see in the Netherlands…the planner thinks that the prep stops when they have booked the speaker.
The same applies to pitching sessions. In the US, they regard them as \”entertainment for VCs\”. So the pace is fast, but the panel also has studied the entries in advance. Whether you win or not, you take away useful tips from the jury, so everyone gains. At some of the ones I have seen in Holland, the jury is hearing the pitch for the first time – and I don\’t think the quality of their answers stimulates the entrepreneur – it is often just destructive criticism.

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By Patrick de Laive on Mar 19, 2008

@jonathan totally agree! prepping is sooo important

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By Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on Mar 19, 2008

Damn, too bad I couldn’t even please my own bloggers! ;-)

But seriously: I agree that panels tend to be less interesting but I hope people at least got some valuable information from us…

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By Ewout Wolff on Mar 19, 2008

@rebecca: Shy?!? We, the loud mouths? ;-D
Yup, I fear I recognise this. Also: somehow we debate, but don’t like debating. @jonathan has his work cut out for the next millennia, I fear. (perhaps idea for the unconference?)

I’ve criticised Eday heavily in the past. Missed the networking/really-getting-to-know-each-other-aspect.
Therefore if you need cooperation to get an unconference-session going: I’m game.

@patrick: why don’t you ask the speakers to come to this blog and let them discuss like we do now? Ok, most won’t have the time to do this, but some might like it. A speaker’s nightmare is that you don’t know how your audience will respond. That fear would be addressed at least partially this way. Both sides gain, therefore.

@Jonathan – sounds like you found the reason why the Dutch version of “Dragon’s Den” seems so terribly tame and one-sided compared to the BBC-version.

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By Rebecca Rijnders on Mar 19, 2008

@ewout: I might just take you up on that!

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By Simon McDermott on Mar 20, 2008

Hi, I was on the panel. The goal on the panel was noble enough – discuss entrepreneurship in Europe, with an audience of entrepreneurs, investors, bloggers. Panels are better with more conflict, clearly. Audience (crowd) plays a role too, ideally coming in at any time with disagreement etc. It would have been good if we had been taken out of our comfort zone. I would like panels to stay, but with much more heckling. I do apologise for my crap answer on targeting consumers versus b2b, jesus…

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By Jonathan Marks on Mar 20, 2008

If you want audience participation, then the layout of the chairs in the room is vital. If you put the chairs in more of a circle or a U , then everyone can see each other. People who’s mother tongue is not English seem much keener to participate this way. Remember the combined intelligence of the audience is usually much greater than the panellists. Its the job of the chairperson to tap this talent and keep the conversation rolling. Too often the panel is on an elevated platform above the audience and the chairperson ignores the audience until the last few minutes (they can’t see the audience anyway because of the spotlights). I have stopped attending pitches in the class-room format – almost always a disappointment.

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By Robin Wauters on Mar 20, 2008

Jumping into the conversation quite late, but as organizer of Plugg, I just want to add that I’m not a big fan of panels at conferences either. However, I thought the quality of the discussions at Plugg were good enough to keep people interested and garnish questions from the audience to add to the conversation in general.

I would have preferred to have nothing but keynote, but trust me, there are a lot of things to consider when building a programma (some of the issues were raised by Patrick above).

Thanks for coming, thanks for the feedback and see you next year!

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By Mathijs on Mar 20, 2008

Fully agree, at MoMo earlier this year I witnessed it, too. During the panel discussion people got bored. Everyone could see that on the message wall behind the panel discussion (sms/twitter). Ernst-Jan’s idea about letting the participants of the discussion do a short presentation is a good (better) idea!

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By Jonathan Marks on Nov 25, 2008

I will be curious to see how the panels go at LeWeb08 in December. The conference theme is “love” and we’re living through times when there seems to be a lot less love going around.

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