Comments on: Conference organizers: please stop with panels

By: Jonathan Marks

Jonathan Marks — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 21:25:28 +0000

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.

By: Attentio Blog » Blog Archive » Next web - Amsterdam

Attentio Blog » Blog Archive » Next web - Amsterdam — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:25:06 +0000

[...] Now this seems like a cool event, asked by big bunch of people will we be going, snazzy speaker line up, great city… They have great stuff on the web, including a robust dislike of panels :) [...]

By: This is one proud editor in chief!

This is one proud editor in chief! — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 14:36:10 +0000

[...] blogging. It was a fairly interesting and well-organized conference. However I did find out that I hate panels. See the Next Web for more [...]

By: Buzzword Bingo at Supernova’s Open Flow Track

Buzzword Bingo at Supernova’s Open Flow Track — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 23:14:26 +0000

[...] way to spice up a panel! (a phenomenon I still hate though) cm_api_urlproxy=’http://thenextweb.org/wp-content/plugins/commentag_plugin.php?proxy=1&’;I hope [...]

By: Mathijs

Mathijs — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 19:31:05 +0000

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!

By: Robin Wauters

Robin Wauters — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 14:57:45 +0000

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!

By: Jonathan Marks

Jonathan Marks — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 13:50:44 +0000

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.

By: Simon McDermott

Simon McDermott — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 13:31:09 +0000

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…

By: Rebecca Rijnders

Rebecca Rijnders — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 12:57:34 +0000

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

By: Ewout Wolff

Ewout Wolff — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 12:28:30 +0000

@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.