Everything in Moderation

In a classic post at his How to Change the World blog, Guy Kawasaki offers a succinct primer on how to be a great moderator. So should you find yourself hosting a discussion panel at your next industry conference, you'll be grateful for tips like these:

Don't over-prepare your panelists. It's fine to distribute the first few questions you plan to ask. But, says Kawasaki, "If you provide all the questions in advance, many panelists will prepare carefully-crafted, devoid-of-content responses—in the worst case, even tapping PR people for help." In other words, your panel will wind up on the express train to Dullsville.

Do over-prepare yourself. You're leading a discussion with subject-matter experts, so you have to be completely up to speed on the latest developments and controversies—particularly the hot topics that will enable you to, in Kawasaki's words, "stir the pot."

Ban "brief" PowerPoint and DVD presentations. If you let one panelist make a multimedia presentation, they're all going to expect the same opportunity. "Then the session will encounter the technical difficulty of making multiple laptops work with the projector or the challenge of integrating presentations into one," he says. "Forget it."

Remember that you're a moderator. While you want to make everyone look smart—say with a few softball questions—you must also be ready to call panelists on overt sales pitches or outright lies.

The Po!nt: "Moderating a panel is deceptively hard," says Kawasaki, "harder, in fact, than keynoting because the quality of the panelists is usually beyond your control." But with the right approach, you can make a panel as entertaining and content-rich as possible.

Source: How to Change the World.