How To Produce Perfect Panels

Conventions are a great way to learn, collaborate, network, educate, and spend $12 on a small coffee. I've produced and participated in dozens of panels, and watched many more. If you're looking to produce an engaging panel that doesn't suck, here are a few tips.

Kill Audience Question & Answers

If you've ever been to a convention panel (particular a pop culture convention), you know the pains of Q&A segments. They give an audience and control to people that have no business having either of those powers. They derail great conversations, and they make a panel that once catered to a wide audience focus on just a single person's (often self promotional) desires. I am not exaggerating when I say that I once watched someone come up to ask a question with three double-spaced size 14 font pages to read to the panel, with a single question at the end. We don't need to hear random life stories from the audience.

So... just don't do them.

It will help the panel run smoother. Other audience members wont cringe while they sit through the question. Your panelists won't have to think about a diplomatic way to not call the question asker a total idiot.

If you put the effort into planning and outlining the show in advance, you should have more than enough good questions and content to fill the time slot. Don't let random people who weren't a part of your planning process derail it.

If you HAVE to do Q&A because you live in one of the few states where it is against the law not to invite strangers to ruin your panel, don't worry! You have options that don't suck as much as a random microphone inviting chaos to the room!

The easiest thing to do is pre-screen your questions. You can do this by putting out index cards for people their questions in advance, through a Twitter hashtag, or some other web form where they can submit questions in real time. This means that you - the moderator or the producer - can pick relevant questions that will move the conversation forwards. In fact - many people will have questions that you were already planning on asking. So you can use their question (or slightly reword it), give them credit, and let them feel special. Yay feeling special! Pre-screening questions and lightly editing them for brevity and stupidity will keep your panel on track.

My favorite thing to do is invite people to Tweet questions at the panelists during and after the panel, and let them answer those questions in the coming days. That way they can still give that one-on-one attention to curious audience members, and not waste that time during your panel.

Keep your moderator near the panelists

For reasons I don't quite understand, a standard layout for panels is a podium with a mediocre gooseneck microphone for the host, and the panelists off to the side sitting on chairs at a table where they are lower than the host (constantly craning their necks to look up at the host). This is a weird formal thing that doesn't represent how a group of people would ever naturally have a conversation.

Put your moderator in the same environment as your panelists! If the panelists are sitting in chairs at a table with desk mics, the moderator should be right next to them (or in the middle of them).

The closer proximity will make the conversation feel more natural for everyone involved. It will also help with camera framing if the panel is being recorded.

Speaking of how people are sitting...

Pre-plan the seating arrangements

Not every panelist will have experience being on a panel. More aggressive panelists have a tendency to overpower the more timid panelists. So - try not to have all the loudest talkers next to the host, leaving the quieter people at the end where they will get lost. If different speaker types are evenly distributed throughout the group, you will get better interaction from everyone.

Plan out and rehearse your damn panel

I've seen far too many panels where there are lulls and questions where the panelists don't know the answers to the questions that they are being asked. This will never happen if you plan out your full panel in advance. Know every question you want to ask, add in a bunch of extras that you may not use, and be prepared for the conversation to shift (and to bring it back).

Have the likely answers to the questions written out in advance so you can spend more time engaged in the live answers, rather than thinking about the content of the answers.You should talk to your panelists in advance to get these answers. This will save you from a lot of surprises during the actual panel. It might also help you rework the panel with more interesting questions in a slightly different way than initially intended.

Giving the guests an opportunity to answer the questions prior to the event will give them a chance to prepare what they want to say, and to come up with concise answers without blabbing on forever about it. This is especially useful for newer panelists that don't do much public speaking. If they have their answers already planned out, it's easier for them to jump in if they know exactly what they want to say. A rehearsal the day or week before the actual panel will give your panelists time to connect and understand each other, so they aren't acting like strangers on the stage.

Also - print out your outline with the questions and answers. On actual paper. And also give copies to your panelists. And give them pens and paper to take notes during the panel. You'll feel real dumb if the insufficient wifi at the convention center isn't good enough to pull up your questions.

Choose the right microphone

You may have a choice in which kind of microphones to use. Typical types of microphones are desk microphones (usually a hand microphone like a SM58 on a desk stand), a gooseneck microphone , or lavaliere (lav/clip-on) microphones.

In general, if they are being talked into correctly, hand/desk microphones will sound the best for the audience and the recording. These mics are good for slightly more experienced panelists that know to keep the mic in front of their mouth and not by their neck or two feet away.

For more inexperienced speakers, lav mics are great because they are always in the right position and they never need to think about talking into it correctly. Never use a lav mic in a situation where you don't have someone operating the audio mixer. The way they pick up sound is too sensitive for a "set it and forget it" situation. Their sound is a tad airier because they are a bit further away from the mouth.

Avoid the gooseneck microphone at all costs! The smaller elements that pick up the sound mean they will often sound overblown. Your voice is more likely to clip/crackle and sound crushed. They are easy to maneuver, but this also means they can end up too close or too far from the subject. They also seem to have a lot more "p-popping ".

Make sure you talk to everyone on the panel about how to use their microphones, and feel free to nudge them in the right direction during the panel if it's not sounding good enough. Sometimes people need a reminder to hold the microphone in front of their mouth!

Check your tech

Everyone has been to a panel where there was an issue with the video that had to be played on the screen. If you are playing a video, make sure to download that video to your computer rather than playing an embedded YouTube video. The internet at your location WILL suck.

Also - don't rely on Google Slides or Dropbox for your final presentation. Save those as local files - even export them as PDFs if you have to. Again - the internet will never be good enough to download your giant Powerpoint file, yet alone send a text message.

In general, there will be an HDMI input for laptops. If you have a modern laptop that only has USB C, or an older one that has VGA for some sucky reason, make sure you have the proper adapter to get it to HDMI.

Before the panel, check every slide and make sure everything works and looks right! If you are not using your regular computer, there can be all sorts of weird formatting things and font issues that you didn't think about in advance. If there are no dynamic elements or video, best bet is to save it as a PDF in advance.

Even if you aren't planning on using anything on the screen during the panel, use it as an opportunity to display the names, titles and social handles of your panelists. It's a constant reminder of who is on stage, why they are there, and their area of expertise. This is also a way to let the conversation continue after the panel without everyone storming the stage at the end.

What are your thoughts?

Let me know what you feel about this article in the comments! Any other pet peeves? Did I say anything oppressively wrong? Any other tips?