Moderating an un-panel (or un-moderating a panel ?)

Last week, I had the privilege of leading a very interesting panel on “Web 2.0 and the Enterprise”. As the moderator, I was keen to get 150-people strong audience to participate, and told them upfront that after a short intro (of 15/20 minutes) from my panelists, we would ask for their input on the topics and questions to be addressed. As I mentioned in my summary post, this audience jumped right in and for almost 90 minutes, we covered a lot of ground about social computing and the contribution of Web 2.0 technology and best practices to enterprise architecture. There was one issue though: as I had decided to moderate the session as an “un-panel” (or un-moderate the panel - your choice), and let go the control of the flow of topics being covered, and who could actually comment/speak/ask questions, we ended up in a bit of a chaos, with up to 5 people trying to speak at the same time, and a lot of context switching going on. Even with this, the event was deemed successful, and my panelists (who have had their fair share of participating or moderating panels) provided positive feedback. But there was still a bit of frustration in me about the fact that we did not cover as much as I wanted, especially on enterprise transaction and integration processes.

I was then invited to lead the venture capital discussion at the first MashupCamp (which totally rocked, thanks to the efforts and the stewardship of David Berlind and Doug Gold). With the previous experience fresh in mind, I decided to do the “un-panel” style again, with one difference: at the very beginning of the session I asked the audience to list their questions/topics and expectations, and wrote these on large sheets of paper that we stuck on the walls. Having all the topics displayed allowed me to structure this un-panel in a way that made it flexible and very interactive, and at the same time remain “on-topic” long enough. I was also lucky to be joined by two VC bloggers: Peter Rip and Rick Segal, who did a great job sharing their candid views with these 40-ish entrepreneurs interested in chatting about angel and VC financing (thanks guys). I heard equal positive feedback for the content and the interactivity, and this time, had a feeling that all topics and key questions of the audience had been covered.

Un-panels are so much more interesting that it is worth trying, especially with this upfront inventory of ideas that provides just enough of control on the content and the flow.

Tags: mashupcamp, unpanel

Comments

[Nik Cubrilovic]

It was interesting Jeff, and more interesting in the style it was carried out which meant that Peter and Rick could throw in their own words at any point and still have a smooth-running session. Good stuff.

[Stephane Lee]

Hi Jeff !

We have the same idea to un-panel, but this time with the panels that marketing information companies are fond of. And we are building the tool to unleash exciting things...

I'll tell you more at the next CGS ;-)