The panel session with the CEO of Twitter bored the audience in a recent on-stage conference interview. And Mark Suster recently wrote another excellent post about conference panels.
I have sat through so many boring panels in business conferences here in Israel. The boring panel recipe:
- Try to find as many prominent individuals as possible to feature as speaker on the conference invitation flyer
- These people are busy, so you do not require a lot of preparation from the panelists
- Get a verbose moderator: long panelist introductions, long questions, [short answer], long recaps of the answer
An easy way to fill 45 minutes, but not a very good way for the audience to spend its time. You cannot wing a presentation, you cannot wing a discussion panel. I wonder why it is that most people go to conferences to meet people in the coffee breaks.