Moderating a panel

Guy Kawaski wrote a blog today on how to kick butt on a panel. In the comments section, someone wanted some tips on how to moderate a panel for success. I've moderated a few, and generally speaking, I find them a lot of fun. Here are a couple of things that I thought worked well:

• Work together on a deck/Create a fake company -- In one panel that I moderated last year, myself and 3 other panelists from different companies created a fake mutual fund company in order to show salient ways that the Web can help improve relationships with advisors. We had different roles as marketing, technology, CRM, and strategy and no where in the panel presentation did we advertise or even say our own companies name (outside introductions). It enabled us to display our expertise without having to pitch why our companies were so great. We were really able to focus on the content of the session. In turn, we got more exposure, and frankly, had a lot more fun.

• Never ask a yes/no question -- There's nothing worse than getting -- "No. (silence)" Panel buzzkill. Instead of "Do you do x?" you can easily change most questions by adding the words, "In what way ... " or "What's your experience with ..."

• Have more questions prepared than you will use -- Sometimes panels leave time for Q and A from the audience, but depending on your position in the agenda (post-lunch or pre-golf, pre-drinks sessions are notoriously bad) you might not have any response at all ... leaving you the moderator with dead time. Try to circulate and rehearse responses between you and your panelists. In my experience, there should be no surprises from the moderator's perspective. Furthermore, make sure that you have more than you need. In general, I try to prepare at least 20 panel questions/hour of panel time.

• Put the discussion points/objectives on a slide -- Panels are great to see brilliant minds in motion, but often it becomes hard to distill who is talking about what. I have had some success in cluing the audience about what the substance of the material is going to be. It has to be better than "Intro, Presentation, Audience Q and A." Think of it this way, what are the three things you want the audeince to leave with? Just put it on the slide and leave it there for the audience to refer to.

• Have dinner the night before -- even though you may have done several conference calls or circulated email prep a number of times, there is nothing like sitting face to face and seeing how the group interacts. You will get some idea of who can take the lead and how the personalities gel when sitting together. Make note of that and it can help you during the panel to moderate tempo or direct an audience question to the right person. **On this dinner point, a colleague of mine ... "re: the dinner the night before....which I think is essential, for just the reasons you state. It makes me crazy when the moderator or panelists then CONSTANTLY REFERS to (during the presentation)...."like we were discussing last night at dinner/this morning at breakfast......" It makes me nuts. I THINK it makes the audience feel like1) left out that they weren't invited and2) that they are getting some "remnant" of the "good stuff" that was "discussed last night at dinner."

Any other comments/suggestions?