Following up on my comments in my post on EUC Explore Minneapolis 2017 I wanted to discuss panel discussions of End User Computing and highlight a couple of recent panels I’ve been able to attend.
Conferences, User Groups, and Webinars all have a variety of formats, but one format I’ve found I really like for disseminating EUC knowledge and experience across all of these venues is the Panel. I attribute this to a couple of different factors:
- [attendee point of view] There’s generally more experiences represented among the speakers. This comes pretty naturally from having more than one presenter, but I think is an important point. With more experiences available, it is more likely that something will speak to each member of the audience. In the case of question and answer periods this also means it is more likely that someone presenting has a relevant experience or answer.
- [panelist point of view] Depending on what your goals are for your panel, it is probably easier for each presenter to prepare, as no one person needs to worry about filling all of the time. The trade-off here is hopefully the moderator or panel organizer is doing some prep to make sure there are topics for the panel to talk about. If you are looking to organize a conference or session, this may help you get folks past some of the common excuses/concerns to presenting.
A few years ago I organized a panel with three speakers to discuss VDI deployments at the Tennessee Higher Education Information Technology Symposium (THEITS). I was motivated to do this following some single speaker presentations in years prior (include one I was a presenter in). While these were great presentations, there were also some great questions that came up, but asked about things outside the scope of the speaker’s deployment. The panel gave A) increased odds of being able to answer the question (point 1 above) and B) invited more discussion from the audience.
I’ve also been a part of similar presentations done online and it was a great opportunity to respond to a question when I had something of value, and yield to others when I did not (or at times, volunteer someone else).
Recently I’ve had the opportunity to attend panels with panelists from the EUC Champions program at both VMworld and EUC Explore Minneapolis. While the EUC Explore session was not recorded, the VMworld session, Ask the Experts: Practical Tips and Tricks to Help You Succeed in EUC. Matt (Heldstab) moderated both of these, and both were excellent sessions, surveying many topics in the end user computing space.
I’ll conclude this post by challenging everyone reading to A) seek out a panel session at an upcoming conference and B) find an opportunity to organize or participate in a panel to share your experiences.
