Prepping for a Panel Presentation

On Wednesday, September 30th, a panel of members of Colorado Women in Social Media will present “Becoming an Influencer” at Denver Startup Week. There is still time to register for this program or the entire annual event. Although all these events are free, you will need to pick up a wristband at the week’s Basecamp to be admitted into any of the events.

This link is directly to this specific presentation, but you can get to the rest of the event from there: http://www.denverstartupweek.org/schedule/912-becoming-an-influencer

This presentation has been in the works for a couple of months, spearheaded by Valerie Morris, Founder and Account Manager at Tintero Creative. She has done a magnificent job of keeping our members on task as we developed our content for the program, promoted it through our social networks, and practiced our parts both separately and together.

We have all learned a lot from this process and this post focuses on tips on the before part of the process. Watch for a follow-up post next week about our experiences giving the presentation.

Prepping and Promoting a Panel-Led Program

• First you have to be selected. Read the submission guidelines carefully and get started early so you have time to create a compelling case for your program to be selected.
  • In many cases you have nothing to do after you send in your proposal- just wait and hope. However, Denver Startup Week utilizes a voting process that allowed us to have some influence – so we worked hard to get the word out (primarily through our own social media connections) and encouraged people to vote for our program.
• Once your proposal is selected, it’s time to create the presentation itself, which we did in PowerPoint. Valerie as our panel coordinator created the original version.
• We met in person for a couple of hours to flesh out the presentation. We brainstormed the concepts we wanted to share and decided who was best suited to present each one. Each of us emailed Valerie our sections to add to the PowerPoint.
• An important thing we will do differently next time is put the draft PowerPoint into a folder on Google Drive earlier than we did. Had we done that, it would have saved time in coordinating our content, especially for our panel coordinator.
• It’s OK if some panel members speak a bit more than others. The key is to make sure that each panel member is confident of her portion and comfortable with what she’s presenting.
• It is essential to set deadlines and stick to them so that all members have their material submitted in a timely manner.
• Select a group member to serve as the panel moderator – someone who does not present on a topic but is part of the development process.
• Lest anyone think this is a job for someone somehow “less-than” the presenters, rest assured that having a capable emcee is an essential aspect of a smoothly running presentation – especially with a large panel, such as ours which has seven presenters.
• Practice, practice, practice! Each panel member needs to rehearse individually so she is completely confident in the material she is presenting and the overall format of presentation.
• It is essential that you bring the entire group together in person at least four or five days prior to the live event, for at least one complete run-through, with all presentation elements. Doing this will uncover any timing or technical issues you might have missed. It’s much better to discover them privately during rehearsal than to have something go wrong at the actual presentation.
• Promote, promote, promote! Even though we have over 800 people registered as of this blog post, we are each still promoting this panel via our social media sites, word-of-mouth, and other means (including this blog post!) and will continue to do so until the day before the event.

How About You?

How have you been part of a panel presentation? What tips would you offer from your experience, especially tips related to prepping for and promoting the program?

About Joyce

Joyce Feustel helps people, especially those age 50 and up, to become more comfortable using social media, especially Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter.

She works with business owners, business development professionals, leaders of nonprofit organizations, job seekers, retired people, consultants, and many others. Find her at www.boomerssocialmediatutor.com.