Choosing a topic and title

What is absolutely critical from your area expertise that this audience needs to understand? Don’t just think that because you’re an expert in bilateral African swallow evolution that everyone at your conference should know about every nook and cranny. Ask yourself some questions: what are new, key findings that they might not know about? How can a piece of your expertise help the larger conference community grow? Remember that you’re not blessing the audience with your infinite cosmic power; you are providing a service that you want them to benefit from.

Next: choose a title that’s going to rope them in. Don’t be obvious, in most cases– again, think about your audience and what they’ve come to the conference to learn. One of the most frustrating things I see on the political conference circuit are poorly titled token panels like, “Why We Need Women to Win Elections.” First of all, boooooring. Second of all, the people who actually need to hear that message aren’t going to go to a panel called that.

I used the following example from my past as an RA on campus recently. I was responsible for the sexual assault awareness programming for my quad, and I knew that I wouldn’t get students to attend something called “Sexual Assault Awareness Night.” Instead, I stole the idea from a training I’d attended, where we took the name of a popular game show at the time (who remembers “Singled Out“?) and made all of the questions and answers about sexual assault awareness. Yes, it’s tricking people. But sometimes people need to be tricked into getting educated.

Copybloggers’ headline writing series also applies to panel naming in many respects, if you need extra help.

Choosing panelists

This can be challenging for most of us. We’re pulled in several directions: we want to get famous people onto our panel so that people will come; we want to promote our friends and their work; we want to have people that have interesting ideas. (I was lucky for my Netroots panel, since my panelists fit many of these bills, haha.)

Before you get to the famous and the friends, though, I want you to think about some other questions. First, who’s not just writing smart things about your topic, but who can actually explain them in an engaging way to an audience? Honestly, many writers and academics make terrible presenters. The panelists don’t have to be the most fun or funniest, but they should do more than drone on as they read a prepared statement.

Next, who do you know that has something challenging to say on your topic? You don’t just want panelists who will congratulate each other; you’ll want them to interact and play off each other. That doesn’t mean they have to be douchey or mean, just willing to be a little different if it’s called for.

On the topic of famous people: yes, having one on your panel is extremely helpful for getting people to choose it from all the other panels that are available in that time slot. It’s true. So, if you choose a famous person, maybe consider choosing someone else who’s not so famous, but meets other, stronger criteria above, so they get some elevation out of the process.

Last, but probably most important: Choose people from different genders, races and backgrounds. I’m not saying this to be nice, or even as an ethical argument. People from different backgrounds make for a more interesting panel. It’s like DNA– see this post I wrote about it, which also plays a major role in my book.

Preparing for the panel

Depending on how in-depth your panel is, anywhere from a few weeks to a week before the panel, email your panelists and lay out what you need from them. Come up with 3-4 questions for them to choose from as a guide for what you want the panel to focus on. Make it clear that you want the audience to take away clear, concrete ideas and action items–this is not just story time.

Give them a time limit that they are supposed to work within (generally 7-10minutes is about right for the average panel), and warn them that you will cut them off if they go over.

Tell them that if they are presenting case studies as an illustrative example of how things work or should work, the case studies must be replicable. Too often (especially on panels about social media and blogging), a case that is unbelievably outstanding is presented, and key points about what really made the success–such as participant’s relationships with key influencers–are left out. This is so damaging to the wider community: When people think that all they have to do, for example, is come up with a nice charity idea and ask their friends to help, they become disappointed and turned off of social media when it doesn’t work.

I also advise against using any PowerPoint presentations, unless you have strong images or graphics. (I myself go for the TED-style of PowerPoint, with just large images and one or two words on each slide.) It’s too tempting for a presenter to just read what’s on screen and not engage with the audience at all.

If there are heavy-duty materials that need to be shared, determine ahead of time a place online where you can share each panelist’s materials: a blog, a wiki, SlideShare, etc.

On the day of the panel

Ask your panelists to meet a half-hour before the panel starts and discuss quickly what each person is going to talk about. Confirm that there are no egregious overlaps in topic. Determine the order that each panelist will present in.

Make sure all your AV is working, and if there are going to be lots of social media users in your audience, choose a hashtag for your panel. (Try just adding a single word to the conference’s main hashtag– for example, we used #nn10rock.)

Get a 2-sentence bio from each of your panelists. Their full bios are either in the conference program or on the conference website, so don’t worry about using the whole thing.

During the panel

Give an overview of the panel topic: Set the stage for your panelists based on what you know they’re going to present, and ask your audience a few questions about the topic that they can answer with a show of hands. Introduce your panelists with the short bios you gathered.

Let your panelists present, but keep to your promise to cut them off when their time is up. Take notes for questions while they’re speaking.

Start the Q&A period of the panel by asking a few pointed questions based on the notes you took. Ask them to explain one interesting detail further.

When it’s time to open the questions up to the audience, warn them of one very big important point: You will not tolerate anyone who gives an entire history of the project their working on, and then asks a random question at the end. We know you’re just there to self-promote, and we’re interested in having a conversation. Using up a lot of time to ask a question does the whole community a disservice. Instead, say your name, that you’re working on [name of project], and you want to know x. Anything more than that will find you cut off.

I know it sounds harsh, but it’s the only way to get through a lot of questions, and to have a productive Q&A session at most conferences.

Following up

At the end of the panel, remind people where they can find the materials online, and then actually gather and post those materials within 24 hours, if possible. Share the materials with wider audiences on Twitter, Facebook and blogs. Invite comment and critique, and improve your panel stylings based on that feedback.

In case you missed the hilarity of my flight back from Austin, here are my tweets…

• 7:00pm (CT): Boarded, hopefully leaving soon… (@ JetBlue Flight #1068)
• 7:15pm: Bill Murray is on my flight. o_O
• 12:06am (ET): Scary-ish landing. Dear lord, I did not want my last tweet on the planet to be about Bill Murray. But I do have some goss, stay tuned
• 12:07am: A Flight w Bill Murray, a story told over multiple tweets. Austin –> NYC, JetBlue (this actually prolly isn’t that interesting)
• 12:08am: Discovery of Mr Murray: when he switched out of his emerg exit row seat back to 2 rows in front of me to sit next to a young woman.
• 12:09am: Unclear whether they knew each other well prior to the flight. There was much giggling from those 2 seats (I was jealous, yes, heh)
• 12:10am: Then, I kid yous not, halfway thru the flight thry get up and go to the bathroom. Murray does a little dance on his way. I’m like, nuh-uh!
• 12:11am: They’re there for about 10min and come back, not weirdly and nothing else happens. Only other thing was that at the end of the flight,
• 12:12am: Murray starts drumming on the seat in front of him. Loudly. The woman starts giggling again. Dude in front of me (right behind Murray)
• 12:13am: …gets pissed and says (loudly, in a thick Brooklyn accent), “Hey drum circle, you wanna knock it off?” Which shockingly does the trick.
• 12:14am: I <3 NY. The End.

So! An early New Year’s resolution: I’m gonna try to get on the ball for next year. Already thinking of SXSW, Allied Media Conference, US Social Forum, Personal Democracy Forum, Women Who Tech, America’s Future Now, NonProfit 2.0, NTEN and more; what do you recommend in the social tech, media, politics, activism, and social justice fields? Conferences & unconferences, big ‘n’ small. Leave ‘em in the comments (links to conferences would be helpful), and I’ll publish a big list in the next few days.

My favorites, in no particular order:

• @Bryce1984 The Lambs That Wouldn’t Shut Up #unseenprequels
• @jchinchar #unseenprequels Some Like It Tepid
• @matthasarms: Apocalypse Soon. #unseenprequels
• @steviedunn: The Day the Earth Continued Spinning #unseenprequels
• @PCTim: #unseenprequels The OK, The not so OK, and the unattractive
• @blogdiva: #unseenprequels Second-Base and The City
• @Alcudiabarfly: #unseenprequels dry-spell in the city
• @stealyourself: Madamoiselle Bovary #UnseenPrequels
• @lizzwinstead: The 5k run/walk Man #unseenprequels
• @jnjoiner: Thursday #unseenprequels
• @LParry: Shaun of the feeling peaky. #unseenprequels
• @KagroX: Still Plenty of Mohicans #unseenprequels
• @drywall: A Bunch of Mohicans #unseenprequels
• @RedGray: #unseenprequels Raiders of the Misplaced Ark
• @islandis: Sex, Lies, and Kinescope. #unseenprequels
• @macphoenix: Undocumented-Immigrant Kane #unseenprequels
• @mcsweater: American History IX #unseenprequels
• @AdamSerwer: The Dark Squire #unseenprequels
• @lizzwinstead: Conception of a Nation #unseenprequels
• @lizzwinstead: Still Going Back and Forth On Some Major Points of Endearments #unseenprequels
• (my own, heh): #unseenprequels Before Harry Met Sally
• UPDATE: via many others, this one clearly wins: @KagroX: Groundhog Day #unseenprequels

UPDATE: More fun titles are posted over at Ben Byrne’s blog!

* Wondering what the deal with the # is? That’s the marker for a “hashtag” on Twitter. It’s how Twitter users easily add or denote a keyword, allowing everyone else to either find or refer to a topic easily. Search for all #unseenprequel tweets!

My cousin Cheryl down in DC is writing a novel, and found it really hard to get big chunks of work done, too. She said that she used to do this with a friend of hers, and would I be interested? I’ll give anything a whirl once. Here’s how it works:

• We have set appointments twice a week in the morning. One of us calls the other at the appointed time.
• We each say what we’re going to try and accomplish in that session, and how long we’d like to work for. (For us, it’s generally an hour at a time.)
• We also offer each other suggestions or share experiences that might be helpful.
• We hang up and get to work. I use the SelfControl app for Mac to block my access to email, Facebook and Twitter during that time.
• At the end of the hour, we call each other and relate how it went, what we were able to get done and what the next steps are.

Wash, rinse, repeat!

The accountability is what’s been the most helpful part of this. Sure, I can make a “meeting” with myself in my iCal to get work done, but knowing that I have to call someone, have a plan and execute itgives me that much more inspiration to get tough chunks of the book worked out. Also, working in tandem with someone who’s not in the same room doesn’t offer up the temptation to just sit there and chat for the whole hour.

All-in-all, a resounding Zandt Family Success Story, and highly recommended to others.

What do I want to do, I hear you asking yourself? In short — I do want you to buy the book, after all — I’m going to be describing the social media moment as a huge opportunity for social change and action. If you’ve read some of what I’ve written about Twitter and other services, and my ideas about the giant gene pool and the desperate need for diversity, you have an idea of where the book will go. Plus, it’ll be stunningly entertaining to boot!

It was interesting to go from “I don’t think I ever want to write a book” at the end of February to looking at what I’ve got to sign for the deal in the middle of May. I wanted to share this part of the story as both a testament to Johanna’s powerful skillz of persuasion, as well as a revelatory moment about how these things can work– especially for women who think they have to know every detail of everything before they set off on sharing their expertise. Not that I know anything about that.

In the beginning, I couldn’t identify what topic (of the myriad of things I’m interested in) I’d have enough passion, expertise and attention span to write an entire book about. Johanna asked me to complete an exercise as homework after our first official call, where I was to answer three questions:

• What community do I identify with, am affiliated with or otherwise care about?
• What is that community’s point of pain? What’s preventing them from getting to the next level?
• What book could I write to address that point of pain?

Well, jeez, that was easy. My community, through my work in feminism over the years, is women; their point of pain is an intimidation and/or distrust of new technologies, and yeah, I’m pretty sure I could write a book helping them get over that hump. As Johanna and I fleshed out my ideas, we both realized that what I’m talking about is larger than just women needing to take advantage of this moment. I’m going to be talking about and bringing in experts from the fields of racial justice, LGBTQQI organizing, the front lines of the class warfare… yeah. It’s going to be one big party in my book.

So, there you have it. We’re attempting to do this on a strikingly fast timetable, and I’m going to be looking to my community for help in a few areas. One of them is fundraising, but that’s a separate story that I’ll blog later this week. For now, I’ll be over here just bouncin’ off the walls.

PS– A big, big, big shoutout to Christine Cupaiuolo, the most fabulous editor ever, without whose help I seriously would not have been able to put together a proposal that knocked it out of the park as hard as it did. Can’t wait to move on to the book work with you, CMC!

Wednesday Panel: Web2.0 Activist Model Case Studies

Over the past two years, Web 2.0 technologies have matured and so have the methods activists use to employ them. In 2008, activists from around the world used Web 2.0 to take command of the digital airwaves pioneering new forms of political mobilization. From Students for a Free Tibet’s live streamed protests in Beijing, to RNC protesters coordinating actions and monitoring police movements on Twitter to mass digital mobilizations for humanitarian relief and election protection, Web 2.0 is no longer just for social networking and fundraising.

This Wednesday, practitioners involved in the above campaigns will present case studies and highlight how they leveraged these tools to have broader reach and greater effectiveness. We’ll also delve into issues governing internal organization and communication among political actors, including: transparency vs. security; command and control vs. autonomous affinity groups, and the power of organizing without organizations vs. the tyranny of structurelessness.

This report back and skills share is intended to leave you with concrete ideas for how these models and tools could impact your work.

Wednesday, December 17, 7:30pm
The Change You Want To See Gallery
http://www.thechangeyouwanttosee.org
84 Havemeyer Street, at Metropolitan Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11211

ABOUT THE PRESENTERS

Nathan Freitas is an entrepreneur and activist, with longtime love for all things mobile, miniaturized, virtual and open-source. His experience runs the gamut from founding a successful venture-funded for-profit business and speaking at JavaOne and Amazon developer events, to locking himself down to foreign consulates and managing satellite links for live streaming of protest video from very remote places. If Nathan were a cloud tag, these would be his tags: cloud computing, android, java, videoblogging, mogulus, wordpress as CMS, tibet, china, human rights, free speech, free thought, encryption, privacy, creative commons, ratatat, sufjan stephens.
http://nathan.freitas.net

Deanna Zandt is a media technologist and consultant to key progressive media organizations including AlterNet and the Hightower Lowdown, and hosts TechGrrl Tips on GRITtv with Laura Flanders. She works with groups to create and implement effective web strategies toward organizational goals of civic engagement and empowerment, and uses her background in linguistics, advertising, telecommunications and finance to complement her technical expertise. Deanna also works with New York-based independent artists such as John S. Hall/King Missile, Surf Reality and the Art Stars to promote radical performances in downtown Manhattan, and is a member of the Brooklyn-based Not An Alternative political art collective.
http://www.deannazandt.com

Nancy Scola is a Brooklyn-based writer, blogger, and editor whose work focuses on the intersection of technology and politics, both broadly defined. She serves as the associate editor of techPresident and Personal Democracy Forum, and has worked in the past on Capitol Hill,
in presidential politics, and in progressive radio.
http://www.nancyscola.com

The rest of the time, I’ll be flaunting about doing Berlin-y things. A bit of travel with my mom is in store as well, yippie! Check back here and in the lifestream for updates and pics.

See you New Yorkers on May 27th!

So, I’m wondering: what kinds of parameters are folks using for moving things to archive versus keeping on a running machine? The OCD-pack-rat in me likes having my entire world at my fingertips whether I’m home or not, but obviously this isn’t sustainable. (…she says as she’s downloading 7GB of pics from aforementioned camera.)

Feel free to leave suggestions in the comments, to twitter me, or to drop a line.

When you don't post something to your blog for a few days I get worried but then when you write some of the things you do i am really worried Love you anyways.Mom

UPDATE: Go see the whole “postcards from yo momma site“. Utter and complete hilarity. Made my day.

While we’re having a laugh, an awesome lolcat from this week:

see more crazy cat pics

Last night, we were reviewing some sketches I’d been working on for the first comic in a series (hopefully) to be titled “The observed weakness of gravity,” and I can’t tell you how wild and complicated combining images (over which you have ultimate and complete control) and words (see previous parens) is. My sticking point at the moment is that I tend to draw absolutely everything — elements, frames, pages — on the perpendicular. Everything lines up neatly with everything else, which doesn’t necessarily make for a totally engaging visual.

It wasn’t until we were breaking each of the images apart that it hit me why I do this: graphic design. For years and years now, I’ve had it drilled into me that every element in every design, especially in web design, absolutely must make sense in its placement and line up on some sort of grid. Even if that grid is uneven in places, it almost always exists. I’m sure the creative director of the agency I used to work for is thrilled that he’s beaten my subconscious into submission, but I’m stymied.

How does one unlearn all of this training in order to set art and stories free? Onward to breaking off the grid…

• Plant a tree on your block (or any block) (via mikki)
• Put a bike rack on your sidewalk
• Fix a pothole

I’ve actually done the bike rack one … they were surprisingly speedy and nice. They came out and measured the sidewalk, which wasn’t wide enough in the end, and then emailed me to discuss other options.