Saturday Deep Dive: Moderating a Comic-Convention Panel

Today's dive into the deeper archive of Webcomics.com takes us to the very first month of the site, October 2008, when we discussed a topic near and dear to my heart: Moderating a comic-convention panel.

A comic-convention panel can be an excellent opportunity to get people excited about your comic, but unless you do a good job of presenting the panel, you're going to wind up boring people. And no one is going to check out your work after you've bored them silly for an hour.

We've all been to the ubiquitous panel in which five cartoonists take turns answering the same question over and over again. They inevitably end up repeating each other's points, constantly flogging their own work, and the result is a droning mess.

Here's the secret to a good panel discussion: It's not what you talk about; it's how you talk about it.

The key to the the whole operation is the moderator. As the moderator, it's your responsibility to engender a comfortable, informal atmosphere -- even if your panelists just met on the stage. Add to this challenge the fact that many cartoonists are not be very good public speakers, and you've got your work cut out for you.

Read the rest of the post and join the discussion under the original thread.