Because you all seem to have a morbid fascination with panels that go wrong, here’s the impromptu filk from the Cultural Memory panel.
Update: Here’s David Anthony Durham’s version of events. Highlight:
As the guitar comes out Patrick bolts for the door, muttering curses. The woman… sings a song about… oh, I don’t know. Who could listen? At this point I’m just watching the exodus of audience members, wishing I was one of them.
Then the audience got in on the act and things went downhill from there.
Nice to see the panel got its water service all right.
I did not know that Dadaists were going to be at the con.
A response from the filker:
http://lemmozine.livejournal.com/45970.html
“Well, I have no clue how I got on such a panel.”
That explains … something. I think.
I do believe What We Have Here Is A Failure To Communicate. And a clash of sf fan subcultures.
Query from the POV of An Old Fogey (me): is this an example of how much the filk community has diverged into its own world, where this is considered an appropriate contributution to a worldcon discussion panel that has nothing specifically to do with filking, but from the POV that, of course, a filking response is appropriate just everywhere? Or is this just the response of an extreme outlier?
I kind of imagine truly dedicated outlying filkers making their way through life as if they were in that Buffy episode (“Once More, With Feeling” — a lovely episode) where everyone was cursed to only communicate through singing.
No offense is meant here to the many wonderful filkers who are wonderful singers, and write terrific songs, and give tremendous performances, and what fine people they all are!
Though I’ll probably have offended someone, nonetheless.
One might also note that we figured out at least by the Seventies, if not way earlier, that: a) every panel needs a moderator; that b) moderators should be well-chosen and well-prepared; c) it’s even better, though this can hardly always be expected to happen, if the panelists get at least five minutes together in the Green Room prior to the panel, to make mutual introductions, and some faint effort to prepared to be on at least the same chapter, or in the same story, together, while not being on the same page is fine.
“C” is rather idealistic, to be sure, but has actually been known to happen in the past for at least some panels sometimes at some conventions.
“A” and “b” might also be considered idealistic, but “b” really shouldn’t be all that impractical except in cases where the moderator has to suddenly drop out, or can’t show up.
Violation of “a” without a Good Excuse should be a criminal offense, and the offending programming department, or people in charge of, should be put in a penalty box, or sentenced to a day polishing Hugos, or something. (Forced to communicate for a week only by singing?)
I think Blind Lemming has a point when he says that filk is relevant to the topic of cultural memory. It sounds like everyone was kind of flailing around, and the singer probably wouldn’t have been invited up to sing if there had been a moderator to set the tone to start with.
I went to the Monday gripe session, and most of the talk was about moderators and unprepared panels. (And this had apparently come up in every gripe session since Friday.) Apparently the schedule e-mails only told the prospective moderators who they were, and not the other panelists, so when the moderator was dropped from a panel, no one knew someone else would need to step up.
There was also a question about why couldn’t panelists contact each other to confer briefly online, to which the answer was Canadian privacy laws and that they’d forgotten to include a checkbox in the program participant info form to say “Yes, you can share my contact info with my fellow panelists.”
Thank you – having seen the tweets I’m glad to finally get a bit more context about ‘that panel’ (I kept meaning to go see what I could find but forgot!)
I’m with Gary on the basics of this as I said, perhaps too aggressively on my LJ here (http://daveon.livejournal.com/464923.html)…
Purplecthulu, who was involved in program planning, mentioned to me that the operation of the Green Room is different in the US to the UK. In the UK it’s vitally important as that’s where you get to order your free drink for the panel and consequently EVERYBODY goes there.
I usurped the moderators role on my panel on Monday because I didn’t feel I could add much to the proceedings whereas, from a content perspective, James MacDonald really could and shouldn’t have the over-head of moderating and speaking.
Moderating is hard; it’s hard if the topic is unclear from the program guide; it’s hard if there are “strong” personalities on the panel itself and it’s really hard if somebody in the audience wants to be heavily involved.
This looks like a failure to moderate, but combined with what _feels_ to me like a disconnect in the strains of fandom itself.
The thing about Canadian privacy laws is a feeble excuse. If it is true then there should have been a tick box about sharing your email on the program participant questionnaire that you had to say yes to before being allowed to be a program participant.
As to the green room, it isn’t really a difference between UK cons and Worldcons, it is just that at Worldcon everyone is run ragged and doesn’t always have time for pre-panel talks. However, if the moderators had been able to contact their panelists properly beforehand there would probably have been more green room meetings.
I note also that it was at a UK con where I first encountered the idea that having a moderator for a panel was imperialistic and immoral and should not be allowed.
Not to mention the fact that this Worldcon was in Canada, not the USA. I got a lot of “oh, this is an American con, we do things much better in the UK” from several people in Montreal and was not impressed.
It wasn’t only the other panelists who didn’t know who the moderators were – program ops had no idea either, because they were not given that information.
Daveon, having read your LJ post, two points, one entirely trivial: “If you don’t really get why you’re on a panel and don’t have something pertinent to add – recluse yourself.”
I believe you mean “recuse,” not “recluse,” though the latter might be an appropriate response, as well. 🙂
More seriously, I wouldn’t generalize too far about an “American model” of Green Rooms; practices vary widely even among similar-type traditional American sf conventions, and Worldcons in particular, being largely organized by different people each year, despite the Permanent Floating Worldcon Committee Syndrome, are always reinventing wheels, and I was, again, pointing out as far back as the late Seventies, often in square, or triangular shapes.
Sometimes there’s institutional memory, and good practices are well-passed on, and sometimes it all goes to pieces and ends in tears.
The basic points on how to run a panel were, I think, codified to some degree as long ago as the late fifties and early Sixties; certainly by the time I was involved in sf con running by the mid-Seventies, we were absolutely clear on the need for a strong moderator, who is there to keep things moving along, shut up the overly talkative panelist, get the quiet one talking, make for balance, deal with troublemakingers in the audience, keep their own opinions largely to themselves, and so on.
But, like everything else it’s possible to get wrong with a convention, that it’s been known How To Do Right for many decades, be it how to do the daily newsletter well, or how to run program ops, or how to do registration, or how to set up an art auction, or how to run a masquerade and photography, or how to run a Hugo ceremony, or how to choose panelists who will complement, but not conflict to the point of murder, and on and on through the long long list of Good Practices, it’s still all too easy for cons, and Worldcons, to put people in charge who are insufficiently clueful, and have Massive Fail in one or more areas.
Sometimes there are rapid changes right before the convention to try to prevent this. Sometimes it’s far too late.
But knowing how to run a good Green Room, and to at least try to get panelists to report to it fifteen minutes before their panel, and talk a bit, is hardly a unique, unheard of, custom, let alone solely a British or European one. Some of us were trying our best at doing that some thirty-five years ago in America.
In other words, you’re otherwise entirely correct, save for having the impression that somehow all American fans are unaware of how to do this.
Heck, a really well-run panel, and convention programming department, will have notified all the panelists weeks in advance, and they’ll have had several rounds of internet discussions to coordinate plans for the panel in advance. We were doing that to some degree back when we had to use snail mail, when we could.
“Moderating is hard; it’s hard if the topic is unclear from the program guide; it’s hard if there are “strong” personalities on the panel itself and it’s really hard if somebody in the audience wants to be heavily involved.”
Having programmed a bunch of programming back when I was 16, and moderated a bunch of panels starting then (and I’m 50 now), I wouldn’t agree that moderating is “hard.” Just that it’s a bit of work, and it takes knowing what you’re doing, and being able to control a microphone, and be verbally deft enough to, and strong-willed enough to, take control of the conversation as necessary, while not shutting down anyone being properly fascinating, or in any way being rote. You have to be fast on your feet, and tongue, and certainly some panelists make it much much harder than others, but you simply have to be able to deal with that.
And it should start with the programmers making sensible panel choices in the first place, rather than just throwing people on because you want to put them somewhere, or have a case of not knowing enough about them to know that A hates B with a flaming passion, or C’s political views will have an antimatter reaction with D’s, that no moderator could get in between, and so on. Know who is a blatherer and who needs to be drawn out.
In short, know what you’re doing when you put together your program. There’s a heck of a lot more to it than coming up with clever-sounding titles, and throwing darts at the names of people who want to be on panels because, bigosh, they’re important enough to deserve it!
Personally, although I’ve long been gafia, I’ve had a lot of fun being a moderator in almost all my past experiences, and carefully almost entirely left my own opinions out, but I’d very much prefer to not simply suddenly be thrown with no warning at a panel with little or no knowledge of the panelists, and little clue as to what the panel is intended to get at; that’s just asking for sheer luck and cleverness to get you out of that. The Hope Is Not A Plan Plan.
Program ops did have access to who was supposed to be moderator in the booking software.
The panelists long schedules also indicated who supposed to be moderator of any panel you were on. Geoff Ryman was the moderator in this case.
At worldcon its not usually feasible to have free alcoholic drinks in the Green Room. I did notice that the Green Room seemed well used, even by Neil Gaiman.
In future more explicit instructions to moderators indicating that they have more responsibility than at a smaller convention vis a vi meeting fellow panelists before hand at the con, ending panels on time and merging the discussion of people who may have never done a panel before.
Finally I recommend that it be indicated in the program book somehow, even by bolding their name, who the moderator is.
Well, my first experience as a panelist was at Interaction, with a “UK-style” green room, and I don’t recall getting any specific instructions about meeting my fellow panelists beforehand. OTOH, it seemed only reasonable to try to do so, since I was a first-timer, and also since I had only a vague idea who they were.
Jeff: I think the thing I found confusing, as I was only on program on the Monday was the Green Room seemed to be left dangling while Program Ops was still staffed. While they’re not necessarily completely interlinked, it struck me as odd, especially when, by noon Monday they’d removed all program grids and room details from the Green Room too.
Cheryl: I’ve been at a UK con where we tried the non-moderated talk way and it wasn’t a great one. I can see that people would think it was non-egalitarian, but sometimes things need to be to work. (Boy, I’ll get some stick for that…). I also find it hard to believe that the Green Room can’t be manned somehow, especially when Program Ops was. Dave Clemments comments about the original plan being to put the Green Room in the Delta do alarm me, but I’m happy to believe it was a minor thing.
As I said, it effected me the most because all my programming ended up on the Monday. I might not have seen the problems as much had I been on other days.
Gary: I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with the program planning comments. We had a huge problem at an Eastercon a couple of years ago where there were no descriptions of items except the title, and no access to the person who came up with the idea. There’s nothing worse than finding that the panel members and the audience all have differing ideas about what an item is about.
I may have been indulging in a spot of hyperbole about moderating being hard, I was in mid-rant… but it’s still not necessarily an easy thing nor a pleasant thing to do. It can lead to confrontation and it will occasionally need a firm hand, especially if there’s problematic audience or panel member who want to control things. Doing that while making it clear it’s not personal isn’t easy at all, at least for most people.
In general though, I think part of the problem was the email issue – it’s the first large con I can remember in a while where I haven’t at least e-met fellow program members before we get there.
Program Ops kept different hours because I am a con workaholic. The Green Room which did extend them if they the staff available. Monday I asked that they stay open to 3 PM the start of the last programming item. They were open to then however they had cleaned up most of their stuff, as had I by then.
On moderation:
If you think about it the average panel lasts 50 minutes, so that is no less than 10 minutes for each panelist to talk.
I think the usual pattern is for the moderator to introduce themselves and the topic of the panel and then have each panelist briefly introduce them self and then go around again for each one’s take on the topic. Then time for followups if possible and a brief summation from each.
Always follow Scalzi’s Rule ask and answer questions do not make statements. I would have hammered a few questioners for that at the Stross Krugman talk. Way too many were making statements in my mind.
I would have hammered a few questioners for that at the Stross Krugman talk. Way too many were making statements in my mind.
I’ve not seen too many moderators at panels willing to cut in with this: Sorry, is there a question here? Because if not I’ll need to move on…
There is a problem where the topic can become politically charged, in which case things can devolve pretty rapidly. I didn’t go, but I heard the Climate Change panel suffered from that.
“Cheryl: I’ve been at a UK con where we tried the non-moderated talk way and it wasn’t a great one.”
One note: a somewhat under-used format is one that was, I gather, in one case one of the greatest successes of this year, but which was pioneered as an innovation at Worldcons by Ted White as chair of NYCon III, the Worldcon in 1967, and that’s the two-person back-and-forth.
The trick to this one is picking exactly the right two people: ones who don’t need a moderator between them, and who have equally useful, but non-belligerent, things to say to each other, so they complement each other in a way that makes the whole greater than the two individual parts.
Even better when the two chosen are a somewhat unexpected pairing.
I call doing a couple of these in 1977 to considerable success, though damned at this point if, absent consulting an old schedule I don’t currently have access to, I can be sure whom I used — the aforementioned Ted White and Terry Carr might have been one. Some of these were also done in 1978.
Probably it’s also been used since, but I couldn’t speak to further specifics.
Obviously, the one I refer to in Montreal was the Krugman-Stross pairing.
And obviously I’m not referring to a format of one person simply being interviewer and the other interviewee.
“If you think about it the average panel lasts 50 minutes, so that is no less than 10 minutes for each panelist to talk.”
This brings up another old rule, too often violated: never, ever, have a panel with more than five members, unless there’s some unbelievably extraordinary reason.
Various folks have written guides on how to do programming before; I like to assume that folks who attend Smofcons, and are on the smofcon mailing list, and like that there, have been keeping these reprinted and up to date and available, but I wouldn’t know, being — I tell you! — largely gafiated.
“I think the usual pattern is for the moderator to introduce themselves and the topic of the panel and then have each panelist briefly introduce them self and then go around again for each one’s take on the topic. Then time for followups if possible and a brief summation from each.”
Sure.
“I’ve not seen too many moderators at panels willing to cut in with this: Sorry, is there a question here? Because if not I’ll need to move on…”
I have. And, yes, it’s a necessity at most any decent-sized convention panel.
It’s not a panel, but an interaction at a LASFS Meeting program, and I only ran across these accounts last night, despite them happening at the end of June, but folks may be amused by the accounts I link here of what happened when author David B. Williams was, ah, questioned by Jerry Pournelle at Williams’ invited talk, which led to Karen Anderson storming out. This is an example, perhaps, of where even a one-person talk could find useful someone in authority to step in, even before it’s supposed to be q&a. And how not to have a two-person dialogue, however impromtu.
And, woot, climate change was involved! Also, SDI.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
“And, yes, it’s a necessity at most any decent-sized convention panel.”
Let me modify this by pointing out the need to distinguish between someone making an ego-driven, pompous, speech, from the audience, and someone relevantly making a short and interesting contribution. I think the latter can be enlightening and fine, whereas obviously the former is not, and it’s up to the moderator to use good judgement as to which is going on.
Sometimes someone in the audience may have more relevant information, or may be better qualified, to speak to a point than someone on the panel. Once in a while it even makes sense to recognize this to the degree of inviting such a person onto the panel, though that should done exceedingly sparingly indeed, of course.
Also, what kind of panel it is, and what type of convention it is, will be relevant.
Debbie Notkin has, had as is her wont, useful things to say about this, as well.
“I call doing a couple of these in 1977 to considerable success, though damned at this point if, absent consulting an old schedule I don’t currently have access to, I can be sure whom I used”
I really should pay more attention to “preview” — apologies. This should be “I recall” and “I can’t be sure….”
“And obviously I’m not referring to a format of one person simply being interviewer and the other interviewee.”
Although that can be good, too, particularly for drawing out a shy, but interesting, person.
Gary: Yes and yes to most points, which is another reason for something being hard – judging if a point is a well made contribution and a potentially de-railing incident often needs finesse.
I had also read about the Pournelle incident which, sadly, brings up one of the reasons why I’m probably not going to be reading any more of his books because the polemics in Escape from Hell got too far under my skin.
With regard to the Krugmann-Stross chat – the only bit that I know frustrated some people, especially those that know Charlie well, is they’d have liked a bit of moderation to the chat as, to be frank, Paul Krugman was doing a fair fanboy impression there! But I think that was a feature.
“…to be frank, Paul Krugman was doing a fair fanboy impression there! But I think that was a feature.”
I’ve only read the transcript; I tend to be too impatient for long videos.
But, really, wouldn’t most sf fans take it as rather flattering to the entire field, and especially to those who like smart sf, and Charlie’s stuff, when a Nobel Prize winner and NY Times columnist acts the sf fanboy?
I’m guessing everyone here has probably seen/read this, btw.
I should have included in my link to Debbie Notkin’s LJ post above that the comments there are all very much worth reading, as well.
But, really, wouldn’t most sf fans take it as rather flattering to the entire field, and especially to those who like smart sf, and Charlie’s stuff, when a Nobel Prize winner and NY Times columnist acts the sf fanboy?
Yes, but I think it was tempered with wanting to see more of Krugman the fan.
Based on rumours I heard, that’s a possibility at future cons as he liked his experience.
I note in passing that I learned how to moderate a panel, and how to run a Green Room, at WisCon.
I’m slightly bemused by the Green Room staff issue. What are they needed for, other than keeping food supplied? Jeff was horribly short of staff, and Program Ops should always have first call on what few staff you have.
As to dealing with comment from the floor, that is something that can be a lot harder at Worldcon than at a local regular convention where you might know a lot of the attendees. At Worldcon you can never be sure whether the person you call on will be a “drone on about his own personal obsession” type, an ordinary questioner, or someone with deep and incisive knowledge about the subject who was somehow overlooked for a panel slot. These days also if you cut off someone who is trying to dominate the panel from the audience you never know if the next day you’ll find yourself accused of discrimination and the target of a FAIL storm on LiveJournal.
Moderating is a skill, you have to work at it, and I was deeply honored to have people come to me after panels and thank me for moderating them well.
“These days also if you cut off someone who is trying to dominate the panel from the audience you never know if the next day you’ll find yourself accused of discrimination and the target of a FAIL storm on LiveJournal.”
My assumption is that that’s probably a safe default assumption.
A tad cynical about fandom? Moi?
But, hey, what’s working on a Worldcon in some capacity, without being called names for some reason, large or small? (Or to a lesser degree, a smaller con.) Ditto writing much online these days. Even outside LJ. (Although it’s no accident I’ve never joined LJ.)
Hey, out of fandom, via political blogging, it was only last month I got called all these names.
Starting out in fanzine fandom when you’re twelve is good preparation for all this.
For extra points, run a Worldcon that a bunch of people run a boycott of, and call you “Nazis” for some decision or other. Then do two in a row featuring those….
Ah, nostalgia.
“I’m slightly bemused by the Green Room staff issue. What are they needed for, other than keeping food supplied?”
Footrubs? Supplication? Taping bacon to cats?
Reading all this fannish stuff of late made me take a look at the full Hugo results, which resulted in me googling “Argentus,” which I was gafiated enough to never have heard of.
So glancing at the most recent of what appears to be a zine that comes out annually (hey, more frequent than Science-Fiction Five-Yearly was, or, for that matter, Science Fiction Fifty-Yearly, which has only managed a single issue, disappointingly missing its timeslot for second issue two years ago, and Bob Tucker only missed his chance by a year, too), I note that Steven Silver has a bunch of articles on con-running, including both the Minicon and Boskone guides to moderating, and other articles on moderating and doing panels, among other pieces on con-running. I duly point this out in light of the above discussion.
I’m slightly bemused by the Green Room staff issue. What are they needed for, other than keeping food supplied?
To be honest, coming from European cons, I find the idea of food in the Green Room a little odd. The main role I would see would fit with European/UK cons and the events I’ve spoken at, where the organisers use the Green Room for marshaling acitivities and making sure people know who is whom. As you say, you’re unlikely to know the people you’re on something with and what they look like. I certainly didn’t.
Finally, merely keeping a copy of the program grid available would have been nice so I didn’t have to hunt one down to check on a room number which turned out to have been changed.
These days also if you cut off someone who is trying to dominate the panel from the audience you never know if the next day you’ll find yourself accused of discrimination and the target of a FAIL storm on LiveJournal.
Certainly that’s a risk that you’ll have to take, and it’s one of the fun new added features of Fandom. Along with grudges about practical everything and a macho feeling that, as Gary put it, if you haven’t been printing a Fanzine since you were 12 on a MIMEOGRAPH machine then you cannot possibly be a real fan 🙂
I’ll temper this with a modifying comment: I might not have had this problem if all my programming hadn’t fallen on the Monday.
Dave:
Most of what you are describing is stuff that Program Ops is supposed to do. In a small convention you don’t need separate operations and hospitality departments for programming. In something the size of Worldcon some people are full time on solving scheduling issues, and other people are full time on hospitality.
You have food in the green room to make sure that people who are rushing headlong from one panel to another actually get a chance to eat. Some days it was my only chance to get lunch, and there have been previous Worldcons where it was my only option for breakfast as well.
Also having food available helps encourage people to turn up there.
If we had been allowed proper pre-con communication then your moderator would have introduced everyone beforehand and encouraged them to turn up.
And yes, the scheduling was a mess.
Cheryl: Agreed that proper pre-con communication would have solved a lot of the problems I encountered.
The Ops space and area itself, while next to the Green Room, wasn’t all that conducive to marshaling activities, although they were, unlike other cons I could mention, mostly on top of tech. (Jordan Kare’s complaints not withstanding) I got what I needed.
My only gripe was the room it was in changed 3 times from my original notification to the final space.
As I said in my original post, I don’t have a lot to go on with large North American cons and was taking information from Dave Clemments on this. Of course, if James Bacon gets his way I’ll have to be around North American cons a tad more in the next 3-4 years.
Re: privacy and panelist contact info, I got an E-mail note about a week before the con, asking me for permission to give my contact information to other panelists. Over the next few days, each time I checked my programming schedule, more and more of the listed panelists had their E-mail addresses shown, I assume as the permissions came in. I didn’t check for the last few days, and there were probably some holdouts, but it would have been possible for most of my co-panelists to contact each other if we’d wished to.
Joel:
That was a last-minute rescue job that the web site team heroically pulled together when Programming (specifically Dave Clements, I believe) threw a fit about their panelists not being allowed to talk to each other. It was good to have, but too little, too late and too much of a barrier to participation. Moderators should have got panelists emails sent to them.
I did not leave the panel “muttering curses,” I said “I’m not good-natured enough for this.”
Patrick:
Thanks. I see much discussion on David’s original post. IMHO the lack of curses is firm proof of your good nature.
That panel didn’t go astray because filking is a divergent culture (if it is). The filker in question (Kathleen?) was an innocent bystander.
Blind Lemming Chiffon had that panel mired in confusion long before the music kicked in. It had nothing to do with him being a filker, and everything to do with his awful performance on the panel. From the start, he’d been deflecting or derailing every attempt by the other panelists to get the conversation going.
The panel was obviously struggling to get traction, but the moment that precipitated the general exodus was when Blind Lemming Chiffon suddenly interrupted that very difficult process by announcing that his friend was now going to come up and sing a song. I promise you, the effect was nothing short of surreal.
Contrary to Mr. Chiffon’s claims, the song had no particular relevance to the panel topic. He was in over his head, so he cut off everyone else’s conversation. It was the same kind of derailment he’d already (repeatedly!) visited on the panel, only done on a much larger scale.
There are a lot of things you could call his maneuver, but IMO, “jaw-droppingly rude” would be a good place to start.
I’m probably being too severe. BLC didn’t intend harm, but he was in over his head, and very confused.
Green Room staff are there also to make sure that only panelists and Program Ops Staff are eating the food. The Green Room also had a minimum of staff and needed at least one person at all times to watch the room, someone who was not always available.
Putting the grid up is a good idea and ironically the grid was OK for most panels. The main panels affected by skewing were filk, children’s and teen’s as could be observed by looking at the big grid at the info desk. If I had had a chance to look at it earlier I would have fixed the grid by removing them from it and printing them separately which is what we did by Sunday.
Blind Lemming Chiffon would have benefited from being able to discuss the topic with the other panelists beforehand for sure.