When Panels Go Bad

~ Cheryl

I’ll be busy traveling for much of today, but I wanted to do a quick post about the bizarre panel that was the talk of much of the parties last night. Apparently it resulted in Patrick Neilsen Hayden walking off the panel, Geoff Ryman banging his head on the table, and mass exits by the audience. I wasn’t there, but Kathryn Cramer has a few photos with which she attempts to capture the surreal atmosphere.

Of course the vast majority of the panels at the convention went fairly well. Somehow the occasional oddity only adds to the entertainment, except perhaps for the panelists at the time.

7 thoughts on “When Panels Go Bad”

  2. Jukka:

    Sure, we’ll be looking all over for reports and creating an archive page. I’ll be doing an extensive report myself and welcome feedback from other con attendees.

  4. hmmm I apparently missed that one. Overall I thought it was a good lot of panels. Only a couple that strayed a bit to far from topic but that is the nature of these things.

    I’ll have to revisit them when/if I get around to blogging about them. Two of the favorites were Neil’s reading especially the ‘love letter’ and your chat with him.

    What did happen in the panel you refer to above?

  5. There was some “odd” moderation going on, and part of the problem I saw on a couple of panels was putting moderators in charge who had their own position on the topic.

    I know it’s hard to do but it really does work best to have a moderator without an axe to grind who is able to control the personalities on the panel. Otherwise things can rapidly go down hill.

    I got to a couple of items late where the discussion had already gone way off topic.

  6. Another triumph for Dadaism or Anarchy or both?

    Its also possible the moderator dropped off the panel. This would have been an interesting one to moderate for sure.

    As a serious panel = fail

    As a worldcon event that got people buzzing = ultra pass

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