Why so many panels drag

A panel discussion sounds easy: no slides, just a conversation. But anyone who has sat in the audience knows it can drag on and on. Some panels feel like a row of separate interviews, because the participants speak alongside each other rather than to each other. Others stay so vague that you can’t tell what they want to say, and others drone through a prepared text as if rehearsing for a stage play.

The bergonomics philosophy

With me on the panel, we talk, we disagree when we have to and, ideally, we laugh. A panel is a conversation: among the panellists and with the audience. It is a place to learn something new and, now and then, to change your mind. An exchange, not a stage play.