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A neat conference hack?

Friday, July 10, 2009 by Dave Winer.

Hey I just had an idea for a conference hack you can do at a traditional audience-oriented conference.  

I have a theory that you could grab any random person from the audience and put them on stage and they'd give a better talk than the usual conference speaker because they wouldn't have had time to prepare slides or get nervous and plan a speech in their head.  

So, why not do exactly that! 

Have a "surprise panel" mid-afternoon on the first day, around 3PM. The conference moderator takes the podium and says: "Would the following people please come up on stage." And then he'd name four people chosen at random from the audience. Then they'd have a discussion about the previous panels and speeches, the topics of the day in whatever industry or profession the conference is about. 

The only problem with this idea is that by 3PM most of the people would already be out in the hallway schmoozing because the speeches and panels were so boring. Not exactly sure what to do about that.