Why plenarys and panels suck

What are plenaries good for?

• Top down/one way communication
• Checking email/facebook
• Media (and Social Media) Attention
• Biz card printers
• Delivering Lectures to scale
• Getting professional credit
• Assumed shared experience
• Audience interaction
• Easy to check out/opt-out
• strengthening egos
• Paid mental holidays
• Maintaining Hierarchies
• Powerpoint
• Perpetuating existing power structures by
  • Allowing for institutional networking
  • Face value and token appreciation (look we have a black woman on our panel!)
  • Refining content for one-way distribution
  • Show and exchange different perspectives within that power structure

What are plenaries bad for?

• Lack of buy-in, getting shared ownership
• Participatory learning
• Going deep
• Getting work done
• Inclusiveness
• Benefiting presenters
• High participant satisfaction
• Control of content
• Building trust

How do we end them:

• Focus on goals and furthering organisational agendas
• The need to build real consensus
• Hack the system - if you have an auditorium with tables get the tables to talk to each other.
• Have clear outcomes to evaluate the event against
• Get organisers to realise what real 'shared-ownership' looks like
• Crowdsource agenda's