How to Create a Diverse Panel of One
I’m privileged to have the opportunity to do a lot of public speaking.
Over the years, I’ve traveled to events around the world to share my thoughts and experiences with others. I’ve also spent a lot of time thinking about how to make my talks more interactive and how to get more people involved. In a couple of weeks, I’m heading to the UK to help spread the Canadian startup gospel at a series of events and conferences, and thought I’d share my approach to making speaking events more engaging for everyone.
I present to you: the audience-driven fireside chat.
Definitely NOT a diverse panel
The Problem with Talks
For audience and speaker alike, the standard format of “speaker talks at audience for 50 minutes, followed by 5 minutes of Q&A” is completely broken. It’s rarely engaging, the Q&A period is never long enough, and all-too-often it’s hijacked by a guy (it’s always a guy) who declares, “This is less of a question and more of a comment…” and then proceeds to mansplain for the next 5 minutes.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could facilitate a stronger connection between audience and speaker? One that encourages and empowers the audience to guide the speaker and changes the dynamic from a one-way talk to a conversation?
After dozens of iterations, I’ve converged on on a format that leads to engaging, impactful and entertaining talks for both speaker and audience alike: the audience-driven fireside chat.
The Audience-Driven Fireside Chat
At the name suggests, the audience-driven fireside chat is simply a fireside chat where the moderator is chosen from the audience.
Sounds easy, right? Not so fast.
As a speaker, you’re generally invited to talk about a specific topic and it’s important that you deliver. Actual moderators do a decent amount of preparation before an interview/fireside chat, but if you pick someone on the spot, they won’t have that opportunity. So you need to ensure that the moderator you choose is both capable and willing to focus on the intended topic in a way that’s of interest to the audience.
As such, picking someone completely at random is risky:
Will they be engaging?
Will they be representative of the audience?
Will they ask questions that are too simple for the crowd? Too specific? Too off-topic?
In choosing a moderator from the audience, you have to be intentional — even when you don’t know anyone in the crowd.
How to Choose a Moderator
Believe it or not, it’s actually pretty easy to narrow down an audience to a handful of candidates who have the right background to (in theory) ask good questions. It’s a simple process of elimination.
One of the topics I often speak about is how international founders can more effectively fundraise in Silicon Valley. In those cases, I generally want a moderator with three qualifications:
They are a founder
They have previously raised at least a small amount of money (in order to ensure that the questions they ask aren’t too basic)
They are able to get outside of their comfort zone (something all founders need to do to succeed!)
Here’s how I do it:
After being introduced, I immediately ask everyone to stand up (this gets the audience engaged from the start and sets a tone of participation).
Next, I ask everyone who is a founder to put their hand up. Assuming that there are a decent number of founders, I then ask everyone else to sit down (by having them put their hands up first, I leave myself with an emergency exit if there aren’t enough founders).
After that, I ask everyone who had raised money to put their hand up. If there are at least a couple of hands, I ask the rest to be seated and chose a moderator from there (if not, I ask questions to discern which founders are furthest along in their entrepreneurial journeys).
Depending on my mood, I’ll use different strategies to pick the moderator from the group of finalists. Sometimes I’ll ask the candidates to participate in a rock-paper-scissors tournament, other times I’ll simply ask for a volunteer. Whomever I choose, I ask them if they’re willing to join me on stage (always be respectful and give them the opportunity to bow out gracefully if they’d prefer not to).
Prepping the Moderator
Once I’ve got a candidate on stage, I inform the audience that we’re going to leave the room for 30 seconds to “strategerize” and ask them to use that time to introduce themselves to their neighbors (more audience participation!). I then take the candidate outside of the room and inform them that I want them to be the moderator for the fireside chat.
I then ask a second time if they’re comfortable participating, emphasizing that it’s okay for them to say no. (For some people, this can be genuinely overwhelming so it’s essential that they feel safe declining. At this point, the rest of the audience doesn’t know that I’m trying to pick a moderator, so there’s no public shame or embarrassment if they bow out).
Assuming that they agree, I give them the following instructions:
Introduce yourself to the audience and tell them about your company (they get to do their elevator pitch first)
Ask me to introduce myself (I’ll give a more substantial introduction in a way that seeds a few potential threads of questioning for the moderator)
Ask me any questions you want to
When you run out of questions, turn to the audience and ask them for more questions
We then return to the room, I introduce the new moderator and we’re off!
Why Audience-Driven Fireside Chats Work
Getting the audience involved from the start breaks down the invisible wall between speaker and audience, reducing the “formality” implicit in a talk and making the speaker seem more accessible.
Selecting a moderator from the audience kicks the wall down completely.
Since moderators occupy a “sanctified seat,” they can ask controversial, challenging or just plain silly questions from a position of safety. Moreover, if they get stuck (because they’re nervous, run out of questions, or whatever), the audience is far more likely to jump in and participate — if only because of loyalty and camaraderie (nobody wants to watch a friend struggle).
In all of my experiences with audience-driven fireside chats, I’ve never had a shortage of questions.
Wait…You Said This Post was about Diversity
The tech industry — particularly when it comes to who gets access to venture capital and who gets to be ‘in the room’ — has a long way to go to be truly inclusive.
What does that have to do with fireside chats? The more we can give underrepresented founders a platform and access, the closer we get to true inclusion and better outcomes for the entire industry.
Here’s how I actually select moderators for my founder talks:
Immediately after being introduced, I ask everyone in the audience to stand up.
Next, I ask everyone who is a founder to put their hand up. Assuming that there are a decent number of founders, I then ask everyone else to sit down.
Next, I ask everyone who is a white male to sit down. I politely but firmly explain, “there’s only going to be one white male on this stage, and I’m it.”
After that, I ask everyone who had raised money to put their hand up. If there are at least a couple of hands, I ask the rest to be seated and chose a moderator from there (if not, I ask questions to discern which founders are furthest along in their entrepreneurial journeys).
The Result?
After years of experimentation across dozens of speaking engagements, the audience-driven fireside chat is by far my go-to format. It’s far more enjoyable for everyone involved than a one-way talk, especially when the moderator goes off in a direction that no one anticipated (which, as a speaker, is both terrifying and exhilarating).
It’s been more than 5 years since I first did an audience-driven fireside chat. Every single one has started with a non-”white male” founder introducing themselves and giving their elevator pitch to a captive audience.
Every single one had a non-”white male” moderator asking unfiltered questions of a white male VC (many of which, I guarantee, a white male moderator would never have asked).
And those questions led to other, similarly unfiltered questions from the audience.
I can’t wait to do it again! ✈️
