I detailed my thoughts on a Panel Picker ala SXSW yesterday. Today I want to talk about some of the advantages.

The Suggestion Process

While writing this I went from calling the person who suggested the panel the “suggester” to the “nominator”.

I suggest there be two phases to the picker. A nomination round and the voting round.

During the nomination round people fill out a form with the details of the panel and it is available online for others to see. During the phase other people can “second” the nomination, essentially voting for it to be voted on later.

Once nominations close, the programming committee goes over the nominations and selects a list of panels. These panels are them put up for con goers to vote on.

Anyone can second a nominated panel, but only people actually signed up for the con can vote in the selection round. I mean really what’s the point of letting people vote who aren’t even going to be there. That’s just noise in the machine.

Advantages

There are a number of advantages to letting the fans create the panels, and they make the program director’s job a little easier.

Panels are Prepackaged

It isn’t up to the program director to come up with every idea, pick a moderator, pick panelists, make sure they communicate pre-con, make sure they are prepared, etc. All that comes from the nominator.

I would expect the nominator to be the person who plans to moderate the panel. She is the panel’s leader even if not the moderator, and she will do all the stuff required to make the panel a success. Since she will also promote the panel during the voting stage, she’s taking responsibility ahead of time. If the panel sucks or screws up, she is the one everyone will associate with the panel.

There are some nuances to the nomination process I’ll talk about below.

Popular knowledge

Because people voted for a panel, you have an idea how popular it is going to be. This helps with scheduling rooms because you know which panels need big rooms and which ones don’t. You can also prepare for the crowds and distribute really popular panels over the days of the con.

Drives Traffic to Con Site

The nominator becomes invested in her panel. Not only is she responsible for its success during the con, she has to get it in the con in the first place. To do this she has to encourage all their followers to support the nomination. This sends people the con website (traffic yeah!), where they will learn more about the con and other nominated panels.

Once the nominations are in, our nominator must get people not only to vote for her panel, but to sign up for the con in advance. (Yeah, pre sales! Yeah, more traffic!)

Nuances

No system or idea is perfect and a panel picker won’t fix all problems. Here are a few things I’ve thought of.

No Dream Panels

You can’t let people just nominate random panels that they can’t make happen, so here are few rules.

1. The nominator must already be registered for the con. Before she can nominate, she has to commit to being there.

2. If a panel gets nominated, all of the panelist must be registered for the con. I’m sure some people, particularly authors, would receive complimentary registrations. Everyone who going to be on the panel must commit to coming. This also ensures the nominator isn’t just hoping there dream panelists will be there.

Just because a lot of people vote for it doesn’t make it good.

People are going to try and game the system. They might want an obnoxious panel to be nominated just to yank other fan’s chains. Someone might have a strong following, but not be a good moderator.

The program director and committee will still have a chance to influence which panels get picked. This would happen mainly between the nomination and voting rounds, but could happen after as well.

Small can be good.

Just because a panel doesn’t get very many seconds to its nomination, doesn’t mean it isn’t something people might be interested in. The Program Director can move any nomination to the voting round they want.

Also not every room at a con is big. You may want smaller panels to fill the smaller rooms. This might mean when it comes to put panels in rooms, you don’t have enough rooms for very popular panels, and decide to add ones with less votes.

Just Cuz They Said They Would Do it…

Even with all of this process, some people will no show. Or their panel will be dumb and not live up to the copy. But the truth is that happens with the top down approach too. We’re not really any worse off.

I’d love to hear other people’s suggestion for problems that should be addressed. Leave a comment below.