hey @ronne sorry to hear about the imposter feelings! that sucks.

I'm not sure if it helps, but I can tell you how I think about this:

First, the moderator maybe doesn't need to be super knowledgeable, just bring some good questions and make sure the speaking time is shared fairly. Perhaps you can draft some questions now and develop them with the feedback of some people here on SSB?>

Maybe it is interesting to use a digital tool like Slido to crowdsource and rank questions from the audience? That way you can exemplify a different, tech-driven approach to power, within the lived experience of the podium.

I know this is only tangentially related but I wrote this blog about power dynamics in teams, maybe it will stimulate some useful thoughts for you :)

I would ask @Emmi and @dan hassan for their suggestions.

@ronne I wonder if you can get the conversation close to people's personal experiences? I notice the most engaging conversations for me are the ones where there's some real vulnerability in the room. It sucks if this vulnerability is only being shared by some marginalised person who's vulnerability is being instrumentalised for the education of all the other participants. So I'm wondering if there is a way to invite everyone to share a little bit of their vulnerable personal experience with power in tech?

You can ask for feelings, ask for stories, use your curiosity to get a little deeper into the conversation: *when you said X, can you tell me more about how that felt?', or 'do you have a recent example from your life you can share?'. If you see someone nodding strongly or making mmmmhmmm noises you can ask them if they want to share what's going on for them.

Other things you can do to break the infinite-monologue dynamic: silence! As a moderator you can make silence normal, invite people to take a few moments to be mindful and quiet before jumping to the next thing, leave space for processing and noticing what is coming up. Conferences are often over stimulating so it is a relief to have a relaxing moment of quiet time.

Also in a big conference I have used a rough version of 1-2-4-all to get audience participation. Like:

• you pose a question/provocation to the audience
• everyone reflects quietly on their own for 1 minute
• then pair up with a neighbour to share for 2 minutes (maybe: is there something you 2 have in common? or interesting points of difference?)
• then the pairs pair up into a group of 4 and they share for 4 minutes. They can be looking for shared understanding, or just hearing what kind of different responses everyone has.
• Then in the final phase, you can move a microphone through the room and hear from some of the groups of 4.

It kinda sorta worked pretty well in a conference auditorium: pair up with your neighbour, then talk to a pair that is in front of or behind you.

Maybe you can also get consent from the audience or the panel to help people to not take up too much time on the mic? Sometimes when I'm moderating, at the start of a session like this I will ask for permission like, sometimes I go on too long because I'm very enthusiastic about a topic, and then later I feel embarrassed for talking too much and not leaving space for others, so I really like it when there's a moderator who can give me a signal to wrap it up. Are people comfortable if I use [some hand gesture] to indicate 'wrap it up'?

Also in content terms: I recommend reading this zine on Consentful Tech: %ZMz3KaU...