Panel discussion

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Along with computer-based training and continuing professional development, the panel discussion — jammed between workshops at an all-day conference as cheap filler, like those dreary Inside Africa fillers that run on a loop on CNN international for business hostages of the Airport Hilton in Bucharest — is one of the great blights of a corporate life quite overwhelmed with them. This is not to say the keynote sessions either side are a whole lot better, but hearing an assembly of junior partners, industry association counsel and random change management consultants mumble about the impact on market stability of trade and/or transa —

Sorry where was I?

As we move into the millennium's second decade a whole new genre of career has hoved into view through the oily midwifery of LinkedIn: the panel discusser. These are people who, by all appearances, spend their working lives attending, moderating or speaking on panel discussions. No topic is too arcane, no facet of the regulatory landscape too dreary, no selfie with fellow-panel members too prostrating of one’s self-esteem to be beyond the siren call to these men and women.

Now, for a junior partner in an offshore law firm this might be a quick way of burnishing credentials and profile-building amongst that electrifying community of corporate agency and trust services professionals.

But for the middling executive director in an in-house legal function — let alone one the Legal COO team — it's harder to understand who regularly lets them out, for that matter pays them, or why.

Do as I say, folks

The JC was meant to appear in a panel discussion recently on the topic “compliance challenges of reg tech” — a topic about which he knows, and cares, very little. As it happens, he clean forgot to go – neatly illustrating the “compliance challenges of meatware”, a subject about with which he is a lot more expert.

The panel selfie

Don’t pass up the chance post a selfie to LinkedIn with your co-panellists turning awkwardly on a low stage in front of thirty bored associate directors, with “great panel discussion today about the EMIR refit!”

What do they have in mind? Do they imagine their network to be flooded with envy, or jealousy, or remorse at the sparkling debate it now discovers it has missed?

See also

• LinkedIn
• LinkedIn influencer’s advice on how to hold a great panel discussion I mean shoot me.
• More LinkedIn Influencer advice on how to hold a great panel discussion
• Yet more LinkedIn Influencer advice on how to hold a great panel discussion
• You’re not going to believe this, but here is some more LinkedIn Influencer advice on how to hold a great panel discussion
• Continuing professional development
• Computer based training