Conferences are rarely so organized, in my field. Lit pretty much just throws everyone in a room and says "go", and unless you submitted /as/ a panel you don't know your fellow speakers from Eve. So there's the 15-20 minute presentation from each, and then Q&A from the audience, which tends to be /really/ disorganized unless a moderator is provided... which is usually not the case unless you submitted a panel and brought your own. Literature: home of the incredibly self-centered. I do not recommend this approach.
I know some other fields consider the discussant position to be what you /use/ the big names for, because they have tenure and don't have to be scrambling to get research out there any more. In tech, I think you're right that either a big name or a newbie could be useful for that position, as long as the moderator knows that they're doing, but it might be nice to pilot this with the big names all as discussants--kind of like having a big name write the introduction to your book. Definitely pass the papers around to other panelists beforehand, not just the mod. Then people might have a chance of making connections between each other, even if they are on one of the "misc thrown together" panels.
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Date: 4 Apr 2014 12:43 am (UTC)I know some other fields consider the discussant position to be what you /use/ the big names for, because they have tenure and don't have to be scrambling to get research out there any more. In tech, I think you're right that either a big name or a newbie could be useful for that position, as long as the moderator knows that they're doing, but it might be nice to pilot this with the big names all as discussants--kind of like having a big name write the introduction to your book. Definitely pass the papers around to other panelists beforehand, not just the mod. Then people might have a chance of making connections between each other, even if they are on one of the "misc thrown together" panels.