Moderating Meetings

We call those individuals "facilitators" to distinguish them from "moderators" that one finds in panels.

Beyond “try to enforce the speaker guidelines", here are specific suggestions:

• Recognize commenters who have not been heard from or who are most likely to move the conversation forward.
• Intervene to clarify a point a speaker/commenter makes that may not be widely understood by the audience.
• End exchanges that get overly emotional/personal.
• Try to identify points on which there is consensus.
• Use show of hands/straw polls/humming/whatever to assess the distribution of opinion on more contentious topics at the end of a discussion.
• Make sure the next step and outcome of the conversation is synthesized explicitly to the audience in the end of the session
• If a session promised or implied time for questions or audience dialog, make sure there is time for that dialog or those questions
• Try to stop 'speeches from the microphone', long introductions to questions; ask them to get to the question
• Be clear whether queue management is in IRC, by standing at the microphone, or both, and if both, be fair between them
• Watch the IRC for problems the audience is having (e.g. questions about idioms or acronyms, speaking speed)