The way we get around this is to designate a chair or moderator for each panel.
The panels always have moderators. It's complicated because sometimes it's the moderator who is doing the droning. I was at one convention in Montreal at which the moderator on a panel of three talked for twenty minutes of a scheduled hour about his unpublished novel. Which, if he were someone like George Martin would rewrite the rules for the audience, because Martin could probably talk to readers about his unpublished books for hours to great appreciation. But, it wasn't.
Sometimes the moderator is someone who is enormously polite and gentle, and they realize that the socially awkward droner is nervous and probably new, and they do not want to hurt their feelings or interrupt (which is rude), so they wait for an opening. Which fails to emerge.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2011-07-26 03:42 pm (UTC)The panels always have moderators. It's complicated because sometimes it's the moderator who is doing the droning. I was at one convention in Montreal at which the moderator on a panel of three talked for twenty minutes of a scheduled hour about his unpublished novel. Which, if he were someone like George Martin would rewrite the rules for the audience, because Martin could probably talk to readers about his unpublished books for hours to great appreciation. But, it wasn't.
Sometimes the moderator is someone who is enormously polite and gentle, and they realize that the socially awkward droner is nervous and probably new, and they do not want to hurt their feelings or interrupt (which is rude), so they wait for an opening. Which fails to emerge.