A panel is not the problem. The moderator is.

distinction — attributed to James Lancaster

The events industry keeps declaring panels obsolete and replacing them with workshops, labs, and interactive formats. The diagnosis is wrong. There is nothing inherently broken about a panel. What collapses a panel is a moderator who lets speakers deliver prepared remarks instead of building tension and asking the difficult questions.

Lancaster pushes back on the constant reinvention of formats. The format is rarely the bottleneck — the chair is.

panels, moderation, format-design, facilitation