Recently, I was a presenter on a panel consisting of three other women entrepreneurs. It gave me a chance to revisit the potential power of panel presentations. Whether you are a presenter and/or a meeting planner and/or program coordinator, consider using the idea of a panel for your next presentation. It takes some extra organization and work, but I think you will find that it is well worth the time.

Start by picking a theme that will be timely for your niche audience. The reason our panel consisted of women was that the event, called an IT (Information Technology) Tea was one in a series of presentations put on by a local technology publication that has been working to bring together women involved in the technology field. The theme for our presentation was Doing It Her Way and involved women entrepreneurs working with IT. Therefore, the attendees were all receptive to our topics and what we had to offer. Good listeners that hang on almost every word are a speakers dream.

Pick panel members with forethought. The meeting planners had obviously chosen our panel with many criteria in mind. Even though we all had the common thread of entrepreneurship and IT, we each had different types of companies, different backgrounds, age differences and different approaches to business.

We did, however, have other qualities in common that were obvious. All are passionate about what we are accomplishing and love talking about it. We were all interested in each other (none of us had met before) and no one tried to dominate the discussion. We could all laugh at ourselves and yet be serious about our directions. I feel that it was obvious to the audience that we were enjoying the afternoon as much as they were.

Prepare, prepare, prepare. Organize, organize, organize. It is my firm belief that the success of a panel undertaking depends upon prior preparation. The woman who pulled our presentation together told us to the minute when and how long we would be speaking. She wrote the introductions and sample questions for the moderator and made copies of everything for each of us. She had an excellent sound system set up with an extra microphone for the audience, and when we got to the Question and Answer part (with sufficient time set aside for this portion of the presentation), she had planted a few questions with audience members to get the ball rolling which it did.

Youve been asked to be part of a panel, so how do you prepare? Yes, even though as a panel participant you dont know for sure what the other panelists are going to say, or what questions will be asked, it is as important, as always, to be prepared. We were fortunate because we had timelines and biographies of the other panelists beforehand. But we had no idea about what or how the others would speak. Each of us brought notes and had a strong opening and closing statement (sort of a motto for our lives and our businesses).

Because you are not the only show, be ready to have fun with the other panelists and be flexible enough to change parts of what you might have said to balance the whole presentation. Each of us made it plain to the others and the audience that we felt honored to be asked to be part of this panel and we all took the opportunity to work together to make the afternoon worthwhile for everyone.

Thats a successful panel!