When you’re preparing for a panel discussion, one of the things you usually do is have a pre-meeting with all of the participants. The purpose of this meeting is, of course, to get to know everyone and decide on what you’re going to talk about. Everything then gets buttoned up and you have the actual panel.

But one of the things I’ve been feeling lately is that oftentimes the pre-meeting is more interesting than the actual panel. And that’s because everyone is more relaxed and everyone is engaged in a genuine discussion that hasn’t been pre-meditated. Nobody wants to hear boring and overly-scripted answers. Natural and free-flowing discussions are so much more engaging.

So I’m going to try and keep this in mind and not put on a sucky panel next week at the land & development conference (which, by the way, will be in person). I’m moderating a panel on innovations in project design, delivery, and building operations. If you’d like to join, you can register over here.