If you were designing an interactive experience where people got to ask an expert questions about what she'd just taught them, what would you aim to achieve? How would you structure it? I imagine you would curate that conversation in some way, and try to maximize the benefit for all the participants, not just those who could come up with a question or comment fastest, or who wanted help with their very specific problem.

Right now, when speakers give talks at tech conferences, we mostly muff this part. Even really good presentations dissolve into poor question-and-answer sessions, where we waste time with nitpicking, rants, homework help, thoughtlessness, and all the predictable outcomes of an untrammeled glibocracy. I myself have been guilty of this.

But we can fix this.

A good Q&A requires work from the audience, the speaker, and the moderator. Yes, you should have a moderator. The speaker's concentrating on answering the questions in front of her; don't try to add time assessment and question flow management to that job as well. As is so often the case,* WisCon has already written up best practices for a moderator, including a script for responding to "This is more of a comment than a question". And yes, you are authorized and have permission to moderate discussions. Everyone else will be grateful.

Mary Robinette Kowal offers seven useful tips for speakers on structuring their talks and Q&A sessions to maximize interest and usefulness. I especially endorse her suggestions on signposting, transitions, planting question-seeds, and answering with specificity.

And the audience - well, that's all of us, including me. I can try to think of good questions, and refrain from asking bad questions.

Some bad questions demean the speaker, perhaps by asking "have you tried this super obvious thing" or, worse, recommending the obvious thing (happened throughout that Q&A); or by implying the speaker stole your code (video). Some bad questions disrespect the audience, by hogging the Q&A time to get an answer only relevant to one person, or by grandstanding.

Good questions and comments are like good fanfic; they delightfully expand the conversation with ideas that initially surprise everyone else, but immediately make sense given our shared context. I might ask for more detail on a speaker's process or future plans, make relevant, nonobvious critiques, or recommend relevant, nonobvious resources. I also sometimes make a note of a question to ask the speaker later, in conversation, or of a link to send her.

A bad Q&A, like conference calls or driving in city traffic, is the opposite of meditation. It sucks the energy out of the room, taking dozens of people's time without returning on that investment. Let's get better.

* WisCon has a member assistance fund, very participatory programming creation and signup, a newsletter that helps attendees prep and see how to volunteer, and amazing universal access, including a Quiet Room and ingredient lists on food. And they run a "how to moderate a panel" metapanel early in the conference to help new mods, and a set of first-timer icebreaker dinners the first night. Basically, if you're running a conference, WisCon has best practices you can learn from.

Thanks to Julie Pagano for a conversation that led to me writing this!