Are you doing the wrong thing with your guest Lib Dem speakers?
We were delighted to welcome Lib Dem President @markpack yesterday for a fascinating discussion about populism, social media, party structures, and his new book. Next week we will be making a trip to parliament to visit @wendychambLD and hear about life as a new MP. pic.twitter.com/IqtTOTIY0O
— Cambridge University Liberals (@CamUniLiberals) February 21, 2020
It may be a trend, a coincidence or something I’m just late to noticing. But I was really struck by how good the format of the events was when I’ve been to speak to two university Liberal Democrat societies since starting as Party President.
In both cases, rather than doing the usual speech followed by questions, the format was an interview. No speech to prepare. No speech to bore people with. No speech to go on too long and squeeze out questions from the audience. Just straight into an interview format with one person popping questions at me.
That format also means that when I said something interesting the questioner could dig into it and when I said something boring they could move on – much better for the audience than having to wait out the less good bits of speeches and wish for more from the best bits.
Likewise, the interviewer could bring in audience questions at different times through the event rather than having to wait all the way until the end.
If you are organising a Lib Dem speaker event too, I’d heartily recommend trying out this format. It’s a winner.
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Interesting article, yes I can see the logic in that being more interesting and engaging.
Sadly, Johnson (or any of his cronies) would never subject themselves to that kind of scrutiny.
Good to see the Lib Dems have much higher standards and don’t try to hide away from tough questions.
What about our dear Prime Minister doing something similar? (Ho, HO! Hell will freeze over first I suspect!)
I always felt that the strictly limited intro speech was essential, ie 5mins max, and then into questions..(and school and student audiences were always the most challenging and rewarding). The short intro can sometimes reveal interesting things about the speaker that the chair would not have found on a background search, but yes, this is a more dynamic approach, and anyway ‘background’ is not always as important as we think.