---
title: "protip: How to have a very good panel debate at your conference"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2012/9/14/protip-how-to-have-a-very-good-panel-debate-at-your-conferen.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2012/9/14/protip-how-to-have-a-very-good-panel-debate-at-your-conferen.html"
published: "2012-09-14T09:44:50"
updated: "2012-09-14T09:44:50"
tags: ["javazone"]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "I was part of this panel about “making the programming pain stop” along with Kevlin Henney and others. It was such fun! One of the things that helped it succeed was the fact that Johannes (the panel moderator) asked the…"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# protip: How to have a very good panel debate at your conference

By Roy Osherove September 14, 2012

**Historical article** · Originally published September 14, 2012; technical details may be outdated.

I was part of [this panel about “making the programming pain stop”](https://vimeo.com/49368449) along with [Kevlin Henney](http://curbralan.com/) and others. It was such fun!

![](https://osherove.com/img/sq/1000w-IMG_4725.JPG)

One of the things that helped it succeed was the fact that [Johannes (the panel moderator)](http://johannesbrodwall.com/) asked the panelists to meet together an hour before the panel started and to start discussing interesting questions together.

Banter started as we got to know each other and when we finally got on stage it was just… fun. People were less shy to speak and tackle each other and overall feeling of “flow” had started.

- [#javazone](https://osherove.com/blog/tag/javazone)


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

### Social

- X: https://x.com/royosherove
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/

### Contact

- Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7

### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/