My First Moderating Experience

The UNAOC reports and diary are still scripted and not ready yet to be published on here, thanks to my lack of management skill to tackle piled up paperwork and being a single sister raising two loud young brothers (Wait… Don’t look at me like that! I love them!). But! The UNAOC was the reason I said yes to the following opportunity: moderating a bilingual talk show. 

Being an awkward social being as I am, I’ve always hated talking in front of people, let alone moderating a formal event. It never went through my mind. Nope. Nada. But the effect of the global forum filled through my blood and brain. Since coming back from Bali, and confirming a lot of new friend requests from all around the world, then seeing updates of my new friends’ influential activities, I’ve oftentimes found myself thinking,
“Okay. So what am I doing here?”

“Oh, I went shopping with this girl! Wait, she’s a famous MTV presenter and youth activist?!”

“This man is… Whaaat??”

“My roommate was whooo??”

“Why couldn’t they put a big board of their achievements when we were in Bali so I could ask for their signatures?!”

(Well, I was joking on the last one. A little bit. Okay, I was honest.)

The point is… I constantly asked myself and felt insecure about my contribution to society. Though, I am working in a school which is already a great place to make changes, but the opportunity and idea sometimes worked differently in your head that makes you keep questioning, “Am I really contributing positively for a greater cause?”

So, two days after coming back from Bali, a colleague offered me the moderator chair for a talk show they soon would conduct in my school. The talk show itself was mainly about how the acquisition of foreign language could accelerate the development of your future career. We had two source persons for the event. 

For Arabic, there was a Syeikh from Egypt. Honestly, I had zero understanding of his explanation. I didn’t understand a single word he said, but it must be very insightful for the Arabic-understanding audience. For English, we had Jennifer Zirbes, a guest lecturer in Andalas University, Padang. She’s originally from Utah and worked in Panama. I was extremely thankful because she had Power Point file for her presentation that day. I didn’t have to write anything down like a poker face note-taker, but I wrote just tiny things to sum up Q&A session. Jennifer got way more questions from the audience that the Arabic moderator had to inform me about the time limit. My bad, I had no idea a moderator had to stick to the time rule (besides, they didn’t inform me about it – self defense much, Ainun? :-p ).

I am the girl in black, with Jennifer on my left and the Syeikh on my right. Beside Jennifer is the awesome Bu Zizi, the head of the institution I am working at.

After the event ended, we had to wait for the car because the driver had to take the Syeikh to Bukit Tinggi first then Jennifer to Unand’s guest house at Padang. I had a very lovely and interesting conversation with Jennifer while waiting for the car, and also on the 2-hour drive to Padang. I bet Mamel also had a great time exercising her English by having a conversation directly with a native speaker. The highlight of my day was not only my first moderating experience which I conclude was great (at least that’s what Jennifer told me), but also the conversation I had with Jennifer. Being a literature student herself and Master degree holder in education, I think we have things in common about way of thinking. We both like reading literature, glad that we took literature as our major, and agree that literature can’t really promise anyone any amazing money-flowing job, but it sure was worth it for the perspective we ended up having. 

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Lesson Time!!

I highlighted several very interesting points Jennifer, the English source person, made during her presentation. The post is quite long so I wrote it in separated post. Read here.

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On Being A Good Moderator

Thanks to the internet, I found several sources I could autonomously learned from to get myself ready as a good moderator. These are some points I highlighted:

Regarding preparation

As for the event, the only preparation I had to do was: asking the speaker’s short data few minutes before the discussion started. Yep, I am the worst. Do not try this, folks. First, you need to make sure you have few words to tell your audience how awesome the opportunity is, of being present there, which obviously include the track records of the speakers. You also need to make sure that the speaker has clear understanding on what the discussion would be about. So, discussions beforehand are a must. P.S.: you can read good articles online (like I did) on how to moderate, and even watch Youtube videos. Internet is awesome, ain’t it? :)

Be neutral

“As a moderator, you are not supposed to participate in the discussion or share your own views, but to be an objective, impartial voice. If you have a lot of things to say, then you should be part of the panel, and not the moderator.” I learned from seeing other people do things awesomely, and for this part, I learned from my experience attending UNAOC forum where I met an incredible moderator who successfully turned a slightly boring speech into fun and interesting one. One of his methods was to give short conclusion, carefully spoken in order not to put any personal perspective, of the currently finished speech. So, I did the same thing. 

Keep it simple

In my case, the talk show was not a highly formal or serious one. It was basically just two experienced source persons presenting their ideas about foreign language acquisition. But because the talk show was held only in Arabic and English, it turned out to be way more serious than it should. I perfectly understood the common level of foreign language the audience had, so I did my best to make sure the audience understood the answer to their questions. Other parts of the talk show, Jennifer did a really good job by talking slowly and using face expressions to attract their attention. Hands down to this awesome woman. 

Be  timely

It is highly important to keep the conversation on track (time and focus). This was my mistake, I admit. The English discussion went very interesting than I expected, and I did not think for a second that we had limited time. The session must end with two people raising their hands for questioning but I had to reject. My lesson: the previous questioners could be interrupted when they delivered their question. I could try to rephrase what they were trying to say into a shorter sentence and then gave the floor to the source person to answer.

Jennifer doing her thing to 'wake up' the bored audience :)

Be fun

The ability to turn a boring situation into an interesting one is extremely important. As a moderator, you need to make sure both the panelist and the audience have an insightful discussion. This would not happen if you could see boring and sleepy people among your audience, or panelists. I didn’t encounter this problem though, but I learned this lesson when I was in Bali for the forum. I was among the audience. I got super bored and sleepy because of the hectic activities in the previous day. The moderator did marvelous job to keep my eyes open, and I believe others’ too.