Recently I had the opportunity to moderate a session at the Society of Clinical Data Manager’s 25th annual conference. I had four amazing speakers all talking about different aspects of artificial intelligence, data management and data visualization. Our session was in the afternoon of the second day. This meant everyone had been listening to several great sessions before ours. Like ours, most sessions focused on the future of our industry and cutting edge technologies that were going to shape the world in which we work. Some of the information certainly was above some of our heads, but most of it was information we needed to be aware of and embrace. Yet I could tell that there were lots of people with questions that had gone unanswered.

Ever sit in a conference soaking in information about the future of your industry and have a million questions run through your head yet at the time Q&A begins not a single question comes to mind? Or perhaps you do have questions, but don’t think you should waste other people’s time by asking your questions? After all, your questions stand between everyone and break time. Right?

Think again. It is important to ask those questions. It doesn’t matter how simple the question is or if you think it is going to show your lack of knowledge in front of your peers. I can guarantee you that they have the same question – at least half of the room does. So grab the microphone and ask.

As the moderator, when it came time for Q&A, there were only a couple of questions and more than 20 minutes available, so I truly appreciate getting questions from the audience. So if you are the moderator and no one is asking questions, what do you do?

That’s right, you get to ask the questions. That is exactly what I did. Since I had sat through other conversations about AI, machine learning, data science and data management’s future, I knew there were a lot of questions that had been left unanswered. So, I asked some questions. Some of these were simple questions such as “We have heard from many speakers over the past few days about AI, ML and data sciences and how it is going to affect our future, but as a data manager, what skills do I need to learn about these, where can I go get these skills and how do I get started?” I also asked a scenario question, “After this conference, I have to go back to my manager and let her know what I learned. I heard a lot about AI and ML but I know that no one at my company knows anything about it. How do I start the conversation? How to I make a business case for investing in learning about AI and ML when I am a novice at this too?”

You should have seen the heads nodding when I was asking the questions. more than half the room was nodding their head. Everyone wants to know:

• How do I learn to be an expert like you?
• What is the roadmap to develop the skills needed to grow in the direction you are talking about?
• How do I gain the skills to help me succeed at doing what you propose?
• How can I leverage this knowledge and opportunity to advance my career?

When you don’t just come out and ask those question, but put them into a story-telling context like I did you connect more with the audience. In the first example, I added the context of all of us hearing a variety of speakers on the topics while on the second one I took a more personal approach. The first example brought the group all together by giving us a common experience while the second example told a story from the point of view of a person to whom we could all relate. These made the questions so much more powerful and personal by connecting and drawing the audience in.

Here is another example, “We have heard several sessions talking about data managers becoming data scientists. I am not a programmer. I do understand statistics and can see how I could be a citizen data scientist, but what recommendations do you have for me to help me acquire the knowledge to become a data scientist. Are there any courses or books you recommend?” In this one I put myself in other people’s shoes and speak what they are thinking. I do happen to be a programmer and already consider myself a data scientist and a subject matter expert in clinical research among other things. I am embodying the group think into the questions I ask and am framing them to provide a common knowledge point from which the question should be answered; another way to say this is I am walking in the audience’s shoes.

As a moderator it is important to think about and prepare for the Q&A session of the meeting. Q&A provides an excellent opportunity to highlight the key points to the audience. It allows you to help them feel more invested in the conversation and can help unite a group. You might have noticed that I drew from outside of this presentation and connected it to the experience of the whole conference. I do that because I believe the session does not exist in a vacuum but instead is the part of a whole ecosystem that is our experience. Certainly, it is best if the audience asks questions and engages, but it is even more important to be prepared for if they don’t.

Frame questions with a story-telling or unifying background that will help connect the audience with the questions being asked. Then ask the questions that you know are on the audience’s mind.

Dr. Karina

When thinking about what questions to ask, consider the skill level and experience of the audience. Most of them are likely to be early in their career or early in the industry. Asking some of the questions that will help them clarify and connect with what was said will help them have clearer take home messages from the conference session. Be sure to also ask a question that might be asked by a mid-career attendee. That will help everyone understand additional details and key information. I generally avoid questions that would be asked by late career attendees because they tend to be complex, technical, have long answers and lose the majority of the attendees. Not that there aren’t some excellent questions, but as a moderator you have to keep the audience as a whole in mind.

You might be surprised like I was when you get approached at the end of the session by people thanking you for asking the questions. They recognize the thought that went into trying to put yourself in their shoes and asking the questions they might have asked. Most importantly, you can walk away with the knowledge that you verbalized the questions that represented the thoughts of the group and drove home some key information even though you were not the main speaker.