My first emcee job! I had been asked to moderate a session for the VNG (about 30 people) as part of a larger Foreign Ministry event. Very nice, a manageable first job! Ideally, before the smaller session started, I could 'check out' the emcee for the whole day and get a feel for the atmosphere.
It took place on the 11th floor above The Hague Central Station, and when I arrived, well on time, our room had been assigned at the very end of a long corridor; this was a half-open room (with no door) that contained exactly 30 chairs, however, there was only a minimal amount of room to move around at the front. And there were 5 flip charts blocking all the space (and yes, I had requested them myself... but in my head, of course, they were going to be set up in a large room and not queued up on the 'stage'). I was shocked! I had wanted the group to move and shift around a lot, to maintain a lot of energy in the group. How was I going to do that now?
In the end, the fact that it was a room that was open proved to be the solution. I simply used the lunch rooms next door (luckily it was after lunch, and no one was sitting there!). I put the flip charts there and walked around a lot myself once I had split up the group to work.
It was totally different from what I had imagined beforehand, but the conditions actually created a team feeling among the group, and we dealt with what we were given. What did go exactly as I had learned at the Masters in Moderation Workshop was The Non-Stop-Chatter. I didn't get much of a handle on her at first, but then I remembered how to approach this: wait for the person to take a breath and immediately follow up, paraphrase and move on to another participant. And it succeeded!
What did I learn? Specify more clearly the criteria the space must meet. The tricky thing in this case was that I was hired by an organisation, which in turn was organising a break-out session for another organisation, and this organisation had hired an external venue. In other words, my requests had gone past four people. Next time, I will try to make contact further down this communication chain, so there is less noise on the line. And I also won't forget to mention that I want a room with a door.
Evelien van Klaveren
