Roundtable & Salon

A moderated discussion among practitioners rather than a dinner among executives. Different room, different value, different rules. It builds technical credibility and champions, and it produces the best content you will get anywhere.

When to use

• You need credibility with the people who evaluate, not the people who sign
• A technical leader is the right host rather than a commercial one
• A topic is genuinely contested and practitioners want to compare notes
• Content is a real objective alongside relationships

Inputs

• Reads: workspace/audience/target-list.csv, workspace/program/charter.md
• Needs from user: the host, the topic, the practitioner audience, whether it is on or off the record, and the venue

Workflow

1. Set the shape

2. Choose a topic that is genuinely contested

The test: could two smart practitioners in the room disagree about this? If not, it is a briefing and it will be flat.

Good topics have a real tension: build against buy, the thing everyone claims to do that almost nobody does, what a regulator or auditor actually asks for, why the standard approach fails at scale, what separated the projects that survived.

Bad topics: your product category as a subject, "the future of X", anything where the correct answer is obviously your product.

3. Set the ground rules and say them out loud

• Chatham House Rule where candor matters: what is said can be used, who said it cannot. State it at the start, and honor it afterward including in your own content
• No recording, unless everyone agrees in advance and in the room
• No selling. Say it explicitly at the open. It lowers the guard immediately
• Phones down, asked once, gently

Saying these aloud at the start is what produces the candor. People assume the opposite by default.

4. Design the discussion

Not an agenda. A path:

• Opening round. Everyone says their name, role, and one sentence on where they are with the topic. This alone makes the rest work, because everyone has spoken once
• Three to four discussion anchors, sequenced from concrete to contested
• A specific question in reserve for the moment the room goes quiet
• Closing round. One thing each person is taking away. Also the best content capture of the session

Brief the moderator: pull in the quiet ones by name, cut off anyone dominating after their second long turn, and never let it become a two-person debate.

5. Plan the content before the session

The content yield is a real part of the return, and it evaporates without a plan.

• Assign a notetaker who is not the moderator or the host
• Capture themes and quotable formulations rather than a transcript
• Under Chatham House Rule, everything publishes unattributed. Say so in the room so people know what to expect
• Expect two to four assets: a written summary, a set of social posts, and frequently one genuinely good idea that becomes a longer piece

Get permission on the spot if something is worth quoting with attribution. Asking in the room is easy and asking three weeks later is awkward.

6. Follow up as a peer, not a vendor

Within 48 hours: a note from the host with the themes, the notes, and anything promised in the room. No product. The commercial conversation follows separately, from the account owner, a week later, and it references something the person actually said.

7. Make it a series if it works

Practitioner roundtables compound. The same group reconvened quarterly becomes a genuine peer community, and being the convener of that community is worth more than any single session. Ask at the end whether people want the next one, and let them shape the topic.

Output

• Writes: workspace/events/<event>/roundtable-plan.md with the shape, topic, ground rules, discussion path, moderator brief, and content plan
• Prints: the discussion path, moderator brief, ground rules script, content capture plan, and the follow-up sequence

Rules & quality bar

• The topic has to be genuinely contested
• Ground rules stated out loud at the open
• Chatham House Rule is honored in your own content, including social
• Opening round always. Everyone speaks in the first ten minutes
• No selling in the room. The commercial follow-up is separate and later
• A notetaker who is not the moderator
• Attribution permission asked in the room, not afterward
• Above 25 people, split it or change the format

Related skills

• Reads: audience-machine, invite-motion
• Pairs with: event-content (the assets), venue-selection
• Feeds: event-followup