It’s fun to be always on the other side of the table ! Setting the context right away , so far in the capacity of SMCPune , I had organised Panel Discussions , but to be one of the panellists that was one of the task in itself.I can assume the anxiety of a teacher as in what questions the student will ask !!
This panel discussion was a part of the “mAGnify initiative “ which is an internal knowledge share session TCS organizes on items of interest to the IT/banking and financial services community, across locations where they have such tech/BFS presence.  As part of this initiative they planned to hold a panel discussion on "Social Media & its Impact on IT & Banking & Financial Services" in Pune on June 21. 
Panel Discussion Themes:   

• Social media - harnessing and monetising social data
• Leveraging social media for your customer - filtering relevant customer data and ways of measuring them 
• Relevance of social media data for the financial services industry
• Using social media sentiment analysis for driving business strategies 
• Case studies of best practices by brands who have used social media to grow their business 
• How firms like TCS can empower themselves using social media

There were four panellists :

R Krishnan : Vice President , Banking Industry Services,TCS

Dr. Ajay Kolhatkar : Senior Practice Consultant , Tata Management Training Centre

Mandar Raje : TCS

Shikha Pakhide : Co-Founder SMCPune Chapter

Obviously the entire essence of the discussion cannot be captured , but here are few points which emerged and were discussed :

• What is the difference between Social Network and Social Media
• Way before Social Media came into being , Alcoholic Anonymous is one such revolution which started in 1935 ! So man is a social animal and social media is “ not a new concept “
• Why do Banks / financial institutions shy away from this open medium ? Complianceo Obsession with Technologyo Security
• And why users are hesitant to use this medium :o Sense of insecurity / fear to share important financial data online
• Social Media forces Banks / financial institutions to achieveo Operational efficiencyo Service Level expectations
• Banks are “ little laggards” in adapting to new interactive mediums
• What is crowd sourcing movement
• Slowly organisations will understand “ value of information “ being exchanged over these platforms
• SM is one of the de facto service channel for many organisations
• Primarily discussions was focused on users what about organisations internal client i.e. their employees. What is the importance of Social Enterprise for Employers
• How can Social Media be leveraged for a wealth managed customer who is naive about this technology ?
• How can we prevent abuse of Social Media
• Every organisation wants to do / venture into Social Media
• What are the negative shades of Social Media
• What do panelists have to express on Social Networks site access not allowed in many of the organisations
• What are the three opportunities for companies like TCS to leverage from Social Media
• Are forums still existing ? If yes do they pose a threat to other popular social network site
• As an individual should I make my presence felt on social sites so that in case if I have to register any complaint / raise an issue with any service provider , they will make an effort to reply to it.

Post Panel Discussion feedback :

Dr.Ajay Kolhatkar : Thanks Krish for the humour and sharing your experiences. Ganesh, your attempts, as a moderator, to qualify questions created the right atmosphere in the session. I enjoyed the session and sincerely hope the audience did too.I guess time was a constraint yet again and the questions could not flow through adequately. But surely not making presentations helped.I look forward to such interactions in the future too.
Mandar Raje : I think, based on the audience' interest, we had a good panel discussion. Krish definitely made it interesting with his insights and impromptu humour :) Looking forward to meeting you all in future.
Sukanya Patwardhan (Senior Practice Consultant):I echo everyone’s feelings.It was a worthwhile experience for me.
Swarna Sudha S (Learning & Development Lead ) : I just had a quick glimpse of the dip stick survey that we did. Feedback has been positive. Thanks to all of you for making this successful. 
It’s always a worthwhile experience to exchange views with learned and experienced folks and I came back enriched

Click here for pictures from the event