We just completed our first AMA in the Global Legal Empowerment Network, and it went very well! Everyone was very disciplined and followed the guidelines. I only had to delete a few “thanks for the answer” replies. The answerer felt compelled to ask himself a question that he really wanted to answer, which was a new one but we let it slide. 
Now we have an excellent topic in the forum containing a wealth of information.
One important thing I noticed is that you have to disable the “remove full quote” admin setting during the AMA because otherwise the answerer’s quoting will be removed.
The process we followed is below - if anyone has any feedback on it let me know because we’ll want to do more AMAs in the future. We used a PM with the answerer to manage it, which was also a helpful place to coordinate before, during and after the AMA forum event.
click to expand
Hi [name]!
Thanks for agreeing to do an AMA with us. I am really looking forward to collaborating with you on this and seeing what happens!
Let’s use this personal message to keep in touch and make plans before, during and after the event. You can also use it to practice using the forum functionality - feel free to post here as much as you like.
Read on for background info on AMAs, a proposed planning checklist for us, and some examples and tips from others who have done AMAs using our forum software. If you want to do things differently or have thoughts on improvements, just let me know!
The first step is for you to draft the texts - I am happy to contribute once you’ve made a start. Maybe easiest if you do it in a google doc and share it with us here?
Cheers,
Tobias
What’s an AMA? 
Ask Me Anything (AMA) is a phenomenon started on Reddit, where famous people make themselves available for a time for live, interactive questions and answers with reddit members. The forum is a great place to host an AMA to engage with our community. AMAs complement nicely with Forum Friday, online events and other engagement tactics.
Planning Checklist
In the checklist below, the OP is you! 
OP means Original Poster in forum speak and means you are the author of the AMA topic and the famous person people will be coming to ask questions to. The moderator is me in this case. I will be leading this activity on our end, with support from other members of the network team.
- OP, moderator schedule AMA date and time
- OP, moderator draft and agree on AMA texts (see below) in advance.
- As required: OP and moderator schedule brief planning/training session just before the AMA to iron out any final details and confirm OP knows how to use forum, has enabled browser notifications, can quote reply directly to questions to keep AMA topic structured, etc. We can also practice here in this planning topic.
- OP announces the AMA on the forum 7 days in advance
- OP, moderator inform colleagues and specific members likely especially interested in asking questions
- OP, moderator promote AMA on social media at regular intervals before, during and after
- OP creates AMA topic at the scheduled day and time
- moderator pins topic globally
- OP actively monitors topic, directly answers questions as they come in
- moderator also monitors topic, adds encouraging messages, seeded questions, moderates as needed
- OP writes wrap up reply at scheduled end time. Moderator closes topic to replies.
Texts to write in advance
Announcement topic to post 7 days ahead
example: The February 2015 WPChat AMA guest is lined up - Meta - WordPress Chat
Social media posts
We will share on twitter and facebook at regular intervals a week before, day before and the day of the AMA event. You’re welcome to do the same.
AMA topic itself
Introduce yourself, frame any topic boundaries you’d like to be asked about
Moderator will add instructions at the bottom
- Please only ask one question by replying to this topic a single time, using the blue Reply button at the bottom. It’s also helpful to scroll to the bottom while
reading the topic to make sure nobody else has asked the same question first, before you ask… right?
- Please don’t ask more than one question, so everyone gets a chance
- Please do not reply to anyone else’s post. The only purpose of replies here in this topic is to ask the author one question. If you’d like to discuss a related topic in more detail, create a new topic.
Posts not following these guidelines may be removed by moderators to keep the Q&A flowing smoothly. Thank you!
Seeded questions
Questions you would like to be asked. We can distribute these among colleagues to make sure the convo keeps going and you are kept busy
Two other items for follow-up:
- our site got busy during the AMA and folks got “extreme load” notifications. Have to revisit that and find out what’s going on with our server. Discussed at How serious is "site is under extreme load, search is disabled, try again later"
- is there a way to provide a link in a topic to compose a new pre-filled topic while remaining in the topic? That would be great so that people can start linked topics to continue the conversation, without having to leave to start the new topic and then come back to quote reply.
- example - click this link to start a topic - works but you are thrown out of the topic.