The third day of eBay's convention kicked off with eBay executives on the hot seat. Conference attendees had an opportunity to ask questions of seven of eBay's top executives, including Meg Whitman, President and CEO.

Henry Gomez, eBay's VP of Corporate Communciations, inroduced the panel consisting of Bill Cobb, Sr. VP of Global marketing, Rajiv Dutta, Chief Financial Officer, Chris Hejelm, Sr. VP of Technology, Mike Jacobson, Sr. VP and General Counsel, Jeff Jordan, Sr. VP and General Manager of eBay.com, and Maynard Webb, eBay's Chief Technical Officer.

The session, called eBay Power Panel, kicked off with a video presentation. An emotional story of eBay users connecting was followed with a success story of an eBay seller. The video concluded with a surreal sequence in which eBay called itself "the people's most efficient and abundant marketplace," with a goal of "creating a global economic democracy" and ended with the tagline, "eBay: The People's Market."

Attendees had filled out cards with questions for the executive panel, and Gomez began reading the cards. The first question was, "Why aren't there icons for Power Buyers, we are compulsive buyers?" Bill Cobb fielded the question and called it a good idea.

Other questions had to do with checkout features, PayPal options, rewarding Powersellers for quality versus quantity, making new eBay employees use eBay, making the site safer, and providing eBay sellers with metrics and sales data.

At some points during the Q&A session, the audience broke into applause, such as when Whitman stated that she was committed to trying to make sales and performance information available to sellers.

One audience member said it seems that eBay employees have limited experience with eBay, and why not have new emplyees do eBay as a requirement. Bill Cobb said everyone in marketing is required to earn 10 feedback points. Meg agreed that all employees should trade on eBay every day, every week, and said that must go beyond the Marketing Department.

Cobb said the marketing group had instituted another rule that all employees in his group must engage an eBay Trading Assistant. "Trading Assistants" are experienced eBay users who sell items for others on a commission basis. eBay created the program in February.

Some of the questions were answered with standard eBay responses. When someone asked why it is difficult to get an answer from customer support, and that many large companies have live phone support, why not eBay, the room exploded with applause. eBay's Maynard Webb said that eBay has introduced chat capability. He failed to mention that the feature is only for help in using eBay features, and not with customer support issues. He also said that they are reviewing a phone support model, but the cost of such a plan must be weighed agains the high number of transactions with low values. "We are judiciously considering it," he said.

Attendance at the 9 o'clock Sunday session was less than half of the previous day's Keynote address. Today sessions and classes continue, and the exhibit hall remains open until 4 pm. The conference is being held at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California.