The conference session chair
QCMC is over and the physics entourage has moved on to the ICAP conference in Cairns or back home. Watching all those talks has prompted me to share my thoughts on chairing a conference session. Here they are:
1. Your Speakers
The job of a session chair is really not that hard. It therefore always puzzles me that some chairs don’t know who the speakers in their session are, how to pronounce their names and what they are talking about. So please – memorize the list of speakers and try to talk to them before the session starts. It’s a real bonus to know the title instead of awkwardly reading it off the first slide of the presentation. A particularly nice touch would be to actually introduce the speakers, i.e. where they are from, what they are working on, etc.
2. Question Time
When a presentation is over the chair usually prompts the audience for questions. If there aren’t any, you should try not to embarrass the speaker by repeatedly asking for questions, e.g.: “No questions? Really, no questions? Maybe you there, at the back? Ah, you were just scratching your nose. Well obviously, the talk was clear enough, haha.”.
Often, the chair will himself come up with a question to fill this dreaded silence from the audience. This is not bad as such, the chair is supposed to be an expert on the session topic after all. However, it should still be a relevant question, which may indeed have come up during the talk. Alternatively, many chairs invent token questions from the title and abstract of the respective talks but these can usually be spotted easily. Also, they can backfire pretty quickly, such as when the speaker doesn’t understand your question, asks you to clarify it and therefore exposes that you have no idea (as witnessed at QCMC). So – if you have a good question, ask it. Maybe even ask first, before referring to the audience. That might break the ice. If you don’t, just let it go, the next speaker will thank you for the extra 30 seconds.
Another unnecessary thing is to tell the audience that there is time for “one or two short questions”. A question may be short but the answer might not be. And please, don’t interrupt a discussion just because you’re one minute late and the coffee is waiting outside. It’s not the speaker’s fault that he came last in the session. There will always be more coffee and discussions is what a conferences are for.
3. The Equipment
Know how to use the presentation hardware. Usually, you will have tech support, but what if you don’t? It’s therefore a good idea to check with the speakers whether they have all tried out their talks, be it on the conference system or their own computer. Also, have a laser pointer ready if at all possible.
4. The Audience
Have you noticed that there is someone in the audience who will have a question, or rather a long and not very relevant comment, for every single speaker? It is within your rights to ignore him.
Finally, a request to the audience proper. Some speakers knowledge of the conference language does often not extend beyond giving their talk, which is actually quite a brave thing to do. If during the first question it becomes clear that they struggle to understand, please don’t go on torturing them.
These are my thoughts on the topic. A Google search has just unsurprisingly revealed to me that there are excellent guides for Session Chairs on the web. This one here for example.
The activity of a session chair is extremely not that hard. It in this way dependably confuses me that a few chairs don’t know who the speakers in their session are, the means by which to articulate their names and what they are discussing. So please – remember the rundown of speakers and endeavor to converse with them before the session begins. It’s a genuine reward to know the title rather than clumsily understanding it of the main slide of the introduction. An especially decent touch is really present the speakers, i.e. where they are from, what they are really going after, and so forth.