Chairs play an essential role in moderating panel sessions and ensuring their success. In addition to carefully monitoring the time allowed for presentations, chairs typically offer a brief welcome and moderate the Q&A discussion with the audience after the presentations.
- The chair should arrive early to ensure that all presenters are present and have loaded presentations onto the laptops provided in each conference meeting room in advance of each session.
- The chair is responsible for equitably dividing the presentation time among presenters. On a panel with 4 presenters each presenter should receive 12-15 minutes to present. Meeting rooms will include “5 minute warning” “1 minute warning” and “time” signs for the chair to use.
- The chair and presenters should decide among themselves whether (1) to take short questions immediately following each presentation, with some time left at the end for conversation across all the papers presented or (2) to hold all questions and discussion until the end.