Thank you for serving as the chair of a PAA session! The quality and tenor of the session will be impacted by your work; this may be especially the case during this year’s hybrid meeting. So, in advance, thank you for reading these guidelines and for trying to facilitate a great session.
Note that your role as chair includes both pre-conference preparation and facilitation during the conference. Please build a good rapport among the presenters in advance (by making introductions/connections among the participants) and to set a positive tone during the session (by ensuring a fair allocation of available time and fostering a collegial and professional exchange). Should challenges arise, you will be looked to for guidance and leadership (and please see the instructions below if you need help). We offer these guidelines to you as the chair of a regular or invited session.
Pre-Conference
- By March 22, please connect with your presenters and discussants on the topics below. To access contact information for your session participants, log into MiraSmart and go to Chair/Discussant Home. Click on View Session/Presentations for that session and then right click on a presenter to get their email address. You can also access short and long abstracts from this page.
- Your Participation. Please let them know how you plan to present—in-person or virtually. If you are participating virtually, you will want to have an in-person co-chair who can handle on-site logistics. We recommend that you recruit a co-chair, perhaps a graduate student or a younger colleague, who can help manage the logistics. Make sure they are registered and plan to attend in-person. Please contact Bobbie Westmoreland with your co-chair’s name and email address, or if you have trouble recruiting someone.
- Participation Mode. Please confirm with the presenters and discussants whether they plan to present in-person or virtually. This will allow you to structure the flow of the session.
- With Confex, PAA’s virtual platform, sessions will open in Zoom, so make sure you have the latest version installed. Confex Zoom technicians will open each room 20 minutes early, and you should arrive 10-15 minutes before the start of your session. Make sure that your Zoom name matches the name in the program so technicians can recognize you and give you hosting capabilities. Further instructions will be sent when the platform is ready.
Collect slides from all presenters. If you will be in-person, bring them on a thumb drive to the session and give it to the technical assistant who will be at the back of the room. Virtual presenters can share their screens, and in-person presenters will be given a clicker to advance slides.
- Papers for Discussant. Presenters in oral sessions should have already uploaded final papers by now make them available to the session's discussant. We encourage you to make it clear to participants that there was a deadline to upload papers for discussants and that discussants are not required to discuss any paper received after the deadline. At the same time, please let members of your session know that all materials received (papers and presentations) should not be circulated to anyone beyond the participants in the session.
- Time Allocation for Presentations. Lay out the plan for the session and specify the time to be allocated for each presenter and discussant. If you wish to enforce a slide limit in the interest of time, make sure to tell presenters in advance; one slide per minute is a useful rule of thumb. Be sure to reserve time for audience questions at the end. Important: hybrid sessions this year are just 75 minutes long!
For a typical four-paper regular session or invited session, a benchmark schedule would be 3 minutes to get going and make introductions, 12 minutes for each presentation, 12 minutes for the discussant, and 12 minutes for audience questions.
At the Session
- Arrive Early. Please welcome your speakers and attendees as they join. Make sure you have the correct pronunciation of participants’ names.
- Time Management. Please make sure to start on time and end on time. This maximizes the time allocated for content and keeps the overall conference on schedule. As is typical for the PAA meetings, we strongly encourage you to defer all audience questions until after all presenters and the discussant have spoken.
- Time Monitoring. Please watch the clock and monitor time. Warn your speakers as their time draws to a close by indicating the time remaining (typically 5 minutes, 2 minutes, and stop); you may need to do this audibly given the Zoom platform. Please be firm. This is simply fair to everyone. This will be far easier if you have clearly communicated to them the ground rules in advance of the session via email and reminded the presenters about your responsibility before the session starts.
- Presentation Order. Please keep to the order listed in the program. Some people come to listen to one speaker and may be disappointed if the presentations are not made in order.
- Question and Answer. Due to the hybrid format, all questions should be posed using the Q&A function on the mobile or online version of the Confex PAA app. As Chair, you will read out the questions and direct them to appropriate respondent. To be able to do this, we recommend you have a tablet, phone or notebook computer handy. Please be respectful of all participants and focus on selecting questions that would enrich the discussion and direct them to appropriate panelists.
- Wrap Up. Please wrap-up and end on time. Clearly define the conclusion of the session by thanking the presenters and the audience and state that the session has ended.
- Troubleshooting. Technical assistants will be on hand in-person and virtually. You can email PAA staff at paaonsite@popassoc.org for issues regarding the room such as temperature, chairs, or room set-up. This email will go to all PAA staff who will provide help as soon as possible. Please keep in mind that this email address will only be monitored from the start of the pre-conference workshops on Wednesday until the end of the conference, and staff will only respond to emails concerning technical issues or emergencies.
Click here for a sample email to send to your session participants. Feel free to modify it as needed for your session.