Information and Guidelines for ECI Session Chairs
These guidelines as a PDF.
The objectives of the conference are to bring together an interdisciplinary group of individuals to exchange their expertise and experiences in many areas with cooperation and friendship, and to further stimulate their research and development activities. This can be achieved by well-organized presentations by the oral and poster presenters as well as by providing ample time for discussion after the oral presentations to stimulate further interest and understanding of the subject. The role of session chairs is to provide a leadership role and run the sessions most efficiently and smoothly. Although you are familiar with the role, here are some guidelines that may help to achieve these goals.
Before the Session
- Review the conference Final Program for the exact time and day of your session.
- Locate all papers of your session in the conference abstract book/proceedings, and note down the page numbers.
- Learn the amount of time for both invited talks and contributed talks, introduction time, and discussion time. Please adjust these timings based on your total allocated time for your session. Most important is to allow sufficient time for discussion. Please check with your authors who are coming and who will make the presentation to prepare yourself for conducting the session most efficiently.
- Prepare a minute-by-minute total timetable of your session that would then clearly show the starting and ending time for each presentation.
- Obtain information of the authors’ education, affiliation, brief work history, important achievements and special awards, etc. for their proper introduction at the session. Only the information about the presenter is important for a multi-authored paper. Reading the title and authors names first at the session acknowledges the other authors.
At the Session
- Check that all audiovisual equipment needed is available in the room, and be prepared to help presenters if any problems arise during the sessions.
- Get familiar with various light switches and projector switches before you start the session so that you won’t waste time during the session.
- Starting and closing of the session at the scheduled time is essential because of our tight schedule. Please be prompt to start the session.
- Introduce yourself.
- Present short introductory remarks on the general subject of the session.
- Inform the audience of the relevant page numbers in the program book.
- Introduce the speaker before each one starts his/her presentation.
- Keep track of the presentation time. Remind the speakers when their time is going to be finished with warnings at 2 minutes and 1 minute. Please be somewhat flexible and courteous in handling your authors, but don’t let any author have an inappropriately large amount of time so that the subsequent authors do not have sufficient time for presenting.
- Generally, the participants need a stimulus from the chairs to open informal discussions for the free and critical exchange of ideas. Please encourage the audience to take part in the discussions and to ask questions without any hesitation. Please ensure that only one discusser does not dominate and that opportunity is provided to all discussers within the allowed discussion time. Please ask the discusser to identify him/herself before asking a question.
- If the discussion on any one paper continues longer than anticipated, interrupt and terminate the discussion as you feel appropriate. Inform the discussers that the discussion can be continued during the coffee break, social hour and other times during the day.
- In case one of the papers is not going to be presented in your session, allow more time to the authors of other papers in your session appropriately.
There is no doubt that the success and efficiency of the session depends on your outstanding conduct. Your cooperation, interest, and efforts are highly appreciated. Thank you.