Short Talk Sessions
Dear Session Chairs,
Thank you for agreeing to chair a session of short papers at ACL 2010. Below are some notes on chairing the session:
1. Check your assignment here (including time and room):
http://www.acl2010.org/program_mainconf.html
2. Please review the instructions to speakers, which has some important information that you should be aware of. These instructions can be found at: http://www.acl2010.org/oral.html
3. As session chair, you have several responsibilities:
A. Session organization:
Please arrive 10-15 minutes early for your session in order to
* check the microphone,
* identify each speaker and inform them of how you will indicate how much time they have left for their talk (5 min., 2 min., 1 min., stop),
* make sure that the speakers have loaded their slides onto the laptop being used for the session.
B. Introductions:
* At the start of the session, please inform the audience that questions will be reserved for the poster session that is during lunch and encourage attendees to come to the poster session. Also, please remind the audience that lunch is complimentary.
* Introduce each speaker, giving their name and title of their talk.
C. Keep the session on schedule:
* Please ensure that all talks start at the assigned time.
* Only 9 minutes are alloted for each talk. (The extra 1 minute between talks is to allow time to change speakers.) Please hold up signs to indicate when the speaker has 5 minutes, 2 minutes, and 1 minute remaining. When the 9 minutes have elapsed, hold up the STOP sign. If they don't wrap up very quickly, you will need to offer strong encouragement to stop. This can involve walking on stage to stand next to them, and in the worst cases telling the speaker that it is necessary to move on to the next talk.
D. There is no question period for short talks. Questions are reserved for the poster session.
E. If a speaker fails to show up, don't start the next talk early
--- many attendees will be expecting the subsequent talk to start at its assigned time and may miss the talk if it is started early. So inform the audience about what has occurred and when the next talk will begin.
We appreciate your being a session chair!
See you in Uppsala,
Sandra and Stephen
p.s. Some of the above points were condensed from Jason Eisner and Annie Zaenen's instructions to session chairs.