The role of the Talks Chair, which is relatively substantial, is to organise the talk sessions, reporting to the conference Programme Chair(s). You will also coordinate the Talks team, comprising one or two other members; liaise with the Workshop Chair, ensuring theme and handling consistency; and liaise with the Sponsorship Chair, taking over the handling of the sponsored talks.
Before the conference
- Agree on the conference themes with the Programme Chair(s).
- Organise travel bursaries for talk presenters (inc. advertisement, reviews and responses).
- Decide on and publicise talk formats with the Programme Chair(s).
- Call for submissions – you will be responsible for promoting the call and collating the submissions.
- Review submissions by:
- Deciding on the review process (inc. evaluation metrics, anonymisation process, etc.).
- Allocating submissions to reviewers and finding additional reviewers, if needs be.
- Making selections, and checking they satisfy the criteria and align with the themes.
- Sending out decision emails.
- Managing complaints and queries.
- Ensure new presenters are given access to mentors (inc. promotion and pairing).
- Put together the programme with the Programme Chair(s) by:
- Grouping selected talks by theme.
- Devising the schedule.
- Identifying room specifications.
- Allocating sessions to rooms.
- Provide information to presenters to enable ticket reservations.
- Update the conference website with general information, a list of abstracts, presenter bios, and pre-prints where available, along with the final schedule.
- Manage the provision of session chairs by:
- Finding primary and backup chairs for each talk session.
- Producing guidance and speaker bios for session chairs.
- Work with the Volunteer Chair to ensure all talk sessions are well staffed.
- Collate slides from presenters in advance of the conference.
- Liaise with keynote and sponsored talk presenters in collaboration with the Programme Chair(s), regarding talk details, ensuring the content is appropriate, and logistics.
During the conference
- Conduct AV testing and ensure slide decks are pre-loaded onto lectern PCs.
- Support keynote and sponsored talk presenters.
- Support other Chairs as needed.
After the conference
- Upload the talk audio recordings and slides to the conference website, where consent has been granted, and publicise this.
- Push material to an online repository (e.g. FigShare) to generate DOIs and make it citable.
- Review feedback.