In general terms, the role of the Poster Session Chair is to organise the posters and poster session(s), reporting to the Programme Chair(s). This role could be well-suited to those looking to experience conference organising for the first time, due to its lower workload.
Before the conference
- Decide on poster formats, and publicise them.
- Call for submissions, emphasising the themes of the conference. 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.
- Update the conference website with a list of abstracts, presenter bios, and pre-prints where available.
- Plan the poster session(s).
- Plan the voting method, prizes and prize giving.
During the conference
- Poster session logistics.
After the conference
- Upload the posters 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.