Consulting Journal: Conferences - Chairing conferences: prologue

Conferences: Chairing conferences: prologue

by David Blakey

The first in this series deals with what you need to do before the conference.

[Monday 17 June 2002]

Consultants are often asked to speak at conferences. You should think seriously about chairing conferences as well. If you are going to travel some distance, so that you will be away for a whole day, then you might as well chair the conference. Chairing is better for making contacts than speaking: you are in a position of greater power and this can be a strong influence on people's attitude towards you. You have to consider whether conferences are a real opportunity for you to get more consulting business. If the conference company has paid for your travel from A to B, you might consider your time to be better spent on visiting client and contacts in B rather than sitting through the entire day at the conference.

Chairing conferences is a skill that can be learnt. Here is my method.

Before the conference

Notes for speakers

Consider preparing some notes to be given to the speakers by the conference company. These notes should include your guidance on the following.

Questions will be taken by speakers either as they speak or at the end of their session. It is usually a good idea to set interactive questions as the standard and to ask speakers to inform you if they will only take questions at the end.
Questions can be controlled by you or the speaker. I recommend that you should control the questions.
Some questions could be delayed until a break. You could ask speakers to inform you if they will still be present during the next break following their session, so that some questions can be deferred until then.
There should be a method for telling speakers that they have ten minutes left in their sessions, especially if you think that they might overrun their allotted time. You might just say ‘Ten minutes’, but you must inform the speakers beforehand that this could happen.

Prepare a copy of the notes for each speaker.

Checklist

Prepare a checklist for yourself. The following items should be included.

Stopping private conversations in the audience.
Having short breaks of about three minutes, when the audience can move about and stretch but not leave the room.

At the venue

Sight

Walk around the room and check lines of sight to the main projector screen and the lectern. Check also if items such as flipchart stands and whiteboards will need to be moved to be visible.

Sound

Check the acoustics.

Get a member of the conference company's staff to sit in the furthest position away from the front. Check if they can hear you by speaking normally and by projecting your voice. If the room is dead, tell the conference people that the speakers should use lapel microphones.
Then, check if you can hear them asking questions. Stay where you are and get them to ask you a question.
Then have them move to the front row and you move to the back row. Have them ask a question again.

If questions are going to be difficult for the rest of the audience to hear, consider these options.

You can have each questioner given a microphone before they ask their question. In theory, this is the best method. In practice, it rarely works well. The conference company's staff are often not in the room when the questions start, so you might find yourself walking round with the microphone. This makes it difficult for you to control questions and to keep track of time.
You can ask the speakers to repeat the questions. In practice, they often forget. They may be nervous, or they may be excited about answering the question.
You can repeat each question yourself. This works best. It also means that you will control the questions and can easily stop further questions when time has run out.

Papers

Check if the conference papers are complete.

If some papers missing, ask the conference organizers when these papers will be issued and how they will be issued. I prefer to have additional papers distributed to each attendee's place during breaks. Some organizers prefer to leave the papers on a table for the attendees to collect. You should know when additional papers are available and tell the attendees to check that they have them.

Refreshments and facilities

Find out from the conference organizers where and when meals will be served and what refreshments will be available adjacent to the conference room.

Check where toilets, telephones and other services are.

Notes for speakers

Give copies of your notes for speakers to the conference staff and ask them to give one to each speaker.

You are now almost ready for the conference to begin. We shall look at what happens next in the next article.

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