Consulting Journal: Conferences - Chairing conferences: sessions

Conferences: Chairing conferences: sessions

by David Blakey

The third article deals with what you should do during each presentation.

[Monday 1 July 2002]

The two previous articles in this series have taken you through the start of the conference. The first speaker is now speaking.

During each presentation

This article will describe what you need to do during each presentation.

Keep a log

I use my standard A4 notebook for this. You can use the notepaper supplied by the conference venue if you prefer. As each speaker begins, you add their their name and the time that they started speaking. You calculate their expected finishing time and add it.

If you've just introduced Andrew Smith, who is scheduled to speak for 50 minutes, your log will look like this

Name	Started	Expected
Andrew Smith	09:05	09:55

Check the conference schedule. I find that conference organizers often allow ten minutes for my opening remarks, and I don't need that long. So, if Andrew was due to begin speaking at 09:10, his scheduled end-time is 10:00.

Your log will now look like this.

Name	Started	Expected	Scheduled
Andrew Smith	09:05	09:55	10:00

Highlight the latest time that Andrew can finish to keep the conference on schedule.

Name	Started	Expected	Scheduled
Andrew Smith	09:05	09:55	10:00

This highlighted time now becomes your target. If a speaker finishes before their target time, then you are probably doing fine (although you should see the notes on lunch in a later article before you get too confident). If you get behind schedule, then you may have to think of some way of getting the conference timing back on track. Don't worry too much. As someone new to chairing conferences, you may worry about speakers running over their allotted time. There will be just as many speakers who run under their allotted time. In fact, your worst timing problem is not that the conference may overrun its scheduled finishing time - because many members of the audience will be happy to stay if the content is good - but that one of the speakers may not arrive at all - because then you will have time to fill and you will not deliver the content that you have promised the audience. But we'll get to that.

Speaker introduction

Read through the ‘bio’ of the next speaker and edit it down to one or two relevant sentences. Do this even if there is a break scheduled after the current speaker. You will have other things to do during the break.

Look and listen

Throughout each presentation, you should look and listen. Look at the audience; listen to the speaker.

Watch for the audience's reaction to strong points made by the speaker. Note these points down. They can be useful for your closing remarks at the end of the day or the end of the conference.
Watch for questions from the audience. The speaker may not notice these people. If you see someone who wants to ask a question, turn to the speaker and say ‘You have a question.’ Do this just loud enough for them to hear (so make sure that your microphone is switched off).

The exception to this is when a speaker has announced that they will take all questions at the end. In this case, at a suitable point, and if the audience member is still indicating that they have a question, make eye contact with the questioner and mouth ‘wait’ at them while holding up the hand further from the speaker, so that you indicate ‘stop’ to the questioner but not to the speaker. Then smile and raise your eyebrows in an expression that implies ‘Is that OK?’ Make a note of that person and be sure that they ask the first question when the speaker finishes.
Check the audience's reaction to the speaker. Are they interested or bored? Look around the room for the two people who look most interested. Do the same for the two people who look most bored. Now ignore these four people and look at the rest. Find three or four people in the centre of the room. Keep watching this group. Are they interested or bored? Do they become more interested or more bored? From time to time scan the rest of the audience for signs of concentration or restlessness.

This will allow you to decide whether to stop the speaker at the end of their expected finishing time or to allow them to overrun their allotted time. I have already mentioned that it can be a new chairman's greatest fear that the conference will overrun its time; an experienced chairman will often let interesting speakers overrun their time. To do this, you need the ability to gauge audience reaction and the confidence that you can control the conference timing. You may be surprised by the number of people who will approach you during a break and thank you for letting a particular speaker exceed their time because their content was so good.

You should also observe the speaker's method.

Some speakers will speak from prepared notes. It is unlikely that these speakers will overrun their time.
Some speakers will present a rehearsed presentation from notes. If they are good speakers, they will be able to keep within their allotted time. You should be able to judge their ability to do this by observing how closely they keep to the content of their paper, without diverting.
Some people will have a prepared paper and a prepared visual presentation, but will alter their actual delivery based upon the audience's reactions. These people are usually very experienced speakers. If they come to a topic that they see does not really interest the audience, they will cover it quickly. If they see that they have aroused the audience's interest, they will spend more time talking about the topic. These people may be able to control their own time or they may tend to overrun. You will have to decide how much leeway to give them, based on the audience's reaction.

Close the session

Keep checking the time as well as the audience reaction. Compare the elapsed time to the amount of the paper that has been presented. Count the number of pages of text in the paper or the number of slides in the presentation.

For a paper, only count pages that are not titles, contents pages, appendixes or indexes. If a page has more than half of its area given to illustrations, charts or tables do not count it.

For a slide presentation, only count slides that are not titles. Do not count slides that contain only a single question.

Let's say that Andrew's paper contains twelve pages of text. Allow ten minutes for questions, so that Andrew's time for delivering his paper is forty minutes. After ten minutes he should have passed the third page; after twenty minutes, the sizth page; and so on.

If you use a wrist-watch, you might consider taking it off and putting it on the table in front of you. This means that you can check the time without making it obvious to the audience that you doing so. Each speaker can see the watch, however, and it may remind them to keep a check on their timing.

Fifteen minutes from the end of the highlighted time in your log, check if the speaker is close to finishing. In Andrew's case, this means that he will have spoken for 35 of 40 minutes. He should be seven-eighths of the way through his paper. If the speaker is close to finishing, do nothing. If they are not, then say ‘You have ten minutes’ so that the speaker can hear you. You should do this regardless of the audience's interest in this speaker.

Ten minutes from the highlighted time, for a speaker who is not interesting, say ‘Five minutes.’

Five minutes from the highlighted time, for a boring speaker, say ‘Can you close now?’

Here's what will usually happen.

At the fifteen minute mark, good speakers will begin to close off so that they can take questions. As the audience is more likely to be interested by good speakers than by poor ones, this will leave more time for questions.
At the ten minute mark, when you say ‘Five minutes’, poor speakers will often rush through the rest of their paper. This can take up the whole of the ten minutes and leave no time for questions. This may not be problem if the audience is really not interested in what the speaker was saying.

Often, breaks can help you. If a speaker has run right up to the end of their allotted time, or if they have a large number of questions, you can announce that the speaker will be available during the next break and that the audience will be able to ask them more questions then. You must, of course, already know that the speaker will still be at the conference during that break.

Do not give the impression that the questions are unimportant. You should stress that there is a lot more material to cover in the conference and that it is in the audience's interests for you to move to the next paper in the schedule.

We shall look at breaks in the next article.

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