[Air-l] Conference absenteeism?

[Ted M Coopman]

Yes, yes, yes, on both counts.

A Thursday to Sunday makes much more sense for teaching schedules.

A chair and some sort of time keeper is critical. I presented for my spouse who could not make it and she had received an email at the last moment asking her to chair her panel, which I ended up doing (she had earlier notified AIOR that she was not coming). It's pretty basic and I think that a regular panel member can also chair.

I dislike the chair/respondent format where she/he discourses on the presentations. It takes away from already tight presentation times and especially questions/comments, the latter which are most important (to me anyway). Let the audience/speakers draw the connections, it's what we do.

Basically, all someone has to do is to introduce the session title, each presenter when their turn comes, and get an audience member to time people. Since my sessions had no chair, and I saw some presenters in other session go long, I just asked someone to volunteer to time and multiple audience members offered. It didn't effect my ability to present.

We could just start a tradition where the first or last presenter chairs, simple.

My thoughts.

-TED

Ted M. Coopman
Department of Communication
University of Washington

On Mon, 27 Sep 2004, Jennifer Stromer-Galley wrote:

> In thinking of scheduling for future conferences, I'd like to make two
> suggestions.
>
> First, the Sunday to Wednesday schedule exacerbates the teaching
> conflict for those of us who teach and have begun our
> semesters/quarters. I know of several people who opted out of the
> conference this year because of the Sunday-Wednesday schedule. I had to
> cancel two classes in order to come, which isn't ideal. A Thursday or
> Friday to Sunday schedule is better in that it doesn't conflict as much
> with the work week.
>
> Second, chairs are an essential part of any panel. I was lucky this year
> and had good panelists who kept each other to their alloted time frame,
> but I have attended and participated on too many panels (Aoir and
> elsewhere) where participants did not keep time, and one person took too
> long presenting leaving the others to cut theirs short and erasing the
> limited time there is for questions. It suspect it's difficult to
> coordinate chairs on top of everything else. Perhaps, the reviewers for
> the conference papers could serve as a useful pool of people to request
> help from.
>
> As always, I was delighted to participate in yet another AoIR
> experience. This has been and continues to be my favorite conference. I
> always leave AoIR energized intellectually. I can't say that for my
> other conference participation.
>
> ~JSG
>
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