Chairs’ guidelines

If you are the (co-)chair of a symposium or a blitz session, the advice below is for you! 
As a session chair, you will have the responsibility of time-keeping and Q&A moderating. 

Q&A tools

For the Q&A, you will have different options

• It is possible to use the Whova app to collect questions from the audience and manage the Q&A entirely via the app. Within the app, all speakers within a given session have moderator access to the Q&A. 
• You can use a classic “live” Q&A session (without the app)

We recommend that you use either a hybrid or a purely “live” Q&A session. Please make your choice and inform the audience at the beginning of the session so that they know whether or not to enter their question into the app. 

General advice 

Due to a disproportion of questions and comments made by women and junior members of academia, compared with male and/or senior members, chairs should consider using moderational rules that would empower and facilitate the public appearance of minorities:

If there are participants who are more active than others – priority in speaking should be given to those who haven’t spoken yet.

Giving equal speaking space to males and females (so-called “zipper” in the discussion – alternating female and male speakers, which helps women to participate in the discussion, but also junior and senior members of academia