pyconuk.org

Session Team

What do we do?

The primary duty of the session chair is to make sure that the speakers start, and more importantly, stop on time. It is not fair to other speakers or to delegates if the conference has fallen behind the timetable.

So the way that this works is that the session chair controls the room for one session at a time. This includes:

• Synchronising your watch!
• Making sure that there are glasses and water for the speaker and session chair (the venue staff should have done this).
• Making sure the speaker starts and finishes on time. We will have yellow/red cards to help with this.

• Sessions must finish five minutes before the start of the next slot, to allow time for swapping streams.

• Helping the next speaker with plugging into the projector and/or nodding sympathetically if it doesn't work!
• Helping the speaker take questions and answers (many will be fine doing this alone, but you need to ensure that questioners are rotated fairly).
• Make sure the speaker repeats the question before answering it

Most talks are within a half an hour or one hour slot, and the last five to ten minutes of the talk should be reserved for audience participation.

We have a tight schedule, therefore we suggest that the next speaker is setting up with the projector (if needed) during question time.

If you have any issues regarding your session chair role during the conference, please talk to Simon Brunning.

2008 Team

• Simon Brunning (Team Captain)

• Richard Taylor
• John Pinner
• Chris Withers (only after I've given my talk though, happy to help out where I can though!)
• Michael Foord
• Christian Muirhead (Resolver Systems)
• Glenn Jones (Resolver Systems)
• Tony Ibbs (I've volunteered for a couple of slots below)
• Orestis Markou (Resolver Systems) (just one for now ):
• Nick Efford
• Please volunteer!

2007 Team

• Team Captain: Tim Couper
• Graham Higgins,
• Johnnie H Stovall,
• Simon Stanford,
• Chris Procter,
• Richard Taylor.
• Tim Parkin

Sessions

We have a schedule consisting of mostly 90 minute sessions. We are suggesting that, on average, each person runs three sessions throughout the weekend. Individually some people may want to do more or less.

There are 16 90 minute 8 60 minute and 4 30 minute sessions over the weekend, so we are looking for around 10 session chairs.

Please add yourself to the rota below.

You might want to look at the schedule and see if you can line up your interests with the free sessions: http://pyconuk.org/timetable.html

2008 Rota

Notes

• N/A means we do not plan to use the room, Plenary sessions are all together

• tba means that the slot is ready for you to volunteer

• Keynote, no session chair as such, intro by John/Zeth
• Close/Prize Draw - John and Zeth

• 1 OrestisMarkou: I'm happy to chair the first half of this (Stop Complexity 11:00-11:45) but I want to be in the Adrian Boult hall for the second part - if anybody else wants to do the second half but not the first, add both our names there!