Indications for virtual sessions' chairs

  1. Follow the indications to the participants to access the virtual programme. Please do that 5-6 minutes before your session starts.
  2. If you are chairing a hybrid session, please read first the indications for hybrid sessions.
  3. Use the Zoom chat to identify yourself as the chair to the “Angel” of the room (conference staff). The Angel will assist you if needed.
  4. Ask the presenters to identify themselves to make sure that all of them are present and their Zoom names correspond to those in the programme. Otherwise, ask them to change them.
  5. If any speaker is missing or has a technical problem, you can pass to the next speaker and come back later to check. In case of a no-show, you can decide to take a break if you prefer, but in this case, the time will be lost, and if the missing speaker arrives late, there will be no possibility to give the talk later.
  6. Introduce the session and the first speaker. Ask the speaker to share the presentation, start the video and un-mute the micro.
  7. You can decide to keep your camera on or off, but switch off your micro unless you need to make any warning.
  8. Each speaker has 20 minutes for the talk and 3-4 minutes for discussion (unless the chair had previously requested to share the time among more speakers. In this case, they will have 15-18 minutes). Please, warn the presenters for the 5 minutes and 1 minute to go.
  9. When the speaker finishes the presentation, you may ask to un-mute all the participants to clap. Then, you should ask to mute all again.
  10. The participants may raise their virtual hand to make a question or write it in the chat for you to read it aloud.
  11. If you see in the participant list someone with the hand raised, please give them the floor one by one to make the question. When the 3-4 minutes discussion pass, invite the audience to continue the discussion in the networking area and proceed with the next speaker.
  12. Please keep the session on time to be able to close it formally. If 4 minutes after the official ending it has not finished, all the participants will be automatically muted. The session will be cut to allow the participants of the next session to enter the room.