Thank you very much for volunteering to serve as the chairperson for a scientific session during EGU23. As the session's leader, your main responsibility is to ensure the session is run in a timely and respectful manner, and that both, on-site attendees and presenters in Vienna as well as virtual attendees and presenters on Zoom/Gather.Town, are enabled to play an active role in the event.

Requirements for serving as the session chairperson

  • All chairpersons must be registered for the conference, even if serving as virtual chairperson. Zoom meetings of oral sessions and PICO introductory talks, as well as the Gather.Town space for virtual posters and PICO viewing are only accessible for registered conference attendees.
  • If you are not a session convener, please check in the programme at least 2 days before your session takes place to make sure the conveners have assigned you the chairperson role in the session modification tool. You must be identified by name and email in this tool in order to assign a Copernicus Office user ID to the chairperson. Please also verify that the conveners used the same email address and Copernicus user ID under which you registered for the conference.

Tips for chairing a successful session

  • Chairpersons are expected to introduce themselves to the audience, to open and close the session strictly on time, and to ensure that the session speakers are present and able to make their presentations without disruption. All times allocated in the conference programme include the time for change-over. For oral presentations and introductory PICO presentations, chairpersons will receive a timer to run the countdown.
  • All EGU23 sessions are run fully hybrid. While one chairperson is supposed to cater the on-site audience in Vienna (oral sessions in lecture rooms, poster sessions in poster halls, and PICO sessions at PICO spots), a second chairperson should be available to cater the virtual audience (oral sessions on Zoom, virtual posters on Gather.Town, virtual PICO introductory talks on Zoom, and virtual PICO viewing on Gather.Town).
  • Please remind attendees that it is not permitted to take screenshots of any live presentations or Zoom chats unless the author explicitly grants their permission to do so. Presenters are asked to include symbols encouraging or not allowing screenshots and sharing.
  • Please encourage all participants, if they have not already done so, to upload supplementary materials to their abstracts and remind them that commenting on these will continue through the end of May.

Orals

  • A technical assistant will be present in the lecture room. The assistant will help the chairperson and speakers to run the session. All presentation files should have been uploaded by the authors at least 24 hours prior to session start. In addition, conveners can upload session materials through the session modification tool. All these files are available on the lecture room notebook. The technical assistant will run the presentation files from this notebook, independent whether the speaker is on site in Vienna or joins virtually via Zoom.
  • The assistant will hand out a Surface Go tablet for the chairperson taking care of the virtual attendees and presenters. They can follow the Zoom meeting's chat on this tablet and are supposed to repeat questions posted in Zoom through the microphone in the lecture room during the discussion time.
  • Chairpersons should remind speakers to remain at the lectern and speak into the lectern microphone. This is the precondition for virtual attendees in Zoom to see and hear the speaker.
  • Chairpersons are supposed to always speak into the microphone since virtual attendees can otherwise not hear anything. When attendees in the lecture room ask questions without a microphone, chairpersons are asked to repeat the questions through their microphone.
  • Before each presentation the chairperson should verify that the speaker is listed in the programme as one of the authors. If this is not the case and the speaker is not sufficiently acquainted with the work in order to answer questions, only the title of the paper should be read. If none of the co-authors is present, these no-shows have to be recorded. The lecture room assistant will compile a list.
  • In view of the many parallel sessions, the time schedule of the session must be strictly kept. Any disruption is extremely frustrating for those wishing to attend only selected presentations. Therefore, if a gap should occur in the time schedule and no stand-by paper is available to fill in, discussions on the previous talks or short oral introductions of poster papers, if not foreseen in the programme, should be stimulated.
  • Any programme changes received at egu23@copernicus.org at least by Thursday, 20 April 2023 will be included in the online programme, the mobile app, and the "daily programme" outside the lecture rooms.
  • Please read the presenter guidelines for oral presentations carefully.

PICOs

  • Presenting Interactive COntent (PICO) is a concept to combine the advantages of short oral presentations with watching the presentations afterwards again on touch screens, to hold discussions with the author and colleagues, and to network. PICO sessions take place in the form of a PICO spot, a combination of an audience together with a number of touch screen displays.
  • The PICO session starts with two minute presentations of all authors (2-minute madness). Chairpersons are asked to ensure that the rather tight schedule is kept. An assistant will be available at the PICO spot. After all authors presented the essence of their work in two minutes, the chairperson invites the audience to move to the touch screens (PICO viewing).
  • While on-site PICO authors will speak at a lectern in the PICO spot, virtual PICO authors will join on Zoom. A technical assistant will be present. All presentation files should have been uploaded by the authors at least 24 hours prior to session start. In addition, conveners can upload session materials through the session modification tool. All these files are available on the PICO spot notebook. The technical assistant will run the presentation files from this notebook, independent whether the speaker is on site in Vienna or joins virtually via Zoom.
  • Chairpersons should remind speakers to remain at the lectern and speak into the lectern microphone. This is the precondition for virtual attendees in Zoom to see and hear the speaker.
  • Chairpersons are supposed to always speak into the microphone since virtual attendees can otherwise not hear anything. When attendees at the PICO spot ask questions without a microphone, chairpersons are asked to repeat the questions through their microphone.
  • During the PICO viewing, all uploaded presentations are automatically opened on the respective PICO screens with the assigned PICO screen numbers. While on-site authors can stand next to their screen to answer questions, virtual authors are asked to stand next to their assigned virtual PICO screen on Gather.Town. Chairpersons should be present both at the PICO spot in Vienna as well as on Gather.Town.
  • Please read the presenter guidelines for PICO presentations carefully.

Posters

  • Chairpersons of poster sessions should gather and guide the on-site audience in Vienna from poster to poster in the order of their appearance, and they should invite the authors to present their posters for some minutes and stimulate discussions afterwards.
  • Chairpersons must remind the on-site audience in Vienna that any virtual poster is presented on Gather.Town. Authors of virtual posters are asked to be available at their assigned virtual poster board on Gather.Town to answer questions through the video chat.
  • Chaipersons should remind any attendees of poster sessions that they can vote for the OSPP contest. Authors were asked to include a QR code to their poster.
  • Please read the presenter guidelines for poster presentations carefully.