Final Report Submitted by: Judith Welsh Chair, Concurrent Contributed Presentations

The Concurrent Contributed Presentations took place on Friday, February 5th from 1:30pm to 3:30pm in the Garden Room, Empire Room, and California Room at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose.

Committee Members

Abstract Reviewers: Amy Butros, Alan Carr, Carolyn Kopper, Dena Sehr and Jerry Thompson

Room Moderators: Claire Hamasu, Michael Newman and Dorothy Thurmond

Room Monitors: Susanna DesMarais, Diane Douglas and Florence Jakus

Publicity

Leah Anderson and I worked together with regard to publicity for the Concurrent Contributed Presentations and Posters. We issued the "Call for Papers and Posters" via the NCNMLG and MLGSCA listservs and newsletters. We also mailed a "Call for Papers and Posters" flyer to members of NCNMLG and MLGSCA.

Abstracts

I sent the 23 abstracts I received in response to the above publicity via email (without author name and affiliation) to the abstract reviewers. Based upon their ratings of excellent, satisfactory or unsatisfactory as

well as their comments, I selected 21 abstracts to be presented during the Concurrent Contributed Presentations. One of the selected speakers later withdrew her abstract at the request of her internship supervisor.

The speakers also submitted a condensed version of their abstracts for inclusion in the Joint Meeting program and web site. I forwarded the names and affiliations of the speakers, titles of the presentations and text of the abstracts to Genny Engel for inclusion in the conference program and to Chris Stave for posting on the Joint Meeting web site. I also forwarded the names and affiliations of the speakers and titles of the presentations to the editors of the NCNMLG and MLGSCA newsletters and to Sherry McGee for inclusion in the preliminary program.

Speakers

I maintained frequent contact with the speakers with regard to abstract editing, speaker scheduling, room assignments, audiovisual equipment and other issues..

Due to the record number of presentations, each speaker was strictly limited to a total of 15 minutes (12 minutes for the presentation and 3 minutes for questions and answers). This 15 minute period was to include any time spent in setting up and adjusting audiovisual equipment.

In order to minimize the time spent in setting up the laptops, I divided the 15 PowerPoint speakers equally among the three rooms and assigned those speakers from the same institution to the same room with one following another.

Handouts

I suggested that the speakers bring at least 100 copies of handouts they planned to distribute in support of their presentations. The speakers were also given the option of providing Electronic Program Chair Chris Stave with their handouts as HTML formatted documents for posting on the Joint Meeting web site.

Facilities

It was necessary to secure the California Room as well as the Garden Room and Empire Room in order to comfortably accommodate both the number of speakers and the number of attendees.

Each room was arranged in theater style with 80 chairs and furnished with a table top podium, table for handouts, and water station. An easel was set up outside each room for the list of scheduled presentations. These arrangements were made by Facilities Chair Hella Bluhm-Stieber.

Audiovisual Equipment

Each room was equipped with an Infocus LCD projector (800x600 resolution, 450 lumens), a Kodak 35mm carousel slide projector, and an enhanced illumination overhead projector (4000 lumens). It was therefore possible for those speakers planning a PowerPoint presentation to bring along backup slides or transparencies. These arrangements were made by Media Chairs Vickie Sanders and Annette Osenga.

An audiovisual technician from Swank Audio Visuals was available to demonstrate use of the equipment from 10:30am to 11:00am as part of the setting up and pre-testing of the audiovisual equipment. Since 15 speakers were planning PowerPoint presentations, I also recommended that an audiovisual technician be retained from 1pm to 3:30pm to assist the speakers and troubleshoot equipment related problems.

One of my major concerns was to minimize the disruption and time lost due to changes in equipment between speakers. In order to alleviate this problem, I requested that each room be equipped with a 4in - 1out switcher which allowed the speakers using PowerPoint to connect their laptops to the projector prior to the beginning of the session. I also suggested to the speakers that they consider sharing one laptop per room rather than using a different laptop for each presentation. Several speakers volunteered to share their laptops with other speakers in the same room with the caveat that everyone scan their disks for viruses before loading their files.

Room Moderator/Monitor Teams

A room moderator/monitor team was assigned to each room. Due to the especially large number of people (20 presentations involving 33 people) participating in the Concurrent Contributed Presentations this year, I delegated primary responsibility to the three room moderator/monitor teams for the conduct of the sessions within their particular rooms. I moved frequently between the three rooms in order to monitor the progress of the various sessions and to be available to provide assistance if necessary.

The role of room moderators was to open the session, introduce (very briefly) each speaker, time their presentations to assure that they did not exceed their allotted 15 minutes, and close the session.

Duties of the room monitors included helping the speakers with the audiovisual equipment, adjusting the lights, and passing out handouts as necessary. Room monitors were also responsible for requesting assistance with malfunctioning or otherwise problematic equipment.

I requested that the three room moderator/monitor teams meet with the speakers in their assigned rooms from 10:30am to 11:00am. This was an opportunity for them to meet the speakers, review everyone's responsibilities, and become acquainted with the setup of the rooms. During this time, the speakers had the opportunity to test the audiovisual equipment to assure that everything was working properly.

I requested that the three room moderator/monitor teams meet again with the speakers in their assigned rooms from 1:00pm to 1:30pm just prior to the beginning of the sessions in order to assist the speakers as necessary with their last minute preparations.

Evaluation

Fortunately none of the problems I had anticipated materialized! Despite a slow start, we received a record number of interesting and worthwhile abstracts. The rooms available at the Fairmont Hotel were very attractive and suitable for our purposes. And finally, the audiovisual equipment functioned properly without an undue delay between speakers for connecting and adjusting the laptop computers.

I would like to acknowledge my debt of gratitude to the members of the Concurrent Contributed Presentations Committee -- the abstract reviewers and room moderator/monitor teams -- for all their time and assistance in making this year's program a success.
 

Judith Welsh ph: 530/752-6204
Health Sciences Library, University of California fax: 530/752-4718
One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616-5291 email: jawelsh@ucdavis.edu

Note: A service for those who might have missed a presentation or for those who couldn’t attend a Joint meeting would be to mount posters and presentations on the website after the Joint Meeting. If this were to be done, chairs, when notifying presenters of their acceptance, should ask the presenters to e-mail their word processing files to the Electronic Program chair, who would specify the word processing program format for saving the document. Nearly all of the presenters had their talks or poster mounts in a word processing file, which many discarded immediately after the meeting. The Power Point files are too big to conveniently handle in mounting on the web site, but word processing files are relatively small. Though presenters should be asked to submit their word processing files when they are accepted to be on the program, they could e-mail the final copy of their presentation just before they leave for the meeting.

M.B. Train