Galaxy IV - Presentation Assignments

Keys to success – use appropriate tool, develop organization scheme, assign presentations/posters in most logical way This piece sounds very straightforward. Once you know presentations that have been accepted you just go in and assign them to time and you’re done. There is a little more to it. Right? For Galaxy IV, the review process was delegated to the associations involved in the conference. I don’t know all the details, but somehow they were provided with access to submissions and then responded with which ones they accepted or rejected to the program chair. This seems like a very straight-forward approach and allowed each of the associations to utilize their existing review process. It appears that then accepted oral presentations were placed in the program in blocks assigned to the associations. Accepted poster presentations were still coming in when I assumed responsibility for the committee and were not coming in based on any particular order. The responses came from the presenters in the form of acceptance. Many had been assigned to a poster session. Earlier I mentioned the problem with submission, which resulted in poster presentations continuing to come in until after we arrived at the convention – definitely not a good situation. The poster presentations received early were assigned locations on the dates they had been assigned based on the category selected by the author at the time of submission. I do not know how I could have completed assignments without the use of Excel or some other similar sortable, searchable tool. Originally, oral submissions came in an excel spreadsheet with presentations listed on worksheets by association. Posters were sorted by assigned session. My first task was to go into the spreadsheets and add additional authors. I also determined consistent institution names based on how Extension referred to itself on its webpages. Appropriate abbreviations were then determined which were used to identify individuals in the registration entries. Finally, sheets were created for each of the oral presentation concurrent sessions and assignments were entered there. This version ended up being most effective for assigning moderators, recording room assignments and keeping notes related to session communication. Categories were not included in all listings of the original information that I received so this was another piece of information that was collected from the submission system and added to the spreadsheets. Once I thought all the poster entries had been received, I made location assignments for each poster session. The first thing I had to do was search for duplicate corresponding authors once it became evident that these existed, so that the posters they were presenting could be located in close proximity to each other. I color-coded the background of these as an indication that there was duplication and in some cased triplication. Then I searched based on categories. I had not visited the conference site, but was told there were posters to the left and right divided by tables in the exhibit area so I devised a scheme that used an L or R to designate the side on which the poster was to be displayed along with a numerical assignment. Numbers began at 1 in the innermost front posters and in the display, the numbers increased as you proceeded to the back of the exhibit. Numbers were assigned by categories with care to place categories close to accommodate presenters with multiple posters. These were easily then entered into the program which was available on the conference website. Lessons Learned: #1 – Use an appropriate tool. I do not know how I could have completed these tasks without Excel. You may have a similar tool that works for you, but it is important to have something that you can use not only for assignment, but for the questions you will receive related to presentation assignments. Being able to sort and search made assignment and responding to others much easier. I have worked with some associations that permit associations and presenters to indicate acceptance within the system. This is desirable, especially where multiple entities are making selections. It would be good to identify who makes what changes along with a time stamp. Ideally, the selection committee will serve as a filter and provide communication used to determine the final program. #2 – You noticed above that oral presentations were assigned by associations and poster presentations were assigned by topic. There were many complaints that topics in the oral presentations did not relate well to each other. And people expressed pleasure in being able to browse the posters and follow similar topics. This contributes to my recommendation to the committee that in the future, topic areas be selected by the education program committee in communication with the associations, associations assign representatives to serve on topic review committees and assignments be made based on topic rather than association. This not only allows for stronger consistency across topics in presentation space at the conference, but would provide opportunity for a committee to include invited guests in addition to peer-reviewed presentations to better address the needs around their particular topic. Next – Assigning moderators for concurrent sessions

Galaxy IV - Educational Programs

Keys to success highlighted in this section – teamwork, established expectations for communication!

I just completed my role as Education Committee Chair for the Galaxy Extension Conference. Some people have asked about the role and how I managed to pull it off. To give you a sense of the magnitude of the role, this committee was responsible for overseeing a total of 304 oral and 437 poster presentations. Of the oral presentations, 250 were refereed with review occurring by sponsoring professional associations, 11 were exhibitor sessions, 29 were sponsored by committees or associations, 4 were pre-conference workshops and 10 were 2-hour Super Seminars. Acceptance rates were 40.85% for oral presentations and 68.39% for posters.

I came into the role three months prior to the convention. This was less than ideal. The person I replaced had computer problems and other issues that challenged their record-keeping. Most of the concurrent sessions had been placed in the program. There was a list of other sessions that appeared on neither the accepted or rejected lists. Eventually I ended up contacting each of these and for the most part they were intending to present so had to be accommodated in the program. So, I had to do some shuffling to add them into the program. The association- and committee-sponsored presentations were not included either. Getting information on these and getting them placed in appropriate positions was also challenging. For some reason the steering committee determined at the last minute to keep pre-conference workshops separate from the other educational programs which created challenges in receiving and communicating information to program participants. Poster submissions had not been placed in order, but I was given the list of posters for inclusion in each of three days of exhibition. One of the first actions I took was to post these lists on the conference website. This initiated a flood of emails and calls from people who had received acceptance, but were not included on the list. This flood continued until the poster presentations were complete at the conference. So, not only did I arrive late into the role, the situation was a tangled mess.

I am a strong believer in continual evaluation and improvement, so am always looking in situations for the lessons for future application. In this case, the committee appeared to exist in name only. When I tried to pull them together I learned they had not met in quite some time and many members never even bothered to respond when I tried to contact them. So my first lesson (teamwork) is to involve the committee early and thoroughly. Every member does not have to be involved in every facet of the activity, but if there were one or two members that had been involved in the acceptance process and in positioning the presentations, they could have aided in the provided continuity. In fact, they would have been stronger candidates to take on the role of committee chair than I was, in terms of providing continuity and thorough understanding of the process from submission to presentation. In the end, the committee member that was recommended to take on the role was not even planning to attend the conference, so could not have fulfilled the role.

A second lesson (established expectations for communication) would be to have a well-documented, clearly defined submission system that could also provide greater continuity. The system used appeared to provide automatic submission reports at many levels. Some people received notices that their submission was received and assumed this meant they were accepted for presentation. Others whose submissions were rejected for oral presentations were accepted for poster presentations resulting in conflicting notices that also created confusion. Finally, the process for taking information from the database to an abstract format was not as easy as it could have been.

Finally, it would have been helpful if a well-developed timeline had been established with all involved in the process (more established expecations for communications). There were challenges associated with communication around other parts of the conference, so individuals said they did not think it odd when they did not receive communication regarding their submissions, beyond their initial acceptance. Even having associations ask their membership check the website and lists was ineffective. If dates for anticipated communications had been established along with clear instructions for contact, this would have helped would-be presenters know when they needed to follow-up.

Next – more on presentation assignment processes.