Monday, October 14, 2013

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.

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