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