CCCC Session Formats and Role Descriptions
Concurrent Session Format
All concurrent sessions run 75 minutes. Three or four speakers deliver talks of 12-15 minutes, reserving 20-30 minutes for audience discussion, reading questions posted online, and synthesizing the panel’s issues into action items for the larger membership to consider.
SIGS and Caucuses hold their business meetings on Thursday and Friday evenings. All are open to convention registrants.
Convention program sessions have been planned on the basis of the descriptions given in the proposal forms submitted last spring. Please ensure the coherence of your session by corresponding with other presenters. The names, postal addresses, and email addresses of all participants in your session will be emailed to you in December.
Responsibilities of the Session Chair
As chair, you serve as coordinator, clearinghouse, and respondent for the session. When you receive the list of participants in your session in December, please request from each participant an abstract outline and biographical information.
The Chair will open the session with brief remarks to set in perspective the topic of the session and to introduce each participant. The Chair is responsible for dividing the time among speakers, coordinating the session, ensuring that audience members and panelists engage the ideas presented, and synthesizing the issues raised during the session.
Please adhere to strict time limits. The 2015 conference puts a premium on discussion of ideas and the transfer of session issues to the rest of the conference. It’s vital, therefore, that presenters and audience members balance their time appropriately.
Concurrent Sessions. Each speaker in a concurrent session is allowed 12-15 minutes. Your proposal and your exhibits will be made available to conferees before the convention; however, not every audience member will have exercised their chance to examine your exhibits before the session. Please concentrate on using digital projectors or paper handouts of your key data, images, and take-aways.
To Read or Not to Read. By and large, speakers who read their papers (especially papers they have not revised for a face-to-face discussion-style conference) are less engaging that those who actually speak to their audience using notes or slides as exhibits. While it's preferable for you to NOT read a paper, some presenters may actually require a text to stay on topic or calm themselves, and in the spirit of accommodating different types of speakers, such reading is fine. However, if you choose to read your paper, please write it in presentation style so that the audience can follow along. And remember to limit your printed paper to 6 double-spaced pages, which is about all you can read comfortably in the time allotted.
Your audience will have an unprecedented amount of information about your research and your topic through the conference app, along with slides and other exhibits you make available before the conference. Accordingly, please treat the session in Tampa as an opportunity to engage your colleagues in discussions and questions about your research, rather than a lecture in which you share brand new information with an uninformed audience.
Roundtable Style. These sessions are meant to embody the spirit of a roundtable discussion: a group of informed panelists will share ideas on a single topic. After brief opening statements (3-5 minutes each), the Chair will guide the remainder of the session in discussion with the panelists, questions and comments posed by online participants, and audience members.
Posters and Poster Sessions. The poster is a new format for the CCCC. Posters will be installed in the interactive ballroom space by the start of the convention, and will remain up for inspection through the end of the convention. All members are free to peruse these posters any time they want. In addition to this self-paced mode, we are also holding organized poster sessions, where authors will stand next to their posters and answer questions and engage their audience for the duration of that session. Each convention time slot will feature 7-15 poster authors.
