Session Volunteers
To volunteer: go to the schedule app and hover your pointer over the link for a talk. You should get a pop-up with information about the talk; this pop-up will either list the session chair and runners or have links to volunteer. (you will need a wiki login)
Session volunteers are the support staff for the speakers presenting. A session is a group of 1, 2, or 3 talks between breaks. For example, Friday has 3 sessions: 10:25am-lunch, lunch-afternoon break, and afternoon break - 5:30PM. You volunteer for a specific time, place, and duration.
Requirements:
- You must be physically present for an entire session, not just one talk.
- Session Chairs manage the activities in the presentation room: introducing speakers, watching the time, stopping speakers on time, helping point out questions from the audience.
- Session Runners co-ordinate speaker movement and the transition between speakers.
Session Chairs and Runners work as a team. As there are five tracks, that means that we need to have five Session Chairs and four Session Runners to cover any single session time period.
To volunteer to be part of the Session Staff:
- get a site login.
- When you use the schedule app, you will see links to volunteer as a Session Chair or Session Runner for available slots, as well as see who has already volunteered.
If you volunteer for a session, you are able to decline later if something comes up, but please keep in mind that we are counting on your help to make PyCon successful.
Session Chairs
To chair a session, you must be physically present in one room for the entire session, not just for one talk.
Responsibilities
Session Chairs introduce the speakers, keep the talks on schedule, and facilitate the smooth transition between talks.
Session Chairs are expected to meet briefly with the people who will be presenting in their session, before the session. Please locate the speakers and introduce yourself well before your session. Ask them a few questions so you can introduce them (introductions should be quite brief), and be certain you know how to pronounce their names!
Before beginning the talks, encourage the audience to fill all the available seats instead of sitting in the aisles or standing by the door.
Session chairs should plan to arrive in the room about 10-15 minutes before their session in order to ensure everything is set up properly. Make sure that the sessions start on time and keep to the schedule. Stop watches with the time will be provided to help facilitate this along with little signs to let the speakers know when 10 minutes and 5 minutes are left. Don't interrupt in the middle of a sentence, but try to keep things moving along on time.
Once the speakers have started, please close the doors to screen out noise from people talking in the hallway. If you want to leave one door open for people to arrive quietly, that's fine, but please be prepared to close it if people are being noisy outside.
Upon conclusion of each presentation, encourage the speakers to disconnect their equipment and move into the hallway for discussions so the next speaker will not be delayed in starting. If the speaker and/or attendees are interested in holding an open space follow-up session, an announcement can be made by the Chair, and those interested can be referred to the Session Runner to help facilitate this.
Session Runners
To be a runner for a session, you must be physically present in the green room 15min before the session you volunteer for. You need to be present in the green room 15min before each talk in your session, and present in the room you are volunteering for at the end of each talk.
Responsibilities
Session Runners help prepare and test the speakers equipment before their talk. All speakers are to arrive at the green room 10min before their talk. There the Session Runners help them prepare their laptop on a projector which is identical to the one they will be using in the presentation room. This is done to resolve any problems in advance of the actual presentation. This could include resolving issues with adapters, screen resolutions and the like.
Once the presentation is configured Session Runners should ask for a copy of the presentation materials to be uploaded to the website. These materials, if offered, will them be copied onto supplied USB drives, and then uploaded to the website by the Session Runner after the transition.
Session Runners escort the speaker to their talk at least 5min before the presentation time, and help connect the laptop to the live system. At this point the Session Runner hands off the presenter to the Session Chair with an introduction. Remember to ask for confirmation on how to pronounce the speakers name.
If the speaker and/or attendees from the previous talk are interested in holding an open space follow-up session, Session Runners can help facilitate this by escorting the attendees to an available room, and filling out the open space card for them and posting it on the board.
While Session Runners need not spend all their time in the Green Room during talks, they are required to be present 15min before each talk, through the full transition and at the end of the last talk in their session. Additionally Session Runners are 'on-call' to help the session chairs and speakers during the full session time period. This will be accomplished via 2-way radios, the details of which to be given later.
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