Chairing a symposium, seminar or panel
Chairing a multi-speaker session combines introducing the programme, connecting the talks, managing time and questions, handling handovers and leading discussion. Online and hybrid sessions also require coordination between speakers, technical support and audiences using different question channels.
Opening and connecting the programme
At EMWA's 2025 Riga symposium, the afternoon chair recapped the morning's regulatory and patient perspectives before asking where medical writers could contribute to products combining drugs, devices, diagnostics and digital components. She introduced the sequence as pharmaceutical-led devices, devices with ancillary drugs, cybersecurity, and diagnostics and digital connectivity. At handover she connected the move from drug–device products to smart devices, and after the cybersecurity talk briefly named multifactor authentication as her takeaway.
The morning chair first welcomed both the room and virtual participants, allowing a couple of minutes before starting. She named the four-D theme, introduced its relevance through a warning about treating medicines and devices as interchangeable, figures about combination products and four actual product examples, and then mapped the product types, lifecycle stages and stakeholder perspectives the day would cover. The first three introductions named each speaker's subject before handing over.
A 2024 EMWA AI seminar opened with questions about learning from other industries, legal challenges, regulators' responses and implications for medical writers. The chair highlighted the regulator's participation because other recent AI meetings she had attended had lacked government-agency input, and asked the speaker to convey the profession's appreciation to the agency. She directed participants to the app for the detailed running order and used a joke to reinforce prompt returns from breaks.
Chairing roles and audience participation
EMWA's 2024 sustainability seminar divided chairing among three people: one welcomed attendees and handled housekeeping and closing remarks, another introduced four speakers and managed their question slots, and a third led the panel. Its housekeeping explained typed questions through chat and spoken questions through the react/raise-hand control, with a moderator indicating when to unmute.
At the 2024 publisher-perspectives seminar, participants were asked to replace generic display names such as “iPhone”, remain muted during talks, type questions into chat or raise a hand and wait for permission to speak, and introduce their location and interests in chat to support networking. The host began welcoming attendees while others were still being admitted. The host placed the seminar within the wider virtual conference and pointed to its website for the subsequent workshops.
Audience input can also enter a presentation directly. At the publisher seminar, a speaker invited yes/no answers through chat or by microphone and asked someone to relay them. At the translation seminar, a presenter unable to see chat while sharing slides asked moderators to relay participants' responses about their use of translation tools.
When the sustainability seminar's first question slot had no audience questions, the chair explicitly invited raised hands and began with her own questions while encouraging participants to contribute. She connected questions to what she had taken from the talks, and in a later slot gave an arriving audience question priority over her own.
Question slots and panel preparation
The 2024 nonclinical-writing seminar announced four talks of roughly twenty to twenty-five minutes with five-minute question slots and a final panel. A colleague monitored online chat and relayed questions; people in the room could raise a hand or use the conference app if they preferred not to be spotlighted. Twelve people were participating online when the monitor introduced a final online question before the panel.
An early finish in the translation seminar was assigned to extra question time, with attendees encouraged to keep typing into chat for the later question slot.
Questions can be redirected or deferred explicitly. At the nonclinical seminar, a question from the first talk was carried forward to the second speaker, whose subject also addressed it, and questions after the second and third talks were held for the panel. During questions after the last talk, the chair sent earlier speakers to the technical desk to be fitted with microphones. A speaker also acknowledged that his presentation would repeat some earlier content and defended repetition as part of learning.
At Riga, the first afternoon talk had time for one question; later talks deferred questions to the panel, and a speaker finishing before the coffee break omitted a question slide because time was short. In the morning, questions initially followed individual talks, with an online question taken before one in the room and one or two short questions allowed before coffee. After the break, the chair announced three successive talks with questions preferably held until the end, while describing the change from regulatory topics to patient, safety-reporting and medical-communications perspectives. She repeatedly reminded attendees that speakers would be available in the afternoon panel.
The sustainability seminar promised to collect questions not reached in five-minute slots for the panel and repeatedly deferred questions aloud. The panel then introduced a chat question with its asker's name and the two intended respondents. The publisher seminar similarly limited overrunning slots to urgent questions and held others for discussion.
Timekeeping, breaks and changes of order
The 2024 visual-communications seminar started late and announced six speakers with twenty-five minutes each for talks and questions, with a panel only if time permitted. It finished over time and closed after the last speaker's questions without the proposed panel.
A chair can give a time warning during a talk. In the sustainability seminar, one speaker was asked to summarise within five minutes, moved to his last material and accepted the chair's apology for rushing him. An AI-seminar speaker acknowledged a two-minute signal. At Riga, the chair stopped a product demonstration and explained that the presenter would remain available that afternoon for questions.
Breaks were announced with return times. The nonclinical seminar warned that overrunning would shorten coffee and then explicitly reduced the break to fifteen minutes. Riga's morning chair asked attendees back at 10:55 and thanked them for returning on time; at lunch she announced a 13:30 return and reminded attendees about lunchtime sessions. The publisher seminar specified both fifteen minutes and twenty past the hour, along with the remaining two talks and panel, and restarted despite uncertainty about who had returned to the virtual room. The sustainability seminar initially announced a ten-minute break but called fifteen minutes when it arrived, specifying 15:00; the return was used to get the next speaker's slides ready.
Running order can change when a speaker is absent. At the practical-AI seminar, an absent speaker prompted the next presenter to offer to speak first, and the slides were switched promptly. When the absent speaker’s slot came again, a replacement was introduced. The chair had also directed questions to the conference app for the panel and specified break and return times.
Technical handovers and failures
Hybrid connections may require live checks. At Riga, a remote speaker's setup included establishing audio, finding screen sharing, confirming that slides were not split-screen and adjusting camera framing. The same exchange established that he could stay for the panel until the top of the hour. Another remote speaker repeated screen sharing until the room could see full-screen slides and later warned of delayed slide advances.
The visual-communications seminar had an initial remote-audio problem, and a remote speaker requested cameras so that some audience faces would be visible. In another talk, the room saw only the first slide until an attendee interrupted; restarting sharing restored the presentation, and the speaker quickly revisited unseen material. The presenter later said the messages about the slides had gone unread. An in-room presenter also paused to get a presentation working.
At the translation seminar, moderators interrupted to correct echoing or inaudible sound, ask a presenter to hide a notification popup, and report that presenter notes rather than slides were visible. At the publisher seminar, a co-chair needed a mute reminder, a speaker initially shared a blank slide, and another required the host to enable screen sharing.
Failures can persist after rehearsal. A sustainability speaker's slides stopped advancing despite working in practice; restarting sharing did not prevent later recurrence, and he continued describing the material, calling slide advancement random and apologising for a few minutes' overrun. At Riga, a chair presenting her own introduction continued without her three missing slides and resumed using them when they appeared. Other speakers encountered a failed microphone, slides invisible from the podium and missing images; they explained the problem and described content that had not appeared.
A successful presentation connection does not ensure later panel access. At one AI seminar, audio and slides were established for a remote talk, but the technical team struggled to reconnect the speaker for the panel; the chair moved to another question while they tried. At another, remote presenters needed repeated audio confirmation and slide advances from the room, including correction of an accidental jump. During its panel a remote participant was audible to some people but not others, and the chair ultimately asked for a written contribution through the app or chat.
Leading and closing the panel
The nonclinical seminar's panel announced four areas: general questions on nonclinical studies, study documents, medical writers' roles and regulatory affairs' roles. Because organisers could not predict whether the audience would already know nonclinical work, the chair explained that discussion would begin with basic questions and deepen as audience questions arrived. She also explained that camera requirements meant panellists sat facing the room rather than one another. The panel ended with an invitation for further questions and a final round of applause.
An AI-seminar panel prioritised app questions by popularity, invited likes to influence the ranking and directed a question to a particular panellist. At the practical-AI seminar, the chair explicitly introduced her own opinion before opening discussion and, with limited time available, encouraged attendees to contact panel members directly through the app or elsewhere.
The sustainability panel added two medical-writing and communications practitioners to the speakers and began with a question to those additional panellists about medical writers' contribution. It closed by asking everyone briefly what made them optimistic about government or business investment against climate change's worst effects, then handed back for closing remarks. The closing chair summarised the remaining work, the need to consider water, air and soil pollution as well as carbon, and the value of looking beyond a geographical bubble, before ending with a quotation about responsibility to future generations.
Two AI panels requested a final sentence from each member. In one, a panellist asked to be returned to after thinking, but the closing exchange did not return to him. In the other, a panellist who had not spoken during discussion was explicitly invited to go first.
Materials and follow-up
At Riga, speakers told attendees that slides would be provided and that presentation links could be followed afterwards. The publisher seminar announced slides in a community site's scientific-publishing section and a recording to be posted by head office; its media partner would publish a separate summary, and provision for non-members was also mentioned. One speaker treated sharing her slides as something to discuss after the meeting.
At the translation seminar, a speaker expected participants to receive a PDF of slides with resource links. Another agreed to add resources to the later PDF, while a speaker offered to look for and share internal plain-language instructions if she found them.