Session Chairs and Moderators: What They Are Actually For

Session chairs are usually recruited late, briefed in a corridor, and judged harshly. It is a real job with three specific responsibilities, and an event that treats it that way runs visibly better.

The three responsibilities

1. Start on time and end on time. A session that finishes late steals from the break, and the break is where the networking happens.
2. Run the questions. Get the first question in quickly, keep them short, and stop the person delivering a speech.
3. Handle the room. The microphone that fails, the audience member who will not stop, the speaker who does not turn up.

Everything else — the warm introduction, the thoughtful summary — is a bonus.

Brief them properly, in writing

A single page per session, delivered in advance, not a conversation on the day:

• Speaker names, pronunciations and the bios to read.
• Exact timings, and how to signal five minutes and one minute.
• Whether to take questions during or after.
• What to do if a speaker does not appear.
• Who to call, with a number.
• For hybrid: that online questions exist and who is feeding them.

Timekeeping is a signal system, agreed in advance

Printed cards work better than a phone: a speaker can see them without breaking stride. Agree the signals with the speaker in the thirty seconds before they start — that one exchange prevents almost all overruns, because a speaker who has acknowledged the signal will honour it.

The first question is the chair's job

Silence after a talk is not disinterest; it is hesitancy. The chair should have one prepared question and ask it immediately. Once one person has spoken, hands go up. A chair who waits for the room is a chair who gets thirty seconds of silence and then closes early.

Handling the difficult ones

• The statement-not-a-question: "Can you put that as a question for us?" — polite, and it works.
• The monologue: "Let us take that one offline so we can get two more in."
• The hostile question: let the speaker answer, then move on deliberately. Do not debate from the chair.
• The absent speaker: shorten the session, do not stretch it. Announce the change and give people the time back.

Our guide to live Q&A goes further into the mechanics.

Recruit earlier than you think

Chairs are the easiest role to recruit from your own audience — senior attendees are usually pleased to be asked, and it gives them a reason to attend a session they might have skipped. Ask at registration, assign in the platform so it appears on their own schedule, and brief them a fortnight out.

Gathervo assigns session chairs to sessions, so their schedule, their briefing and the session's feedback all follow the assignment. Try it free.