Chairing a poster session at a scientific conference is a challenging task as it implies direct questioning and dialogue on synthesized points of a scientific work. The task of the chairperson is to make the session informative, interesting and lively by facilitating good communication between the speakers and the audience. The following provides information and some guidelines for chairpersons to help make this happen.

Poster display times & E–poster station

Two poster display times have been scheduled:

• Monday–Tuesday: all posters related to oral sessions scheduled/starting on Monday or Tuesday;
• Wednesday–Friday: all posters related to oral sessions scheduled/starting on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday

In addition, an E–poster station in the poster area will provide access to all posters during the entire week, independent of the scheduled display times – given that the authors have uploaded the poster presentation file until 31 August. You may encourage the poster presenters of your session to upload the electronic file. By extending the display time for posters in this way, we hope everyone has enough opportunities to visit the posters of their interest.

Poster sessions at the EMS2023 will take place onsite only. For one presentation which has been assigned as an online poster (session UP2.1), the poster will still be present at the respective board and a QR code will provide direct access to the related supporting material.

Poster session (author-in-attendance time)

Authors of posters are asked to be at their poster during the time their poster presentation is scheduled. As the chairperson, you should try to visit as many posters of your session as possible. This task could be split, especially for sessions having many posters, by nominating more than one chairperson.

• Part I: Tuesday, 5 September, 16:00–17:15
• Part II: Thursday, 7 September, 16:00–17:15

Coffee break catering will be provided at the start of the poster sessions.

Preparation

Prepare yourself for the session by reading the abstracts of the contributions, check whether the authors have uploaded their poster as supporting material or as a presentation file to the conference platform in advance of the session. Thus, you can be aware of what to expect and be in a good position to instigate a discussion with the poster presenter. Convenors see an overview of all uploaded supporting material in the session modification dashboard. Presentation files, i.e. the electronic posters, are also accessible.

Note that this year, all electronic versions of the posters are also accessible for all conference participants as a presentation file during the scheduled session directly in the programme for the entire display time.

Get to the poster area early and make sure you know in which area of the room the posters of your session are located and which are the poster board numbers associated with the posters of your session.

Go through the poster area on the day of the poster session and check whether the posters have already been put up at the designated poster boards. The poster sessions are essentially scheduled towards the end of the poster display times, so browsing the posters in advance should be possible in most cases.

Poster pitches

If you have scheduled time for poster pitches in your session, please invite poster presenters in advance to prepare 1 slide about their poster.

Note, that the upload of a presentation slide for poster authors is not possible because the presentation file upload is reserved for the electronic version of the poster itself. Thus, please ask the authors to send the slide in advance to you; compile all of these and upload as session material at least 24 hours in advance of the session start.

Should you prefer to introduce the posters of the session you are chairing yourself, you may ask all poster presenters to provide 2–3 sentences on their main message, or a slide you could use; again, upload the compiled file as session material via the session dashboard. If necessary, it will be possible to provide the slides on an USB stick to the conference assistant in the room (see details at guidelines for chairpersons of oral sessions).

To contact the authors please log into your session dashboard (convener login); using the mail tool (blue button at the bottom) you can select presenting authors of poster presentations.

Gaps in the oral programme

In case time for poster pitches has not been scheduled, please still prepare as recommended above, as a gap that may occur in your oral session due to a presenter not showing up may then be used for poster pitches.
Otherwise, many of the "rules" prepared for the chairperson guidelines for oral sessions apply accordingly for the poster pitches:

• Introduce the poster presenter;
• Mention the poster board number;
• Ensure that the speaker is audible, and visible to the online participants, i.e. check and correct the position of the microphone and camera;
• Communicate to the speaker how much time is available for the poster pitch; for example, stand up after 0:45 seconds and time is over after 01:00 min; the digital timer visible on the screen may be used;
• NO question and answers: Do not allow questions and discussions during the poster introduction time, but invite the audience to discuss all questions and suggestions with the author in front of the poster in the poster area.

Designate a Chairperson

Normally (one of) the convener(s) who prepared the session is also chairing (part of) the poster session. Should this not be possible, speakers/authors may be nominated by the appropriate convener(s) to act as chairperson of a particular poster sub-session. Make sure that the chairpersons are aware of the tasks of the poster session chair and are aware of these guidelines.