Session chairs will be responsible for the following duties:

1. Before your session, introduce yourself to the presenters in your session. Ask them how they'd like to be introduced, and if they have any special Audio-visual needs. Help them set up and/or point out the A/V staff who will be on-hand to help. Remember, speakers often appreciate knowing in advance who is in charge of the session, but they might not immediately know who the chair of their session is.
2. At the beginning of your session, briefly introduce yourself and your session to the audience. Although WASPAA is a small, friendly environment, new attendees not familiar with the normal WASPAA crowd will appreciate a 30 second introduction of who you are, where you're from, and what the session is about.
3. For each of the papers in your session, briefly introduce the speaker, including his/her affiliation.
4. Keep speakers to the established time schedule. All paper presentations will be allocated 20 minutes. Speakers should allot 15 minutes for their presentation and 3 minutes for questions/discussion. Chairs should use the final two minutes to allow a transition to the next speaker. Please give speakers a five minute and one minute warning to help them gauge their time (two sheets of paper with "5 min" and "1 min" written on them are often useful for this task).
5. If any technical difficulties arise during the presentation, assist the presenter in finding the problem.
6. During the discussion period following each paper, moderate the discussion. In particular, please be prepared to interject thoughtful questions if there are few immediate responses from the audience. Silence after a presentation is often uncomfortable for the presenter, and session chairs should support presenters by starting and leading the discussion if necessary.