Event Format

VaMoS is a highly interactive event. Sessions are organised so as to provoke discussion among the presenters of papers, discussants and all the other participants. Typically, after a paper is presented, it is immediately discussed by a pre-assigned discussant, then subject to a free discussion involving all participants.

Which roles are there?

Three particular roles can be distinguished in this organisation:

• Presenter (PR) – presents a paper. A PR is also often a discussant (see below).
• Discussant (DC) – prepares the discussion of a paper. Each paper is assigned one DC. DCs are presenters of other papers in the same session. The DC gives a critical review of the paper directly after its presentation, guided by a predefined set of questions (see below). The assignments of discussants will be made available to paper authors well before the conference.
• Session Chair (SC) – introduces the presenters of the papers in a session. The SC takes care of the time, organises the discussion of a paper after its presentation, and gives the word to speakers in the audience during discussions. The SC also moderates session and plenary discussions.

How do I know which role I have and what I have to do?

Presenter (PR) – Your paper has been accepted and you will be the author who presents the paper. It is highly recommended that you attend all three days of the event and take an active part in the discussion of all papers presented at the conference. Prepare your presentation and bear in mind the available time of 20 minutes for presentation. Meet the SC in the online meeting a few minutes before the session starts. Please make sure to share your presentation screen in the online tool before starting your talk.

Discussant (DC) – Read the paper you are assigned to: For each session, an author of the first paper will discuss the second paper, an author of the second paper will discuss the third paper, and an author of the third paper will discuss the first paper. Please have a look at the programme to check when the paper you should discuss is scheduled. Prepare short personal notes answering the following questions to stimulate discussion through your 3-minute presentation:

• What is the main contribution of the presented paper?
• How does the contribution relate to your work (or other work that you know well)?
• What would you suggest to improve/complement/extend the contribution of the paper?
• What are your individual questions (clarification, industry applicability, future potentials, etc.)?

Session Chair (SC) – Please prepare by taking a look at the papers of your session. Meet the PRs a few minutes before your session starts. Open your session by introducing its topic and the first PR. Hand the word to the PR and ask them to share their presentation on the screen. In case of any technical problems, there will be one of the organizers present in the online meeting to assist. Keep the time and give the PR signs when the presentation exceeds the available time: presentations are scheduled for 20 min, the following discussion of each paper (including discussant) is scheduled for 10 minutes. Please pay attention to online participants “raising their hand” or writing questions to the chat. For questions in the chat, invite the question author to pose their question via audio; only if this is not possible, please read out the question in their name. Invite the general audience to the discussion and moderate the paper discussion to keep the session structured and focused. Close the paper discussion and hand over to the next PR. After the last paper discussion, close the session when the time is over.