Session Information & Instructions for Program Participants

Please review the information in the program carefully. Email corrections and/or changes to sessions@weai.org. If plans have changed and you are not participating in the conference, please advise your session chair or session organizer and our office immediately. 

Sessions will be held fully in-person and fully virtual with only keynote addresses being streamed out to virtual attendees. These instructions apply to both session types, with the following additional details specifically for virtual sessions: Virtual Session Configuration

Audio-Visual Equipment

Projectors, screens, and computers will be provided in each meeting room. Remember to bring a USB drive to transfer your presentation slides to the computer provided in your meeting room.

Session Structure & Procedures

If your session has discussants, they are assigned first paper to first discussant, second paper to second discussant, etc. However all session participants are expected to be familiar with all the papers in the session and to contribute to the discussion.

By March 15, paper presenters must upload their paper to the conference platform. After logging in, visit MY ACCOUNT > ALL where you can access and edit your submission(s) in round "Accepted Papers for Program Placement" and upload your final drafts/slides. If you are unable to upload your paper by March 15, contact your session chair and assigned discussant immediately to keep them apprised of your progress. 

Session time allocations (based on four papers): 105 minutes total. 15 minutes per paper presentation plus 5 minutes for the paper’s primary discussant, then time for all other participants’ discussion. The session chair may alter time allocations if appropriate.

Email addresses for participants are not posted on the online program for privacy reasons. Session organizers will facilitate the discussion amongst their participants. WEAI will coordinate communications for volunteer session participants.

Session Chairs

Your involvement in the weeks prior to the conference is essential to the session’s success.

Before the conference, facilitate communication amongst session participants. Follow up with your session participants to ensure papers are uploaded for sharing with everyone in your session by March 15. Discus­sants have no obligation to discuss a late paper.

During the conference, arrive in your assigned meeting room a few minutes early to check on the computer and projector. Watch the clock and ensure that presenters and discussants stay within their allotted timeframes.

After the session, complete the chair questionnaire you will receive by email. Your feedback helps us improve future conferences.

Paper Presenters

By March 15, upload your paper to the conference platform as described above. Limit your paper to 15 to 25 double-spaced pages in order to not overburden your discussant and fellow participants. 

During your session, stay within the allotted time (usually 15 minutes). Summarize the paper’s objective, methods, main points, and conclusions. Do not read your paper.

Tips on being an effective presenter from former Economic Inquiry Editor Bill Neilson:

  • Do not go long. Going long means less time for feedback. It is much better to present only a small portion of your paper well than to go long and try to present the entire thing. Also, audience members punish presenters who go long by withdrawing their attention, and you do not want this. So, if anything, make your presentation shorter than 15 minutes and restrict attention to only things people absolutely have to know. The introduction should be short, and the literature review shorter, perhaps non-existent.

Discussants

Before the conference, if you cannot meet your commitment, please locate a substitute and contact both WEAI and the session chair immediately.

During your session, be prepared to offer comments and constructive criticism. Plan your remarks to stay within the allotted time (usually 5 to 8 minutes). In the chair’s absence, the first discussant listed is assigned as an alternate chair. Each paper has a primary discussant, but everyone is urged to contribute to the discussion of all papers.

Tips on being an effective discussant from former Economic Inquiry Editor Bill Neilson:

  1. Summarize the paper very quickly. This does two things: (1) it helps audience members who were not paying attention catch up with what you are about to say.  (2) it shows the author what you got out of the paper. Most referee reports begin with summaries of the paper, and these are valuable to the author because they show what points were most salient. 
  2. Talk about how you would have approached the problem.  This is great for sessions where participants all come from different specializations and so the different approaches would be interesting to hear.
  3. Talk about strengths of the author’s approach. It is always nice for the author to hear something positive, but it is also good for the audience to learn what was especially good about the paper they just heard.
  4. Talk about any strategies for improvement you can think of.
  5. The key thing to remember in discussing a paper is that you are talking to the audience, not the author. The author is only one member of the audience, but you want to impress everyone. Serving as a discussant is a marketing opportunity for you, and you should use it to show any possible recruiter in the audience what a fantastic colleague you would be. So, your discussion should be a self-contained talk that everyone in the audience will understand, not just the author.
Conference Dates to Remember

  • February 15: Early-Bird Registration discount ends.
  • March 15: Deadline for papers to reach fellow session participants.
  • April 11: Virtual program. Sessions held in Melbourne Standard Time zone. Note that daylight savings time in Melbourne ends April 3, so when planning for your home time zone the time conversion may shift as Melbourne goes back to Standard Time.
  • April 12-15: Conference in Melbourne.
  • October 31:  Deadline for WEAI members to submit revised conference papers free of charge to Economic Inquiry or Contemporary Economic Policy for possible publication.