I was attending a scientific conference recently which consisted of a series of short talks given by renowned scientists. The session was organized by a leading scientist in the field who invited the speakers and directed them to cover the key scientific subjects of the field to form a theme in the session. According to the agenda each speaker had 20 minutes for their talks with 15 minutes to present and 5 minutes to answer questions from the audience.

The session was scheduled to proceed like this: Talk number one; 10:00 to 10:20, Talk number two; 10:20 to 10:40 and so on.

It was to conclude at 12:00 for lunch.

What the session organizer neglected to account for was that he decided to give a 15 minute introductory talk at the beginning of the session. But, there was no time set aside for his introduction. This introduction is his right and quite common, but it is usually given a specific amount of time in the schedule.

Even if forgetting to take this into account during the session most people, in my opinion, should have realized this situation and would adjust the subsequent talks so that everyone got the right amount of time. Some might shorten question time of each of the talks by two or three minutes to make up for the session chair’s introduction and still end on time. I think the most common solution to this little situation is we all go late to lunch. No big deal and sessions running over time is extremely common.

On this particular occasion, the session chair gave his introduction and the first speaker started late. The result was a completely novel resolution to the late start caused by the Chair’s introduction. The session chair gave his introduction and then introduced the second speaker who started his 20 minute presentation at 10:13 AM. At 10:20 the session chair cuts off the presenter and allows no questions citing time constraints to make sure everyone else gets the right amount of time. The speaker apologizes for going so long and concludes very quickly and obviously embarrassed. He must have thought he talked 20 minutes as he scurried away. The audience did seem to think that was not quite right, but the next speaker was introduced and took up his 20 minute slot and the session ended on time with each subsequent speaker ending on time. I did over hear the first speaker musing that he felt he should have not been cut off after he realized what happened but the session was long over by then.

I’m sure that the session chair thought he only talked for a minute or two, but the assumption severely short changed the duration of the first speaker’s talk. The moral of the story is all session chairs need to be able to do math and calculate total times. Their introductory remarks may be a waste of time, but those minutes are real.