Speaker+Selection

= MACUL CONFERENCE =

TIMELINE

 * Purpose: ** The duties of the speaker selection committee are to select the regular sessions for the MACUL conference. The goal of the committee is to select a balance of sessions based upon the strands and audience levels.

= August = Remind Board Members and SIG Officers to recommend 1 or 2 specific speakers that they know are well qualified. Recommended speakers fill out the speaker form with that information and are automatically selected to present.

= September = Recruit Reviewers. In recent years, over 300 proposals were reviewed. Each proposal is evaluated by two reviewers on-line. Decide how many should be assigned to each reviewer. For example, if each reviewer was to read 30 proposals, 20 readers are needed. These do not have to be Board members! Reviewers do not need to attend a meeting, just review proposals online. It's helpful if the reviewer has presented at past conferences.

Establish the review time (Proposals are due October 3; reviews must be completed by October 10).

Identify the Final Speaker Review Team. This team in the past has included up to 4 persons: the Executive Director, Speaker Selection Committee chairperson, Conference Co-chairs, Board President, Featured Speaker Chair, other in training. Establish Final Review date soon after October 10.

Communicate with Janet Karpus to identify how many speaker slots you need to fill for each of the different room sizes.

Investigate how many speaker applications have been submitted for the available slots. If there is not at least 25% more sessions that you have available slots, then generate a last minute request for speakers.

Speaker Review Set-Up This process uses a web site that still has the front end, but is no longer working. Contact Janet Karpus and Cathy Collela from WMU Conferences and Seminars to find out the information about who will be providing the layout for the reviewers to use to score the proposals. Review the layout.

= October = Speaker proposal deadline has been during the first week- around Oct 4. The proposals must be reviewed by around the 10th so that the information can be collated and sent to a final review committee that makes decisions regarding how many of the sessions will be accepted based on the reviewers scores, room, and time limitations.

1) When the MACUL Speaker proposals are ready to be reviewed on-line, WMU C&S can divide up the proposals among the reviewers. When possible, give the reviewer groups of sessions in the same strand. The on-line submission site is "shut down." If a speaker tries to apply on-line they will receive a message instructing them to fax their proposal to the WMU office to be placed on the waiting list (the late proposals are sent to the Final Selection Committee before their meeting).
 * Speaker Reviewer On-line Process:**

2) Reviewers will be given the log in site-such as: dde.wmich.edu/conferences/macul/review.html

3) Reviewers will be assigned a password.

4) Reviewers select each record assigned to them, give a score from 1 - 5, and assign a room size taking into consideration the room size the speaker has suggested. They submit their results (the main page will highlight each completed record). A scoring rubric would be helpful.

5) Be sure that all the reviews are completed by the deadline, so that there is time to prepare the spreadsheet and gather all of the information needed for the Final Review Committee. One year, three reviewers did not complete their reviews and therefore created a lot of extra work for others.

6) When the review of proposals is complete, WMU C&S will send an Excel file to the chairperson of the Speaker Selection Committee and members of the Final Selection Committee.

7) WMU C&S will identify the contact person for any on-line technical difficulties.

U of Cincinnati Conf Planner provides the speaker selection chair a spreadsheet list of rooms and sizes available. She identifies the rooms for TWICE, Featured Speakers, Hands-On Lab, etc. This creates a total number of each size of rooms the speaker selection committee must fill.
 * Final Speaker Selection Review Team Information needs:**

Communicate with MACUL Office (Ieva, Ric) and U of Cincinnati Conf Planner (Chris, Diane H) to obtain copies of the following Excel spreadsheets information created for this process. Note: Past experience showed the data was easier to work with in Excel using the auto-filter features than in FileMaker Pro).

1) "Attendance for Speaker & Sessions in 200_" - lists the sessions presented in the prior year and the approximate attendance for these sessions. This information would be helpful for the reviewers to have when they are recommending room sizes.

2) "Waiting List –date-" - a list of sessions to use to fill cancellations in a priority order. This helps WMU C&S decide on who receives the next open slot.

3) "MACUL Room Availability 200_" - a list of how many of what size rooms are available. This is more critical in Grand Rapids because of the smaller rooms. Use this information to assign room sizes so that the right number of sessions are assigned for the number of available slots.

4) "Session Speakers 200_ Fina1" - used to quickly review who was selected and what size of rooms they were assigned. This was given to the committee members.

5) "Session Speakers 200_a" - used to view the scored information by different headings. This helped when looking for balance in sessions or to find all those who were identified as being for tech directors, etc. This has a lot of different workbooks with the same information, quickly viewed in different order. 6) "Reviewer Scores" is a raw sheet used to work with the scores.


 * Final Speaker Selection Process:**

1) The Final Review Team meets for approximately 4-5 hours. 2) Identify final selection of speakers. This is started by looking at the highest averages for each proposal and marking these as "YES". 3) Try to create some balance in the strands. 4) Select the right number of speakers for the available room sizes. Move sessions to larger room or smaller room sizes if needed to use the available slots for each room size. 5) Other automatics need to be included: a. sponsor sessions (some sponsors get one guaranteed slot, major sponsors - more than one) b. invited speakers (those who have been labeled as "invited" on their application.) 6) Leave a few slots open for sessions which might have “slipped through the cracks" and should be included because of the topics or speaker. For example, even if a tech strand scores low, it's included. Also, leave a few rooms available until later, because of last minute sponsors and other great speakers or topics.

A challenge is how many proposals to accept from exhibitors when they apply under different presenter's names. Exhibitors are encouraged to present with an educator. We don't guarantee Exhibitors a session unless they are a sponsor. Sometime an exhibitor may not have any, while another exhibitor may have two, depending on the topic and our feelings about the level of interest for this topic.

DO NOT WORRY ABOUTSESSION TIMES OR DAYS. U of Cincinnati Conf Planner does all the assigning of days and times. Provide them with a list of: -who is accepted -the room size they're assigned to -who is on the waiting list.

7) Send the final spreadsheet to U of Cincinnati Conf Planner. Also provide them with a prioritized waiting list.

November
Work with U of Cincinnati Conf Planner to develop a process to proof times assigned to sessions in a given strand. This is an effort to avoid possible conflicts of assigning specific strand sessions at the same time (i.e.: too many “Technical Support Issues sessions during a given hour.). SIG leaders have volunteered to help review the session schedule. = =

Update this process to meet the Speaker Selection Committee needs