Seesion chairs as they need to react to speaker and audience during the talks and Q&A.
Please consider who can fullfil this role for tutorials if they do not have a session chair.
When code of conduct violations go unchecked, the entire audience can leave the room with an awful feeling of being a witness to mistreatment. Due to the Bystander effect, it is likely that your audience will feel less empowered than normal to act on their own behalf.
All of them should read and understand the conference's Code of Conduct. They should be made aware that part of their role is to safe guard everyone present, and the atmosphere of the event, by minimising the potential impact of a code of conduct violation that happens in public during their session. We would like them to follow our prelimenary Code of Conduct guidelines for session chairs. We expect that they are prepared to stop severe Code of Conduct violations and know how to support attendees that may address them with CoC concerns before, during, or after, their session. We do not expect them to monitor or critique everyone's speech or actions. Nor do we expect them to take on the role of the CoC Response team.
As part of the session chair preperation, whether via email or on-site, you can share the following with them (or something along these lines):
"In talks, the session chair may interrupt the speaker to give a warning in the event of a code of conduct violation. If relevant, the screen should be blanked and offending slides skipped. Interrupting may not always be appropriate or feasible - the violation may be a minor gaffe, the chair may not respond quickly enough or be at some distance from the speaker, or the presentation may be a lightning talk. In such cases, the session chair may apologize to the audience at the end of the talk/session that a violation occurred and state that this incident will be followed up after the session.
Code of conduct violations should be reported to the response team, even if they were dealt with during the session. This helps to monitor the effectiveness of the code of conduct enforcement and allows the team to decide if any further action is necessary, e.g. making a general announcement to remind people of the code of conduct or to support the action that was taken by the chair.
You can reach the response team at <[email protected]>. The team members are: <list names>"
We recommend to have this shared by or on behalf of the response team.
Any responses with follow up questions or clarifications can then be addressed by the CoC team.
In the past, we addressed session chairs responses when they had concerns, e.g. there was a concern that it relies on the chair's opinion, in which case we clarified that this is true for general chairing duties and underlined that the actions should be moderate (a caution) unless the CoC violation is severe (e.g. targeted harassment).
The following was a section in the information email sent out to session chairs:
"Code of conduct (CoC)
Please familiarise yourself with the code of conduct: http://www.user2019.fr/coc/.
Any code of conduct violation that happens in your session should be reported to the response team, even if you addressed it during the session. This helps to monitor the effectiveness of the code of conduct enforcement and allows the team to decide if any further action is necessary, e.g. making a general announcement to remind people of the code of conduct or to support any action you took.
Feel free, but not obliged, to interrupt the speaker to give a warning in the event of a code of conduct violation. If relevant, the screen may be blanked and offending slides skipped. Interrupting may not always be appropriate or feasible - the violation may be a minor gaffe, you may not respond quickly enough or be at some distance from the speaker, or the presentation may be a lightning talk. In such cases, you may apologize to the audience at the end of the talk/session that a violation occurred and state that this incident will be followed up after the session.
The CoC team are identified with a blue arm band during the conference and may be contacted at [email protected]."