ASA Connect

I have a question for the ASA community.

What do you think of speed sessions? They have been growing in prominence at JSM to the point where they are the only way a contributed abstract can get an oral presentation.

I have found them helpful. Unlike both longer presentations and poster, which let you linger at leasure and ask questions to the author, they simply move too fast to really communicate much. 

In addition, I think they go too far in priveleging insiders over outsiders. While this is if course inevitable, the only way a topic can get an oral presentation of more than 5 minutes) is if it was organized as part of a session (invited or topic-contributed).

Finally, it caters to society's tendency to short attention spans, thinking in bullet points, and making snap judgments which inevitably tend to reinforce existing thinking, not to mention existing players and, of course, existing prejudices. As a profession, shouldn't we be resisting that tendency, training people to look at things carefully,  thinking in greater depth, being more open to new people and new ideas? 

Perhaps most contributed abstracts don't merit much in the way of presentation time. Even there, I think posters where authors get a slot of several hours to stand by their poster and take questions from passers-by are more helpful than speed sessions.

But I would suggest that our profession's largest North American conference should have some room, some  slots, reserved for abstracts that might come in from nowhere but merit full presentation and discussion.

I understand that we want to encourage researchers to collaborate and the session approach tends to do that. And of course any profession is inevitably going to give insiders an edge. 

But I think there should be slots that get a substantial amount of presentation time open to meritorious contributed abstracts. And I think the preferred presentation route for sessions not getting a substantial live presentation time should be the poster, not the speed session. Posters could, of course be done in a different format, perhaps as recorded presentations, slides, or videos. But they should retain two critical features that distinguish them from speed sessions: (1) The ability for attendees to peruse abstracts and focus on the ones of interest to them (rather than sitting through a whirl of short presentations presented sequentially), and (2) A substantial, scheduled period where a live author is available to take questions from passersby, whether in person or virtually. 

What do you think?

I have a question for the ASA community.

What do you think of speed sessions? They have been growing in prominence at JSM to the point where they are the only way a contributed abstract can get an oral presentation.

I have found them helpful. Unlike both longer presentations and poster, which let you linger at leasure and ask questions to the author, they simply move too fast to really communicate much. 

In addition, I think they go too far in priveleging insiders over outsiders. While this is if course inevitable, the only way a topic can get an oral presentation of more than 5 minutes) is if it was organized as part of a session (invited or topic-contributed).

Finally, it caters to society's tendency to short attention spans, thinking in bullet points, and making snap judgments which inevitably tend to reinforce existing thinking, not to mention existing players and, of course, existing prejudices. As a profession, shouldn't we be resisting that tendency, training people to look at things carefully,  thinking in greater depth, being more open to new people and new ideas? 

Perhaps most contributed abstracts don't merit much in the way of presentation time. Even there, I think posters where authors get a slot of several hours to stand by their poster and take questions from passers-by are more helpful than speed sessions.

But I would suggest that our profession's largest North American conference should have some room, some  slots, reserved for abstracts that might come in from nowhere but merit full presentation and discussion.

I understand that we want to encourage researchers to collaborate and the session approach tends to do that. And of course any profession is inevitably going to give insiders an edge. 

But I think there should be slots that get a substantial amount of presentation time open to meritorious contributed abstracts. And I think the preferred presentation route for sessions not getting a substantial live presentation time should be the poster, not the speed session. Posters could, of course be done in a different format, perhaps as recorded presentations, slides, or videos. But they should retain two critical features that distinguish them from speed sessions: (1) The ability for attendees to peruse abstracts and focus on the ones of interest to them (rather than sitting through a whirl of short presentations presented sequentially), and (2) A substantial, scheduled period where a live author is available to take questions from passersby, whether in person or virtually. 

What do you think?

I have a question for the ASA community.

What do you think of speed sessions? They have been growing in prominence at JSM to the point where they are the only way a contributed abstract can get an oral presentation.

I have found them helpful. Unlike both longer presentations and poster, which let you linger at leasure and ask questions to the author, they simply move too fast to really communicate much. 

In addition, I think they go too far in priveleging insiders over outsiders. While this is if course inevitable, the only way a topic can get an oral presentation of more than 5 minutes) is if it was organized as part of a session (invited or topic-contributed).

Finally, it caters to society's tendency to short attention spans, thinking in bullet points, and making snap judgments which inevitably tend to reinforce existing thinking, not to mention existing players and, of course, existing prejudices. As a profession, shouldn't we be resisting that tendency, training people to look at things carefully,  thinking in greater depth, being more open to new people and new ideas? 

Perhaps most contributed abstracts don't merit much in the way of presentation time. Even there, I think posters where authors get a slot of several hours to stand by their poster and take questions from passers-by are more helpful than speed sessions.

But I would suggest that our profession's largest North American conference should have some room, some  slots, reserved for abstracts that might come in from nowhere but merit full presentation and discussion.

I understand that we want to encourage researchers to collaborate and the session approach tends to do that. And of course any profession is inevitably going to give insiders an edge. 

But I think there should be slots that get a substantial amount of presentation time open to meritorious contributed abstracts. And I think the preferred presentation route for sessions not getting a substantial live presentation time should be the poster, not the speed session. Posters could, of course be done in a different format, perhaps as recorded presentations, slides, or videos. But they should retain two critical features that distinguish them from speed sessions: (1) The ability for attendees to peruse abstracts and focus on the ones of interest to them (rather than sitting through a whirl of short presentations presented sequentially), and (2) A substantial, scheduled period where a live author is available to take questions from passersby, whether in person or virtually. 

What do you think?

I have a question for the ASA community.

What do you think of speed sessions? They have been growing in prominence at JSM to the point where they are the only way a contributed abstract can get an oral presentation.

I have found them helpful. Unlike both longer presentations and poster, which let you linger at leasure and ask questions to the author, they simply move too fast to really communicate much. 

In addition, I think they go too far in priveleging insiders over outsiders. While this is if course inevitable, the only way a topic can get an oral presentation of more than 5 minutes) is if it was organized as part of a session (invited or topic-contributed).

Finally, it caters to society's tendency to short attention spans, thinking in bullet points, and making snap judgments which inevitably tend to reinforce existing thinking, not to mention existing players and, of course, existing prejudices. As a profession, shouldn't we be resisting that tendency, training people to look at things carefully,  thinking in greater depth, being more open to new people and new ideas? 

Perhaps most contributed abstracts don't merit much in the way of presentation time. Even there, I think posters where authors get a slot of several hours to stand by their poster and take questions from passers-by are more helpful than speed sessions.

But I would suggest that our profession's largest North American conference should have some room, some  slots, reserved for abstracts that might come in from nowhere but merit full presentation and discussion.

I understand that we want to encourage researchers to collaborate and the session approach tends to do that. And of course any profession is inevitably going to give insiders an edge. 

But I think there should be slots that get a substantial amount of presentation time open to meritorious contributed abstracts. And I think the preferred presentation route for sessions not getting a substantial live presentation time should be the poster, not the speed session. Posters could, of course be done in a different format, perhaps as recorded presentations, slides, or videos. But they should retain two critical features that distinguish them from speed sessions: (1) The ability for attendees to peruse abstracts and focus on the ones of interest to them (rather than sitting through a whirl of short presentations presented sequentially), and (2) A substantial, scheduled period where a live author is available to take questions from passersby, whether in person or virtually. 

What do you think?

I have a question for the ASA community.

What do you think of speed sessions? They have been growing in prominence at JSM to the point where they are the only way a contributed abstract can get an oral presentation.

I have found them helpful. Unlike both longer presentations and poster, which let you linger at leasure and ask questions to the author, they simply move too fast to really communicate much. 

In addition, I think they go too far in priveleging insiders over outsiders. While this is if course inevitable, the only way a topic can get an oral presentation of more than 5 minutes) is if it was organized as part of a session (invited or topic-contributed).

Finally, it caters to society's tendency to short attention spans, thinking in bullet points, and making snap judgments which inevitably tend to reinforce existing thinking, not to mention existing players and, of course, existing prejudices. As a profession, shouldn't we be resisting that tendency, training people to look at things carefully,  thinking in greater depth, being more open to new people and new ideas? 

Perhaps most contributed abstracts don't merit much in the way of presentation time. Even there, I think posters where authors get a slot of several hours to stand by their poster and take questions from passers-by are more helpful than speed sessions.

But I would suggest that our profession's largest North American conference should have some room, some  slots, reserved for abstracts that might come in from nowhere but merit full presentation and discussion.

I understand that we want to encourage researchers to collaborate and the session approach tends to do that. And of course any profession is inevitably going to give insiders an edge. 

But I think there should be slots that get a substantial amount of presentation time open to meritorious contributed abstracts. And I think the preferred presentation route for sessions not getting a substantial live presentation time should be the poster, not the speed session. Posters could, of course be done in a different format, perhaps as recorded presentations, slides, or videos. But they should retain two critical features that distinguish them from speed sessions: (1) The ability for attendees to peruse abstracts and focus on the ones of interest to them (rather than sitting through a whirl of short presentations presented sequentially), and (2) A substantial, scheduled period where a live author is available to take questions from passersby, whether in person or virtually. 

What do you think?

I have a question for the ASA community.

What do you think of speed sessions? They have been growing in prominence at JSM to the point where they are the only way a contributed abstract can get an oral presentation.

I have found them helpful. Unlike both longer presentations and poster, which let you linger at leasure and ask questions to the author, they simply move too fast to really communicate much. 

In addition, I think they go too far in priveleging insiders over outsiders. While this is if course inevitable, the only way a topic can get an oral presentation of more than 5 minutes) is if it was organized as part of a session (invited or topic-contributed).

Finally, it caters to society's tendency to short attention spans, thinking in bullet points, and making snap judgments which inevitably tend to reinforce existing thinking, not to mention existing players and, of course, existing prejudices. As a profession, shouldn't we be resisting that tendency, training people to look at things carefully,  thinking in greater depth, being more open to new people and new ideas? 

Perhaps most contributed abstracts don't merit much in the way of presentation time. Even there, I think posters where authors get a slot of several hours to stand by their poster and take questions from passers-by are more helpful than speed sessions.

But I would suggest that our profession's largest North American conference should have some room, some  slots, reserved for abstracts that might come in from nowhere but merit full presentation and discussion.

I understand that we want to encourage researchers to collaborate and the session approach tends to do that. And of course any profession is inevitably going to give insiders an edge. 

But I think there should be slots that get a substantial amount of presentation time open to meritorious contributed abstracts. And I think the preferred presentation route for sessions not getting a substantial live presentation time should be the poster, not the speed session. Posters could, of course be done in a different format, perhaps as recorded presentations, slides, or videos. But they should retain two critical features that distinguish them from speed sessions: (1) The ability for attendees to peruse abstracts and focus on the ones of interest to them (rather than sitting through a whirl of short presentations presented sequentially), and (2) A substantial, scheduled period where a live author is available to take questions from passersby, whether in person or virtually. 

What do you think?

I have a question for the ASA community.

What do you think of speed sessions? They have been growing in prominence at JSM to the point where they are the only way a contributed abstract can get an oral presentation.

I have found them helpful. Unlike both longer presentations and poster, which let you linger at leasure and ask questions to the author, they simply move too fast to really communicate much. 

In addition, I think they go too far in priveleging insiders over outsiders. While this is if course inevitable, the only way a topic can get an oral presentation of more than 5 minutes) is if it was organized as part of a session (invited or topic-contributed).

Finally, it caters to society's tendency to short attention spans, thinking in bullet points, and making snap judgments which inevitably tend to reinforce existing thinking, not to mention existing players and, of course, existing prejudices. As a profession, shouldn't we be resisting that tendency, training people to look at things carefully,  thinking in greater depth, being more open to new people and new ideas? 

Perhaps most contributed abstracts don't merit much in the way of presentation time. Even there, I think posters where authors get a slot of several hours to stand by their poster and take questions from passers-by are more helpful than speed sessions.

But I would suggest that our profession's largest North American conference should have some room, some  slots, reserved for abstracts that might come in from nowhere but merit full presentation and discussion.

I understand that we want to encourage researchers to collaborate and the session approach tends to do that. And of course any profession is inevitably going to give insiders an edge. 

But I think there should be slots that get a substantial amount of presentation time open to meritorious contributed abstracts. And I think the preferred presentation route for sessions not getting a substantial live presentation time should be the poster, not the speed session. Posters could, of course be done in a different format, perhaps as recorded presentations, slides, or videos. But they should retain two critical features that distinguish them from speed sessions: (1) The ability for attendees to peruse abstracts and focus on the ones of interest to them (rather than sitting through a whirl of short presentations presented sequentially), and (2) A substantial, scheduled period where a live author is available to take questions from passersby, whether in person or virtually. 

What do you think?

I have a question for the ASA community.

What do you think of speed sessions? They have been growing in prominence at JSM to the point where they are the only way a contributed abstract can get an oral presentation.

I have found them helpful. Unlike both longer presentations and poster, which let you linger at leasure and ask questions to the author, they simply move too fast to really communicate much. 

In addition, I think they go too far in priveleging insiders over outsiders. While this is if course inevitable, the only way a topic can get an oral presentation of more than 5 minutes) is if it was organized as part of a session (invited or topic-contributed).

Finally, it caters to society's tendency to short attention spans, thinking in bullet points, and making snap judgments which inevitably tend to reinforce existing thinking, not to mention existing players and, of course, existing prejudices. As a profession, shouldn't we be resisting that tendency, training people to look at things carefully,  thinking in greater depth, being more open to new people and new ideas? 

Perhaps most contributed abstracts don't merit much in the way of presentation time. Even there, I think posters where authors get a slot of several hours to stand by their poster and take questions from passers-by are more helpful than speed sessions.

But I would suggest that our profession's largest North American conference should have some room, some  slots, reserved for abstracts that might come in from nowhere but merit full presentation and discussion.

I understand that we want to encourage researchers to collaborate and the session approach tends to do that. And of course any profession is inevitably going to give insiders an edge. 

But I think there should be slots that get a substantial amount of presentation time open to meritorious contributed abstracts. And I think the preferred presentation route for sessions not getting a substantial live presentation time should be the poster, not the speed session. Posters could, of course be done in a different format, perhaps as recorded presentations, slides, or videos. But they should retain two critical features that distinguish them from speed sessions: (1) The ability for attendees to peruse abstracts and focus on the ones of interest to them (rather than sitting through a whirl of short presentations presented sequentially), and (2) A substantial, scheduled period where a live author is available to take questions from passersby, whether in person or virtually. 

What do you think?

I have a question for the ASA community.

What do you think of speed sessions? They have been growing in prominence at JSM to the point where they are the only way a contributed abstract can get an oral presentation.

I have found them helpful. Unlike both longer presentations and poster, which let you linger at leasure and ask questions to the author, they simply move too fast to really communicate much. 

In addition, I think they go too far in priveleging insiders over outsiders. While this is if course inevitable, the only way a topic can get an oral presentation of more than 5 minutes) is if it was organized as part of a session (invited or topic-contributed).

Finally, it caters to society's tendency to short attention spans, thinking in bullet points, and making snap judgments which inevitably tend to reinforce existing thinking, not to mention existing players and, of course, existing prejudices. As a profession, shouldn't we be resisting that tendency, training people to look at things carefully,  thinking in greater depth, being more open to new people and new ideas? 

Perhaps most contributed abstracts don't merit much in the way of presentation time. Even there, I think posters where authors get a slot of several hours to stand by their poster and take questions from passers-by are more helpful than speed sessions.

But I would suggest that our profession's largest North American conference should have some room, some  slots, reserved for abstracts that might come in from nowhere but merit full presentation and discussion.

I understand that we want to encourage researchers to collaborate and the session approach tends to do that. And of course any profession is inevitably going to give insiders an edge. 

But I think there should be slots that get a substantial amount of presentation time open to meritorious contributed abstracts. And I think the preferred presentation route for sessions not getting a substantial live presentation time should be the poster, not the speed session. Posters could, of course be done in a different format, perhaps as recorded presentations, slides, or videos. But they should retain two critical features that distinguish them from speed sessions: (1) The ability for attendees to peruse abstracts and focus on the ones of interest to them (rather than sitting through a whirl of short presentations presented sequentially), and (2) A substantial, scheduled period where a live author is available to take questions from passersby, whether in person or virtually. 

What do you think?

I agree it's always good to air the assumptions on which decisions are based.

I think the assumption that the talk is just an advertisement for a paper in the Proceedings is not valid. The publication in the Proceedings, if any, is generally just a rendering of the talk in paragraph form. If there's a paper underlying the talk that's more substantial than that, it gets published in a peer-reviewed journal, not the conference journal. If people are like me, they listen to the talks and read peer-reviewed journals. They don't generally read conference proceedings. 

i think the basic and very understandable reason is that people want peer-reviewed journal publication creeits. Publishing something that's a lot more effort than their talk in a non-peer-reviewed journal is basically a waste of their time. 

I would suggest two courses of action based on this:

1. If you want to encorage people to submit a paper and get more participant buy-in into the model that the talk just an advertisement for the paper, publish peer-reviewed conference papers. Many conferences have an arrangement with a journal by which it publishes a special conference edition of the journal for conference talk papers that pass peer review. The BIOP conference does this. So do major clinical conferences in the biomedical field. Why not have JSM do this? Why not have a special JSM issue (or volume) of JASA that contains papers from JSM conference presentations? Presenters would submit their papers to JSM instead of the proceedings and they would then undergo peer review. I would suggest either abolishing the Proceedings and replacing them with this type of JASA special edition, or continuing the Proceedings and have them contain all papers submitted to JASA for the special edition, including rejected ones. If the nature and/or quality of JSM papers is different from what JASA wants to focus on, perhaps JSM could work with another journal or even develop its own peer-reviewed journal. 

2. Assume the talk is the paper, and people won't be willing to spend a lot of time on something that is neither oresented af a conference nor published in a peer-reviewed journal. In this case, abolish speed sessions. Give oral presentations enough time to actually present a paper. Use poster format for presentations not meriting that much time. If all oral presentations got 20 or even 30 minutes, there might need to be more parallel sessions and more meeting space, and the conference fees would have to go up to pay for it, but the basic JSM format wouldn't need to be altered. There might also be somewhat fewer contributed papers accepted and more presentations accepted as posters. 

in either event, my personal take, just as one behavioral data point, is that when I want to see an advertisement for what the presenters have to say, I read the abstract. (The abstract is the advertisement). When I want to hear what they have to say, I go to the presentation. If I want to find out more, I look them up and read their peer-reviewed journal articles. I never read the Proceedings. 

I have a question for the ASA community.

What do you think of speed sessions? They have been growing in prominence at JSM to the point where they are the only way a contributed abstract can get an oral presentation.

I have found them helpful. Unlike both longer presentations and poster, which let you linger at leasure and ask questions to the author, they simply move too fast to really communicate much. 

In addition, I think they go too far in priveleging insiders over outsiders. While this is if course inevitable, the only way a topic can get an oral presentation of more than 5 minutes) is if it was organized as part of a session (invited or topic-contributed).

Finally, it caters to society's tendency to short attention spans, thinking in bullet points, and making snap judgments which inevitably tend to reinforce existing thinking, not to mention existing players and, of course, existing prejudices. As a profession, shouldn't we be resisting that tendency, training people to look at things carefully,  thinking in greater depth, being more open to new people and new ideas? 

Perhaps most contributed abstracts don't merit much in the way of presentation time. Even there, I think posters where authors get a slot of several hours to stand by their poster and take questions from passers-by are more helpful than speed sessions.

But I would suggest that our profession's largest North American conference should have some room, some  slots, reserved for abstracts that might come in from nowhere but merit full presentation and discussion.

I understand that we want to encourage researchers to collaborate and the session approach tends to do that. And of course any profession is inevitably going to give insiders an edge. 

But I think there should be slots that get a substantial amount of presentation time open to meritorious contributed abstracts. And I think the preferred presentation route for sessions not getting a substantial live presentation time should be the poster, not the speed session. Posters could, of course be done in a different format, perhaps as recorded presentations, slides, or videos. But they should retain two critical features that distinguish them from speed sessions: (1) The ability for attendees to peruse abstracts and focus on the ones of interest to them (rather than sitting through a whirl of short presentations presented sequentially), and (2) A substantial, scheduled period where a live author is available to take questions from passersby, whether in person or virtually. 

What do you think?

I agree it's always good to air the assumptions on which decisions are based.

I think the assumption that the talk is just an advertisement for a paper in the Proceedings is not valid. The publication in the Proceedings, if any, is generally just a rendering of the talk in paragraph form. If there's a paper underlying the talk that's more substantial than that, it gets published in a peer-reviewed journal, not the conference journal. If people are like me, they listen to the talks and read peer-reviewed journals. They don't generally read conference proceedings. 

i think the basic and very understandable reason is that people want peer-reviewed journal publication creeits. Publishing something that's a lot more effort than their talk in a non-peer-reviewed journal is basically a waste of their time. 

I would suggest two courses of action based on this:

1. If you want to encorage people to submit a paper and get more participant buy-in into the model that the talk just an advertisement for the paper, publish peer-reviewed conference papers. Many conferences have an arrangement with a journal by which it publishes a special conference edition of the journal for conference talk papers that pass peer review. The BIOP conference does this. So do major clinical conferences in the biomedical field. Why not have JSM do this? Why not have a special JSM issue (or volume) of JASA that contains papers from JSM conference presentations? Presenters would submit their papers to JSM instead of the proceedings and they would then undergo peer review. I would suggest either abolishing the Proceedings and replacing them with this type of JASA special edition, or continuing the Proceedings and have them contain all papers submitted to JASA for the special edition, including rejected ones. If the nature and/or quality of JSM papers is different from what JASA wants to focus on, perhaps JSM could work with another journal or even develop its own peer-reviewed journal. 

2. Assume the talk is the paper, and people won't be willing to spend a lot of time on something that is neither oresented af a conference nor published in a peer-reviewed journal. In this case, abolish speed sessions. Give oral presentations enough time to actually present a paper. Use poster format for presentations not meriting that much time. If all oral presentations got 20 or even 30 minutes, there might need to be more parallel sessions and more meeting space, and the conference fees would have to go up to pay for it, but the basic JSM format wouldn't need to be altered. There might also be somewhat fewer contributed papers accepted and more presentations accepted as posters. 

in either event, my personal take, just as one behavioral data point, is that when I want to see an advertisement for what the presenters have to say, I read the abstract. (The abstract is the advertisement). When I want to hear what they have to say, I go to the presentation. If I want to find out more, I look them up and read their peer-reviewed journal articles. I never read the Proceedings. 

I have a question for the ASA community.

What do you think of speed sessions? They have been growing in prominence at JSM to the point where they are the only way a contributed abstract can get an oral presentation.

I have found them helpful. Unlike both longer presentations and poster, which let you linger at leasure and ask questions to the author, they simply move too fast to really communicate much. 

In addition, I think they go too far in priveleging insiders over outsiders. While this is if course inevitable, the only way a topic can get an oral presentation of more than 5 minutes) is if it was organized as part of a session (invited or topic-contributed).

Finally, it caters to society's tendency to short attention spans, thinking in bullet points, and making snap judgments which inevitably tend to reinforce existing thinking, not to mention existing players and, of course, existing prejudices. As a profession, shouldn't we be resisting that tendency, training people to look at things carefully,  thinking in greater depth, being more open to new people and new ideas? 

Perhaps most contributed abstracts don't merit much in the way of presentation time. Even there, I think posters where authors get a slot of several hours to stand by their poster and take questions from passers-by are more helpful than speed sessions.

But I would suggest that our profession's largest North American conference should have some room, some  slots, reserved for abstracts that might come in from nowhere but merit full presentation and discussion.

I understand that we want to encourage researchers to collaborate and the session approach tends to do that. And of course any profession is inevitably going to give insiders an edge. 

But I think there should be slots that get a substantial amount of presentation time open to meritorious contributed abstracts. And I think the preferred presentation route for sessions not getting a substantial live presentation time should be the poster, not the speed session. Posters could, of course be done in a different format, perhaps as recorded presentations, slides, or videos. But they should retain two critical features that distinguish them from speed sessions: (1) The ability for attendees to peruse abstracts and focus on the ones of interest to them (rather than sitting through a whirl of short presentations presented sequentially), and (2) A substantial, scheduled period where a live author is available to take questions from passersby, whether in person or virtually. 

What do you think?

I have a question for the ASA community.

What do you think of speed sessions? They have been growing in prominence at JSM to the point where they are the only way a contributed abstract can get an oral presentation.

I have found them helpful. Unlike both longer presentations and poster, which let you linger at leasure and ask questions to the author, they simply move too fast to really communicate much. 

In addition, I think they go too far in priveleging insiders over outsiders. While this is if course inevitable, the only way a topic can get an oral presentation of more than 5 minutes) is if it was organized as part of a session (invited or topic-contributed).

Finally, it caters to society's tendency to short attention spans, thinking in bullet points, and making snap judgments which inevitably tend to reinforce existing thinking, not to mention existing players and, of course, existing prejudices. As a profession, shouldn't we be resisting that tendency, training people to look at things carefully,  thinking in greater depth, being more open to new people and new ideas? 

Perhaps most contributed abstracts don't merit much in the way of presentation time. Even there, I think posters where authors get a slot of several hours to stand by their poster and take questions from passers-by are more helpful than speed sessions.

But I would suggest that our profession's largest North American conference should have some room, some  slots, reserved for abstracts that might come in from nowhere but merit full presentation and discussion.

I understand that we want to encourage researchers to collaborate and the session approach tends to do that. And of course any profession is inevitably going to give insiders an edge. 

But I think there should be slots that get a substantial amount of presentation time open to meritorious contributed abstracts. And I think the preferred presentation route for sessions not getting a substantial live presentation time should be the poster, not the speed session. Posters could, of course be done in a different format, perhaps as recorded presentations, slides, or videos. But they should retain two critical features that distinguish them from speed sessions: (1) The ability for attendees to peruse abstracts and focus on the ones of interest to them (rather than sitting through a whirl of short presentations presented sequentially), and (2) A substantial, scheduled period where a live author is available to take questions from passersby, whether in person or virtually. 

What do you think?

I have a question for the ASA community.

What do you think of speed sessions? They have been growing in prominence at JSM to the point where they are the only way a contributed abstract can get an oral presentation.

I have found them helpful. Unlike both longer presentations and poster, which let you linger at leasure and ask questions to the author, they simply move too fast to really communicate much. 

In addition, I think they go too far in priveleging insiders over outsiders. While this is if course inevitable, the only way a topic can get an oral presentation of more than 5 minutes) is if it was organized as part of a session (invited or topic-contributed).

Finally, it caters to society's tendency to short attention spans, thinking in bullet points, and making snap judgments which inevitably tend to reinforce existing thinking, not to mention existing players and, of course, existing prejudices. As a profession, shouldn't we be resisting that tendency, training people to look at things carefully,  thinking in greater depth, being more open to new people and new ideas? 

Perhaps most contributed abstracts don't merit much in the way of presentation time. Even there, I think posters where authors get a slot of several hours to stand by their poster and take questions from passers-by are more helpful than speed sessions.

But I would suggest that our profession's largest North American conference should have some room, some  slots, reserved for abstracts that might come in from nowhere but merit full presentation and discussion.

I understand that we want to encourage researchers to collaborate and the session approach tends to do that. And of course any profession is inevitably going to give insiders an edge. 

But I think there should be slots that get a substantial amount of presentation time open to meritorious contributed abstracts. And I think the preferred presentation route for sessions not getting a substantial live presentation time should be the poster, not the speed session. Posters could, of course be done in a different format, perhaps as recorded presentations, slides, or videos. But they should retain two critical features that distinguish them from speed sessions: (1) The ability for attendees to peruse abstracts and focus on the ones of interest to them (rather than sitting through a whirl of short presentations presented sequentially), and (2) A substantial, scheduled period where a live author is available to take questions from passersby, whether in person or virtually. 

What do you think?