The Organizing Committee for the Philadelphia SHARP Conference 2013 is delighted to announce a new conference presentation format: the Lightning Session.
Alongside the usual presentations of research through 20-minute individual papers, pre-formed panels with three or four speakers, and the occasional Round Table, some presenters this year will take part in SHARP's inaugural Lightning, or short-paper, sessions. Each speaker will have just 10 minutes to deliver his or her talk, with a maximum of three Powerpoint slides or one single-page handout permitted.
The intellectual demands of this format are different from those of any other at the conference, and we anticipate that the distillation and specificity required by brevity will revel connections and commonalities among projects showcased in this way.
After all four or five presentations in a Lightning Session have been delivered, there will be a round-table-style discussion in which presenters and audience members can follow up on questions and topics of common interest. Senior members of our Organizing Committee will be moderating these sessions, and eagerly anticipate encountering a range of new scholarship.
More information about session themes and moderators will be posted here in June 2013.
We are grateful to our presenters and moderators for their enthusiasm about these groundbreaking new Sessions, and we look forward to your support and participation in Philadelphia this July.