Guidance for Leading a Roundtable Discussion

All roundtable discussion topics run concurrently. They are organized to run as two 35-minute sessions, with a 5-minute break in the middle, which can also be used as an opportunity for participants to switch discussion tables (they may also choose to remain at your table the entire time).

Your role as session leader will be to help moderate the discussion as well as to lend your expertise during the session. You do not need to prepare anything ahead of time, and we do not expect that roundtable discussion leaders will have any sort of presentation prepared. Ideally, you will moderate a discussion wherein:

• you and others at your table contribute your expertise and experience with others.
• participants can come with questions and come away with answers or thoughtful discussion toward addressing the question.
• all participants have the opportunity to speak and participate in a rich discussion, without people dominating the conversation or moving off-topic. Note that some people may not feel comfortable talking, but keep an eye out for participants who look like they want to speak and help them feel empowered to do so.
• embrace that this is a discussion and there may be unresolved topics at the end.
• you are encouraged to take notes and post resources and ideas on the roundtable event page for participants to refer back to and/or new readers can learn from. Please ensure these are written in a way that would make sense to people who did not participate in the discussion so they are more easily understanable by a large audience.

We also ask that you do pause after 35 minutes to allow participants to take a break. More informal discussions can continue to run during that time, but we want to give participants an easy opportunity to take a break and/or join another topic of interest.