Before I review the Learning Technologies Autumn Forum, I want to point out the help and support the chairs offered across the four days.

It’s easy to overlook what the role involves.

A chair needs to understand what the session is trying to do, know enough about the subject to ask useful questions, prepare with the speakers beforehand where possible and work out how much involvement the session needs.

Then, once you’re live, you’re watching the speaker, the clock, the chat and the questions, while trying to judge an audience you mostly can’t see.

And there’s another complication with the online Autumn Firum. What the audience sees and responds to will be 30–60 seconds behind what you’re seeing in the studio feed. So you’re listening to one thing, watching another, tracking questions about something that happened half a minute ago and deciding when to step in.

It’s a bit like rubbing your tummy and patting your head while keeping an eye on the clock.

Sometimes the best thing is to stay out of the way. Sometimes it’s to challenge, clarify, draw out an example or connect something back to practice. A vendor presentation needs something different from a research session or a fireside conversation. And sometimes the plan changes completely, usually through technical, internet or technology problems.

Most of that is invisible when it works.

So before I post about what I took from the Forum itself, thank you to Erica Farmer, Abi Manifold, Henriette Kloots, Anit Mahay, Liz Drury, Anne-Marie Burbidge and Hannah Frame for the preparation, prompting, questioning and support across the sessions.

I chaired a few myself, so I know how much is going on behind the screen.