Room setup
Ideal room setup
Your ideal room setup will depend on the types of activities that will make up your workshop. A workshop that only has an interactive presentation will look very different from a workshop requiring attendees to break into groups or which has catering needs. Below we break down the different types of activities that might be part of a workshop and what types of rooms might most benefit them. Before we get into specifics, here are some general tips for room set up:
Visit the room before your event
Choose a room that has worked for the type of event you’re hosting in the past
Arrange the room to make the workshop more interactive (limit the number of faraway chairs or position chairs into a semicircle. This is particularly important if your presenting to a small number of people).
Pick a room that you can easily rearrange (i.e. that has chairs or tables that can be moved)
Bring extra extension cords
Setup recommendations for specific workshop activities
Position the camera and mic in front of any speakers without completely obstructing the audience.
Place a mic in the audience so that questions don’t need to be repeated for the livestream. If this isn’t possible, ask speakers to repeat audience questions for the livestream.
Get to the room at least an hour early and test the livestream setup.
Make sure you’ll have internet access in the room before choosing it.
Panels
Make sure you have at least 5 moveable chairs (for panelists and your moderator, ideally not stools)
If possible, have the panel in a smaller (non-auditorium) room where it’s easier to hear the panelists and the audience can more directly interact with them.
If in a larger room, you’ll need at least one mic for the panelists to pass around but ideally each panelist will have their own mic.
Seat panelists at chairs roughly facing each other (while also facing the audience) to encourage discussion and participation.
Situate the moderator close to the other panelists (sitting with them and not obstructing audience view). This way the moderator can better dive into the conversation and encourage the panelists to chime in.
You can find more advice on running a great panel here.
Exercises with smaller groups or round table discussions among groups of attendees
Make sure to find a room with many mobile chairs and possibly mobile tables.
Unless the workshop consists entirely of these types of events, tables won’t be necessary but may be useful if attendees are completing written exercises of some kind.
If written exercises are a part of your workshop, be sure to come with the adequate number of pens and worksheets for your attendees. You should also make sure the room you choose has a white or chalk board so that you can help the groups brainstorm. If there is no white or chalk board you can also bring a canvas with a large notepad or poster board.
Tool demos
If you’re inviting organizations or individuals to demo their reproducibility tools at your workshop, make sure they get sufficient table space to do so.
Reach out to those giving demos directly to get a better understanding of how much space they need or let them know the maximum amount of space they’ll have.
Demo space should be somewhat physically separated from any general presentation space to avoid distracting attendees.
Demos work well at medium/large events (30+) attendees but can be awkward at smaller events.
It’s useful to pair demo time with an informal catered/networking session.
Catered sessions
If your event has food, you should make absolutely sure that food is allowed in the room you choose for the event and that you contact the required catering groups (some universities, for instance, have very strict rules about who can be used to cater university events and it may be useful to organize your event with a local student or postdoc group to make catering logistics easier).
Catered sessions should be separated both temporally and somewhat physically from the main presentation space. Temporally because you’ll want attendees to interact and speak with each other during the catered session and physically because the food setup can be distracting.
Try to get the food/drink to arrive at or around the time the catered session begins to avoid distracting attendees.
To encourage attendees to interact at the catered session, avoid having tables with chairs - high top tables or no tables at all work best (you will still want tables to hold the food and drink, but attendees can queue up for this).
Make sure the space containing the food won’t be too cramped as attendees swarm the food. Alternatively, make sure there is space for attendees to queue up for food.
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