 Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening everyone. My name is Daniela. I'm Ida Boy Director of Strategic Programs and as you notice in the last few weeks, I'm leading this task of assigning chairs to the technical sessions. So I would like to thank you very much and to welcome you to the last preparatory meeting that we are having for the chairs for the Ida Boy members that volunteer to be chairing a session at the 2022 World Water Congress. It's starting 10 days from now in Copenhagen. We are going to start this session with a short speech from our Executive Director, Kala. He's going to be giving us some welcome, welcome remarks. So you, Kala. Thanks, Daniela. Hi. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening to you all. It's very nice to see so many of you on the call. I just really wanted to say a few words to you all before you kick off the meeting. First of all, I would just like to thank you really sincerely for all of the hard work that you're putting in to supporting us in this conference and also your offer to chair and co-chair the technical sessions that we have in Copenhagen. You know that IWA is a membership association and it's only through the activities of our members and our supporters that we are able to deliver such a good service. And our World Water Congress is, you know, have this huge reputation, right? Being really, really technically very strong but also run very efficiently. And it's because of service of it like yourselves that we're able to do that. This conference in Copenhagen is likely to be the largest World Water Congress we've had historically. The numbers in terms of registration are extremely high. They are overtaking the numbers we had in Tokyo, which was the previous largest conference we've had. And so it's going to be an extremely successful conference, both in terms of the numbers of people coming, but we have fantastic technical sessions. I think we have over 100 technical sessions. We have something like 60 workshops and of course we have a plenary sessions. So it's a very intense week and the program is also very intense, but if you read the details of the program, we have, you know, some fantastic papers being presented throughout the conference. This is the first outing that IWAs had since COVID, big, big outing. We've had some smaller events since COVID. But the last big conference we had was our Development Congress, which was in 2019 in Colombo. And of course we have our World Water Congress in Tokyo in 2018. So we are actually as a secretariat, we are quite nervous, we're quite anxious about the next couple of weeks, because we haven't delivered such a big event for such a long time. And also, you know, we've had some transitions within the organization we move from the Netherlands to London, and that's created certain challenges. So it's going to be quite an interesting couple of weeks for us. But I believe that with the help and support of yourselves that we can put on a really, really excellent conference. We have some fantastic keynote speakers for our plenary sessions. We have some really good workshops going on. Of course we've got fantastic technical sessions. There will be some high level activities. We have a high level summit. We have our utility, the forum, we have a regulator's forum. So it's really going to be, like I said, very intense, very diverse in terms of the activities that are going to take place. And we'd also like to thank my staff, you know, Daniela, Isabella, Aisha, Kuzito, you know, we have a lot of people working in the background at the secretariat, supporting this event. You know, I get to speak to you all but actually most of the work is being done by the staff here at the secretariat. So I'd like to also thank them. So with that, I'd like to close. I'd like to again, honestly, and very sincerely thank you for all your hard work. We really, really appreciate everything that you do for IWA. I really hope that I get a chance to meet many of you during the conference. I know many of you quite well. And so I really do hope that I get a chance to meet with you during the conference. So I will be very frequently at the IWA stands, so please come along to the stand and say hello. But I wish you all well. I think the conference is going to be a great success. And, you know, I hope that you enjoy the experience of chairing but also attending the conference. So with that, I'll hand back to Daniela. Thank you, Carla. So before I start my presentation, I will introduce our two colleagues that are here today with us. So Isabella, you are in camera, yes. Isabella, some of you already know she is the membership engagement officer responsible for the Young Water professional community. So probably all the Young Water professionals that are here today have already somehow interacted with Isabella. And she is going to be supporting us with the chat box. So you can propose questions by the end of the presentation. You can come to camera and speak. But if you want to share some questions in the chat box, you are welcome. Aisha Nichols. She's here as well. She is the global events and awards officer. She's already in Copenhagen now. And she will be supporting us with the questions because sometimes the questions that come are more related to the Congress organization than to the session itself. So Aisha is here to support me if there are some questions more specific that have to be addressed by her. So I'm going to start sharing my screen now. Yeah, I think now you can see the presentation. So our agenda today we had this short welcoming from Kala. Then I'm going to go through a very quick overview of the Congress program. We will discuss the technical session structure. Following I will talk a bit about the roles of responsibilities of the chairs. I can explain how you can contact both your coach here and the speakers from a session. And then we're going to have the longer part longest part of the meeting that is the Q&A session. There was quite interesting in the other two meetings. So this is a brief overview of the program. You can find more details in the website. We will have the opening ceremony on Sunday and daily from Monday to Thursday we will have two keynote planaries, one early morning at nine and one late afternoon. I think it's seven. I think it's 530 or 544 that we will start. And during the day we'll have three slots for technical sessions. One in the morning and two in the afternoon. In those slots you have 100 technical sessions with papers being presented. And we'll have around 60 workshops that were proposed by the members and approved by the program committee. And are engaging each one usually around five to six speakers. So today we are here to talk about the technical sessions that will be held in those three slots. As I mentioned the three slots, a day should start at 10.30, 1.30 and 3.45pm, except on Thursday, the last day of the Congress, because on Thursday we won't have the last slot. The slot at 15.45 won't happen because we will have the closing ceremony is starting just a few minutes after that. The usual program of each session is three full presentations, so three papers to be presented for 12 minutes each, each presenter will have 12 minutes to speak. And we'll have also three poster pitches. So very short presentations of around three to four minutes at most, followed by a Q&A session and ideally for a discussion moment that you can interact and engage the audience. In each session we will have two chairs who will be responsible jointly by running the section. What we emphasize here, we are changing, this was a decision from the program committee, we are changing a bit the structure of the tests for the chair. Usually in the events before COVID, we had a chair and a rapporteur in session. In the digital Congress that happened last year in May, we had a chair and a co-chair, and we had assigned very clear tasks to the chair and to the co-chair, and tasks. It was a more complex session to run because we had to operate Zoom and we had to get the questions from the chat box, it was a bit complex, so we had very clear tasks. This time we are not having an assigned chair and an assigned co-chair. We are having two chairs and it's up to you, to the two chairs, to discuss between yourselves who is going to be playing each of the tasks that are expected from you. This is totally flexible, it depends on who will feel more comfortable doing each task. That's why we ask you to discuss with your co-chair and have a plan for the session to have very clear who's going to be doing what. We try to allocate to all sessions one senior professional and one young water professional to give chances to give the floor for these young water professionals so they can network and then they can learn from the great experience of working with a more senior professional. We didn't manage to do that to all sessions, I don't have the exact number here, most of them yes, most of them you have one young water professional and one senior professional, but some sessions especially on Tuesday, we didn't manage to assign a young water professional because we have the emerging water leaders forum that will be happening on Tuesday as well and most of our young water professionals are joining this forum, so especially on Tuesday most of the sessions will have two senior chairs running. So the structure of the session, this is quite flexible and you'll be able to adjust this structure that we are suggesting here. So we are suggesting five minutes for an introduction moment where you can introduce yourself, talk a bit about you the two chairs and introduce the session what it's about and to have like some ice breaking conversations. Then you call the first presentation introduce the author, the author will have 12 minutes to speak, and then you can have like a short two to three minutes we will a moment just for them to clarify some points. Then you have the same of the second and the third presentation, then you can call the poster pictures also to this in the speakers. Those presentations will be much shorter so it doesn't really make sense to have a quick moment after these presentations. And then, if you do like that you have 25 minutes for a panel discussion, where you can connect let's say the, the papers, and you can engage the audience in the debate. After that you have five minutes to wrap up to conclude the session. This is just a suggestion I emphasize you can discuss between you between the chairs you can discuss and come up with something different, but you must follow the timing for the papers so each paper is 12 minutes and each poster fits three minutes. So this is strict, you should be strict about that, but the Q&A, you can have longer Q&A is after each presentation or longer Q&A session at the end, this is totally up to you yesterday there was a quite interesting discussion some of the chairs more experienced chairs were advocating for the option of having a longer session by the end of the presentations, some of other chairs also experienced said no it depends on the papers, so yes, it's totally up to you. So we suggest especially after you have read the abstracts that you discuss with your co-chair and define that. So most of the responsibilities is expected from the chairs. And as I mentioned I emphasize here it's up to you to define who's going to be doing what. So prior to the session, you should contact your co-chair and ensure you built this plan for how to run your session. I strongly suggest that you read the abstracts of the papers that will be presented in your session and prepare some questions to be addressed by the speakers, in case there are no questions coming from the audience and probably most of you that chairs know that this happens very often, the audience is a bit ashamed, shy in the beginning, and they don't come up with questions so it's important that you have some prepared questions to ice break. So here I informed that abstracts will be sent to all chairs by this Friday by tomorrow. I will email all of you with the recording of the session and the list of papers and the link for the abstracts tomorrow. You should also on the day of the session you should be there around like 20 minutes before and check if all speakers or presenters are there. And if one of them does not arrive, let's say about five minutes before the start, then you should contact the organization and we can try to reach out to them. There will be a volunteer in your room, so you can ask this volunteer, this volunteer will contact us, we will be able to access the information of who is there because they have to check in when entering the venue. So we'll be able to understand if the person is there and at the venue and it's not in the room, or if the person didn't check in at that time. We can inform you and then you can manage the best possible solution. During the session. That's the quite usual tasks to be performed as chairing as the chair of a session so we'll be open the session welcoming the audience, providing some housekeeping rules and the agenda of the day, you'll be introducing the speakers and the presentations and we'll conduct the Q&A session. We ask you to ensure that they respect time. Of course, this is not so strict as the digital Congress where at that time our Zoom session was going to stop so you really need to be very strict with time. But here we also ask you, although we have a long break between sessions, we kindly ask you to enforce the to the speakers that they must respect time. You should also capture the key outcomes of the session. This is very important. And that's why you have to set two chairs because I know it's difficult to do everything at the same time. One of the chairs should be capturing the key outcomes of session and of the discussion after the presentations for two reasons one because this will help you performing your last task in the session that is wrapping up the session. But also because you need to report a present a short report about the session. So we come to the after session tasks, and this is the most important one. You are requested to submit a very short summary of the session discussions and outcomes. We provided a template it's a link in the guidance written document that I shared with you a couple of days ago. So if you click there you it's going to open a Word document it's really really simple basically it's your name, the name of the session code of the session, your name, and then a very short report of each presentation and any potential outcomes from the discussions. This report will be used for you, of course to summarize the session, and it will be used also at the closing ceremony because you have a panel, led by one of the program committee members with six volunteers that will be bringing the key outcomes of each of the six themes. And so your report will be providing inputs to these reporters to bring the discussion to the floor at the closing ceremony, and also the these reports will be used internally by the secretary app as inputs for the next word order Congress that will be help happening in 2024 into in Canada. So, this will help us to shape the new, the new Congress. The report should be sent by the end of the day in the guidance in the written guidance that the email address is the word order Congress that you are you are used to to use. If you have emailed the Congress already. And so we should send this by the end of the day, except for the sections held on Thursday, especially the one, the ones held on Thursday 130pm. We kindly ask you to deliver your report as soon as possible, because we'll have the the break and then the, the closing ceremony. So if you manage to send them a few minutes after your session we'll be able to include those your your points at the, at the discussions during the closing ceremony. So contacting your co chair and speakers, you have already the email address of your co chairs I shared already with you. Some, some of you have copied me so I know that many of you are already discussing with your co chair that's great. And you will also receive, as I mentioned, an email from me tomorrow, where I'm going to be listing the papers to be presented in your session and providing a link for the abstracts of those papers. Please feel free to contact the authors after you read the abstracts because in each abstract does the name of the author and their email addresses. So we cannot officially form you dated their email addresses for GDPR reasons. So as you have the abstract you'll be able to contact them. So if you want if you feel it's necessary for you to agree on some prepared questions, or if you want to have like a short CV from them to introduce them. Please feel free to email them that this is also an opportunity for networking. So you'll be also available on the Congress app. But this is going to be just a few days before the Congress next week by probably late next week. So you also be able to access them. Well, finally the question and answers. The first meeting this slide was was empty. Then I populated it with the main questions raised during our first meeting last week. Other questions that were raised yesterday that I'm going to be discussing with you. I didn't have time. The meeting was yesterday evening. I didn't have time to update the slides. I'm sorry, but I have them here. So I'm going to discuss it and we'll have probably questions from you. So with the tree group of questions, I'm going to be putting together a frequent asked questions document that will be also shared with you tomorrow. Okay, so from the meeting hosted last week on the 25. The questions raised were if this recording of this meeting and this presentation will be shared with you and the answer is yes, we are we recorded the three presentations I think we are going to be sharing this one as this is the most complete one. And the presentation the PowerPoint presentation and this frequent aspect question list. So we're going to be sharing that with you tomorrow. Second question was if the technical sessions in Copenhagen will be recorded, and the answer is no during the Congress only the planners will be recorded. I would also ask it if when introducing the speakers, if the chair should provide some information regarding their CVs or simply saying the name of the speaker and the name of the paper. This is totally up to you. If you feel it's important for the show let's say for for the session to run smoothly, you can personally I think it's interesting to present a very very short CV so you don't lose time as well of course. But it's interesting to give at least some context. The expertise of the speaker and which institution is coming from. And so we encourage you when you receive the abstract that you have access to the email addresses that you can reach out to them and asked for some information. Another question in another interesting question that was raised in the first meeting was if the housekeeping rules that should be mentioned when opening the session should also include security rules provided by the venue. And the answer here is no housekeeping rules, you should be informed at the beginning of your session should be only related on how to run the session how many minutes its speaker will have when this will question and so moment will happen. The venue is is a huge venue and they run lots of events monthly and they have their own security rules informed in many different and strategic locations at the venue so you don't have to worry about this. I think, yes, I think those were the questions from the first session first meeting last week. So yesterday. Some of the questions raised about the posters. One of the question was if the poster presenters will have slides, and the answer is yes they can have slides but probably I can say if there's a limit but I think like two or three. Yep, you're correct. Yeah, so three slides so they will have slides as well. And another set I think a question from somebody else but also both posters was about the poster sessions if the poster presenters will have as sometimes very often it happens in Congress is that they will have a specific time slot that they should be standing up next to the poster to to be available. To discuss the poster. And the answer is no there's no strict time, although they can be there anytime they want. And we asked the posters to provide a QR code so the attendees, the delegates can go there and scan the QR code and get more information about the posters so there's not going to be one single slot for them to be next to their posters. So this was one question. An interesting question was if after reading the papers that abstracts if you feel like the order of the papers in your session is not the ideal under your perspective. If you are allowed to change this order, we kindly ask you not to do that. The order was defined by the program committee so it makes sense. And some people, you know they change rooms they expect to attend the first presentation in one room and the third presentation another room so this can can be a problem for them so we kindly ask you not to change the order. And these questions, if the poster will have strict time. Oh, about how you can control your time. We were asked if you would have the clock showing at the screen and no you're not going to be having the clock so you have to control the time by yourself. We had the suggested that we could have cards like the yellow and red cards for showing the time for the presenters that that's going to be considered. I still didn't discuss that with our events team as the meeting was yesterday but we'll be considering this suggestion. And that's up to you to control the time as I mentioned, it's not as strict as in a remote event. We cannot afford too much delay. So, and another question that it will also be, it was a suggestion not a question, if we could have like written like paper cards that the audience could write the question in advance and instead of going to the microphone. This was an interesting suggestion that I'm also going to take to our events team. I believe. Okay, the last one was also request if we could share like the ideal, the ideal summary of a session, considering this was more or less the same template that we use in the Digital Congress last year. The chairs asked if we could share the like an ideal report made for the created for the Digital Congress. I'm going to check with our events team if you can identify one that could be followed as a template is empty is just the table. So if we could share with you a good example. Okay, this is also suggesting that I'm going to take to our events that are easy to to discuss. So that's it for my from my side you all have my email address and please feel free to contact me anytime you need. So, I can, I can address any further questions that you may have. I'll stop sharing my screen now. Thank you very much for your attention. It was a longer presentation today, because the questions. I'm adding the questions so which data each meeting presentation is a bit longer. And please feel free to come on camera and to state your questions or to share your questions through the chat box. We already received some questions in the chat. I don't know if you want to start with this. Otherwise, okay. So, we've received the questions from Martin asking if they get to see the presentations and papers before the sessions. Okay, the papers, the abstracts will be sent to you not the full papers but abstracts will be sent to you tomorrow. So you'll be able to read all the six papers. I think I forgot to mention during the meeting, the six and three is the usual structure so most sections will have three full papers and three poster pictures, some sessions just a few ones will have four papers and two poster pictures or something like that. Okay. But anyway, independently of the name number of papers you will receive that tomorrow so you'll be able to read and about the presentations. They have they are sharing the presentations. Aisha, can you clarify the chess will be having access to the presentations. Not the presentations now, but everything will be in the app anyway so you will be able to get the recordings bios, every kind of material. Okay, so so once the app so okay so you have access to the abstracts tomorrow by email. And once the app is available probably one week from now, then you'll have access to the presentations. Thank you. Next Isabella. They asked if they're going to get the bios of the speakers. Okay, the bios. No, the bios, we are not allowed to share. But you have access to the email address once you. Colleague sorry to interrupt the meeting I think you can see how I'm wearing. What is fetching me. I'm going to do some catchment surveys. Okay, so thank you very much for the fruitful meeting I'll be in touch with you. Okay, thank you very much as per to join us. Okay, so what where was that. Other bios. Yes, no, we are not sharing the bios. This is controversial issue if you cannot or cannot share due to GDPR reasons. But you have access to their email addresses. Once you open the abstracts there's the name of all authors and their email addresses. So, if you feel with your session will be more interesting if you share a bit of information about the speakers, you can email them and ask for for a short like two or three lines bio. Following this, there was another question about timekeeping. If there's going to be any timekeeping keeping cards but you're ready to discuss this. Yes. This was a suggestion and I'm going to discuss with with our events director. Regarding copies of the presentations. We also just said, and let me say is the poster pitch presentation prerecorded or poster pitch speakers have to be also present in the room. The poster pitches will be presented present in the room, they will be there to physically present. Although they have all speakers posters and papers they have shared with us the prerecorded presentations and this is going to be available at the app on the app. But they will also be physically in session. This is the last question that we had in the shed. Okay. So the floor is open. I had a question which you passed through, because it's quite important to us. When is the detailed program available people cannot buy one day tickets, because they don't know what is in the sessions. That's interesting. I should do you know this information. I am for my colleague Aisha, that is from the from our events team. We are hoping to get that onto the website as soon as possible because people have been asking for the program. So, possibly by early next week, that full program will be on the site. Can I have a question. Yes, please. You are sending out the abstracts. Why don't you send out the full papers. If we're going to do a good sharing job we should read the papers in advance. Not only the abstracts. Okay. So what I was, what I was, what, what, why I received what does the abstract so Aisha, would it be possible to share the full papers or not. Not all our presenters have opted to send through full papers, which, yeah, it's optional to the presenters themselves. So it's not something we could provide you fully the abstracts is something we definitely can send through to you and you obviously have a good overview of what the paper is about. And it is quite a detailed. Yeah, kind of pieces three pages three to four pages of the actual. Yeah, presentations themselves so that's the only reason why you can't get the full papers. Okay, thank you. To be honest, I support how about question, because we also have to prepare questions to the speaker in case there is no question from the audience. And that's in my professional experience can't be based on abstract only. So it would be great if we had the opportunity to to see the full papers. But I think half of them and other colleagues, we can also ask them when we contact the speakers for their bios. So more or less, we can take action ourselves. I have another question to you. Thank you. Just about that. Thank you for as I mentioned, we don't have the full papers of some of them we have some of them we don't. But it's an extended abstract is not just like a couple of two or three paragraphs it's a three to four pages document. But if you feel you need more information please feel free to contact the authors I think your suggestion was quite quite interesting. The question I have is, or also a remark, perhaps, I absolutely like the the flexibility, but if we want to allow people to attend presentation number one in our technical session then drop off to presentation number two in the other session. And more or less have to stick to the 12 minutes and three minutes for human aid, because otherwise people leave the room in the expectation that they will have the start and finish of a second presentation. So there is flexibility, but on the other hand, it's always better to stick a little bit to the 15 minutes for each for each presenter. Yes, yes. Thank you for your comment. I fully agree with that, especially and another point that this is my personal view about sharing. For instance, if you don't give any time for work we may after straight straight after the presentation. Some of the questions are just clarification questions you know that you you you are the person that is asking says okay can you go back to slide number three you know I have that table that you showed you know so this is kind of complicated to make those kind of questions by the end of the session. So that that that's very important in my opinion to have this very even if it's just two or three minutes for some clarifications questions so that's why the the suggested structure mentions that small slot for questions after each paper. Your comment totally makes sense. Thank you and yours also because that means that that clarifications should have priority in the three minutes Q&A and questions that could lead to very interesting planning discussion should be saved to the the the planning Q&A after the presentations. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, and that's the I would say that the art of being a chair, being a chair is not something so so easy as some people think we all have we all have participating in sessions that are just like a list of questions to each speaker and that's it and sessions where we can actually have a debate, and those are much more interesting and we learn much more and network you know. So, ideally we can have many of those interesting sessions at the at the Congress I'm sure we will I'm confident we will. Anyone else. Just another comment on the detail program I don't know. I think it is the latest that it has ever been sent out. People tried to plan because there are so many parallel things so many interesting things. And basically many of the sessions are not a black box. You don't know what is going to happen that what is being presented exactly might be something about water chemicals and what what does that mean and there are three different sessions on that. And so it's going to be difficult to plan your attendance the later we are getting this detailed program. Yes. Thank you for that. And we are aware of that. Just, just a bit of a contest. Usually the Congress is planned two years in advance. So, you probably notice most of you are used to come to our Congress is before this year due to COVID situation that the Congress start was later than usual because until last year we instead of having the two year cycle we had a one year cycle because it was just by the end of the year that it was the final yes the Congress is happening no matter what. And even the discussion was the Congress is not happening this year before it keeps going and we cannot have the physical Congress this year we will have it in the next year or not so it was a discussion. So that's why everything is delayed. And unfortunately the full program as well. It should have been online weeks ago and it's not so we really apologize. But this is the main reason everything is delayed, not only not only the program. Unfortunately, but I'm sure that for the next Congress we will kind of go back to to the to the usual calendar and we will have the program available in advance. We are still adjusting to this situation. Any further questions. No, we didn't receive any other questions in the shot. So, when will we know who is my coach here. I wrote the name of your coach and the email I sent you last week. Anyway, tomorrow when I send when I send the abstracts. I'm going to be sending to both of you together so you have also I'm going to say both names and you're going to have that dress so if you didn't read the previous email you're going to receive it tomorrow. So I think we are done. I would like to finish the meeting. Thank you once again, not only for being available today for this conversation, especially because some of you are very experienced chairs and, and you you you give your time to be here today with us so thank you very much. Thank you very much for volunteer for being a chair at the work for the Congress. Your work is really important I think the sessions are the core of the Congress. That's the only moment or one of the few moments that all the delegates have the floor they can make questions they can participate in the debate this is very very important for them. Thank you very much, and I'm confident that we will have a wonderful Congress. So, I wish you all safe trip to Copenhagen, and see you there in 10 days from now. Okay, thank you bye bye.