ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the new post-Covid world of virtual chairing. There are more and more virtual chairing technology platforms, not just Zoom and Microsoft Teams. The chair and any team/secretariat working with her or him need to understand the platform/s they are using, how they vary, how the various tools (mute/unmute; chat; raise hand) work. Preparation is required more than ever, as so often emphasised in physical chairing. Virtual meetings should be made shorter because of screen fatigue. They lack the warmth and interpersonal qualities of physical meetings although the home environment seen on screen can add warmth. But they can allow more reticent members of meetings to hold their own against the more talkative. The chat function may endanger the focus on one conversation at a time. The book ends with research from Cambridge, Massachusetts, that suggests that virtual meetings are 11.5 per cent shorter than physical meetings. This should please Bartleby and Simon Jenkins whose dislike of meetings was highlighted in the Introduction at the start of the book.
