Optimal slidesmanship in conferences with unpredictable chairmen

Conference attendance is an area of scientific endeavour that can be very rewarding to its skilled practitioners. However, the inexperienced conference attendee (speaker) may not be aware of the rules of the game and runs a risk of making disastrous mistakes. In this paper the authors are concerned with slidesmanship and wish to design optimal policies for a slidesman who must decide on such questions as the number of slides to prepare, the timing of the slides and at what time to terminate the presentation. They suggest that the slidesman is facing a forgetful audience as well as an unpredictable chairman.