Modeling presentations at national conventions

Organizing the presentations at professional meetings or society meetings is a chore that is common to all professions. The success of general purpose/national conventions is basically measured by the number of presentations that are obtained. Obtaining a maximum number of presentations with a minimum amount of work is a problem that lends itself to analysis using Operations Research. Dean Hartley analyzed the Military Applications Society contributions to national conventions and modeled them using Markov process concepts. The results are useful in minimizing the costs of recruiting session chairs for future meetings. The description of the analysis may also provide a useful education tool.