Strong leadership is very important to the success of any symposium. The chairperson of the steering committee must know how to select and organize its members as well as be knowledgeable of the symposium subject. The chairperson should be known in the maritime industry so that he/she can assist the technical committee in the selection of authors, discussers, and moderators who will be willing to participate in the symposium. The chairperson of the steering committee is frequently a past chairperson of the section, which has the advantage of being familiar with the politics and geography of the section.

The steering committee should be comprised of the symposium chairperson, the Secretary-Treasurer, all committee chairpersons, and representatives of the co-sponsoring organization(s), if there are any. The first item of Symposium planning is defining the responsibility of each member of the steering committee. The chairperson must be certain that all aspects of the symposium are covered without overlaps, nor gaps in, responsibilities. A suggested steering committee organization is shown in Figure 1.

The Symposium will require some "seed" money to cover some of the start-up items such as letterheads, a Call for Papers, printing and postage costs, and some early publicity in technical journals. The Section or the Society can advance the “seed” money on a conditional basis and when the Symposium has concluded its business, this money will be returned. The handling of symposium finances is extremely important at this stage since there are many unknowns, particularly in the number of people that will attend, the site costs in terms of public room usage, and the meal costs.