At the 2nd Meeting Science Symposium last week, I gave a talk on the effects of using a speakers’ list in meetings and it occurred to me that different people seem to use different terms for this tool (or method). In English, some say “speakers’ list”, some say “speaker list”, others say “stack” (and the activity as “stack taking”) but I have no sense for why people choose one or the other. Is it Britsh vs American English? Or business vs. activist language?
What term do you use and why? What alternative terms are there in your language and what do they mean?
Just to clarify: by stack or speakers’ list, I mean any kind of queuing system where people wanting to speak signal this to the person in charge of taking the stack (keeping the stack?) who notes your name (or some other identifying label) on the list of speakers. When the current speaker is finished, the next person on the list is called. - There are, of course, variations (such as the “progressive stack”, but I’m talking about any form of stack, speaker list or whatever you may call it.)