1. Plan in Advance
Start planning for big events, at least eight or twelve months before the date of the event. Choose a venue, catering services, seating arrangements, budgeting, and speakers to avoid last-minute hassles. When you plan early, you become clear with the things to be done, and you make proper arrangements accordingly. Also, you need to plan the financial and non-financial needs, thus choosing sponsors and inviting companies accordingly. In the planning stage only, choose and explore the technologies available to you. Since the outbreak of Covid-19, the use of technology has grown faster than ever, and it has been quite successful. Thus, explore the technologies available whether you want to organize virtual, live, or hybrid conferencing. Also, while hosting the event, make sure it goes smooth and error-free. So, in the planning stage, be clear about the type and kind of conferencing you want to organize.
2. Naming the Conference
It's important to name your conference. Otherwise, the audience won't come and attend the session. Firstly, know your target audience for whom you are organizing the session and name it accordingly so that the audience will get attracted to it. Create a unique name for your conference that doesn't match or look similar to any other conference. Also, pick a theme that suits your goals and agenda. The chosen theme will attract the audience and create a good vibe and aura.
3. Budgeting
Planning a wise budget will make your event successful. When you organize any conference, you need to remember that your motive might not be to generate profit, but you shouldn't incur a loss. Stick to your planned budget and spend it wisely wherever required. Spend where you will be able to earn some value for yourself, your company, and its employees. Try to get more sponsors as they will give a brand value to your event and also pay a fee to your conference.
4. Delegation of Tasks
You can't organize a conference single-handedly; you require people and a team that would support you to make your event successful. Delegating the tasks is the best decision you will take while organizing your event. Choose a team with the right members who are dedicated, honest, and loyal towards their work. Discipline should be there in any team to do all the work promptly without hassles. Form a committee, select a coordinator who will take major decisions, and coordinate the entire event. Depending on the size of your event, delegate tasks to either individuals or teams. Bring in volunteers who will look onto the smaller tasks and advertise your conference. If your budget is good, you can hire an event planner or go to a conference Management Company that will efficiently organize your conference.
5. Selecting Speakers and Guests
It is a difficult but most important step in organizing a conference. After finalizing the dates and venues, choose a speaker for your event. Try to choose a speaker who is experienced, who helps in engaging with your audience throughout, who shares his experiences, who will not just come and bore the audience. Thus, look at speakers' reviews, profiles, and past experiences and choose them wisely. A speaker could either make your event a success or he could spoil it. It may happen that the cost of bringing a speaker would change your budgeting; thus, be prepared for that too.
6. Tickets and Sales
It is highly recommended that you shouldn't charge high fees and set the pricing of tickets low, as your motive is not to earn profit from this event, but to cover other costs, you might charge a reasonable fee from the audience. Give discounts to students, charge fees for providing meals, charge fees depending on the kind of audience. Also, start accepting registrations one month in advance to get maximum attendees and registrations can be online, as it is more suitable in today's world.
7. Advertising
Social media presence is very important to attract the target audience. Create a website and have a URL that will contain all the important information related to the venue, food, lodging, and transportation. The website must contain the theme and name of the speakers to attract the audience. Advertise your event on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. Post the stories, countdowns, and use hashtags to attract the audience. Tell your participants, volunteers, to share pictures. Chose a PR that will use techniques to attract the target audience and bring in more attendees.
8. Target Audience
You must remember that whatever you are doing must attract the target audience only. Chose a segment of people you want to attract and focus on them only. There are many kinds of audiences, but you have to promote it to a particular sect. Identify the sect and promote it in various ways. Also, invite people of the same segment from different cities, states, and countries so that it will create a sense of unity and diversity in your conference.
9. The Day of the Event
Fnally, the day arrives, and all your hard work will pay off. So, to make your event without flaws, communicate with your team members about their roles and responsibilities see that the sound system and other materials are well equipped. Practice one day prior about the things which are going to happen and create an aura. Talk with the caters about the food management and thus make you that everything is one the running order.
10. Post-Event Feedback
Taking feedbacks are an integral part of any conference. Feedback lets you know how much you succeeded. Once the event is over, take necessary feedback from the audience so that you can know where you lacked and what made your event successful. You will know whether the speakers engaged with the audience or not. Also, feedbacks help in the future as you can improve and get better. Send thanks mails to the audience who attended the conference, so that they too will feel acknowledged and special. You should also post photos and polls on social media platforms so that people will see and give their reviews accordingly.
Tips for Building Better Conference Programs
Now, let looks into some of the most essential tips for building a better conference program:
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Make it user-friendly.
Exploring the full conference programme can be daunting if your event has a large number of sessions. To avoid session overload, heterogeneous content should be grouped into concurrent sessions in distinct channels. Sorting similar topics into distinct streams can make it much easier for delegates to figure out where the sessions are appropriate for them. Curation and design go hand in hand when it comes to conference programmes.
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Provide a bit of downtime in your agenda.
Do not ask your delegates to work uninterrupted day and night Researchers don't work on a full tank of gas. Provide plenty of opportunities for delegates to relax, comprehend what they've just heard, and get some cool breeze and nourishment. At the absolute least, breaks should be long enough for participants to determine which program they would like to participate in next, discover exactly where it'll be held, take a bathroom break if needed, and reach their desired location in a relaxed fashion.
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Make your show more interesting by mixing it up.
Different types of contributions are more appropriate for different types of sessions. Panels and seminars and typical oral and graphic demonstrations and keynote speeches must be included. After a day of waiting and observing, seminars can be a terrific way to engage participants.
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Make your programme approachable.
It's critical to make your conference programme available to delegates. The printed conference programme with scrawled updates and labelled Flash drives is quickly becoming obsolete. Consider purchasing an app or, at the very least, an internet conference programme that can be accessed via a cellphone. Consider giving delegates armbands with schedules on them so they can see at a peek. If the internet is down, these come in handy.
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Presenters should not be overworked.
Make sure scholars aren't scheduled to deliver two papers in the same round or even across multiple delivery periods on the very same day. Tired, exhausted lecturers won't have the chance or focus on delivering your visitors the excellent presentations guests deserve. When someone has more than one approved proposal to deliver, strive to scatter their lectures out as much as practicable within the programme.
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After each program, schedule beverage breaks
Long after they leave your conference, people will remember the connections they made. Participants are more likely to come back to your conference the following year once they have established good connections, so include incentives for them in your conference programme.
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Be wary of the sink hole in the conference.
The post-lunch dip affects researchers as well. If your conference programme includes any high-energy events, arrange them during the conference dead zone after lunch. When participants would benefit from roaming around and recharging their batteries instead of sitting still and attending.
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Make sure that all of the presenters have signed up.
A large number of absent presenters can be quite disruptive to a session. As your conference time approaches, verify whether the presenters that have confirmed to come such that your programme doesn't end up with as many holes as Swiss cheese. Track down those who haven't shown up, and if they're not coming, reschedule your sessions. When the big day approaches, have someone at the registration counter keep track of which presenters are unable to attend. Then, early in the morning, reorganise your sessions as needed.
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Make some noise
Your prospective participants are occupied people making decisions in a society full of 24-hour mass communication. So, how can you get their attention and generate excitement for your conference? Create a marketing strategy for your conference that includes sending strong messages via PR, web content, and email campaigns. Make a plan for what content you'll share, when you'll share it, and who you'll share it with.
To generate interest in your conference, publish interviews, blog articles, images, programmes, speaker announcements, and so on your conference website. Create a hashtag for your conference to get people involved in the discourse on social media.
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Include downloadable materials in your conference agenda
Allow attendees to browse speaker profiles, slides and exhibit resources directly from your programme after you've compiled them.
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Allow for social gatherings.
Don't inform the speakers, since conferences aren't only about the seminars. Social gatherings offer participants the opportunities to engage new people and make new memories, but it includes an excellent chance to discuss research in an informal context. Don't overlook them when planning your conference agenda.
A conference should thrill attendees and inspire them to seek more ideas, more interaction with others who share their problems, more change, more ways of performing their work. It should be regardless of whether it is focused on an urgent problem, improvement in practice, networking, or lobbying.
An excellent conference can set currents in motion that can have a massive effect on a problem or field. It's worth the time and effort to get it right.
Conclusion
These are the basic ten steps that are needed to organize any conference; these steps are needed to be taken to make your event successful. Try to plan as early as you can, make proper budgeting and work as hard as you can. If you feel it is hard to manage all these, you should contact the event planner and take their help. Smart work is required more than hard work, and with the technologies, things have become easier too.
Also, don't forget to apply the tips we have discussed for building a perfect conference program.
