Planning a conference can get a bit overwhelming. As soon as you start organising one thing, you get distracted by another, equally important part of the conference.
Here are a few questions you should be asking yourself, your conference planning committee or your conference planner, before going into detailed organisation:
1) What is the point of the conference?
What does it want to achieve? A lot of conferences forget to address this crucial point and because of this, they are not good conferences. Knowing what you want to get through to your audience brings me to question number 2...
2) Who is the target audience?
A group of international businessmen will have different expectations and needs from the conference than say a group of undergraduate physics students. Make sure you know who your target sponsors are going to be as well.
3) What will be the outcome of this conference?
How will it affect the people attending it, and how will it affect your business overall? E.g. Improve your reputation or increase your employees performance.
• Make sure you delegate what you can't handle.
• Don't be over ambitious.
• Be realistic- most things will affect one another so you need to be organised but patient.
• Have weekly update meetings with your conference planning team and make sure everyone knows what they're meant to be doing. Your working schedule should include: list of actions, status of actions and deadlines.
The Conference
Budget: Have a budget and stick to it. You should allow an extra 10% for contingency.
Programme: This will be detailed information about each speaker, tutorial or meeting so that delegates know what to expect and what they are going to learn from these events.
Marketing: How to inform your target audience about the conference. E.g. creating a website.
Event Schedule: What are people going to do during this conference? Include meet and greet, meals, speakers, activities, tutorials, meetings, and breaks.