Guide to successful conferences

Successful Conferences Guide

Organizing conferences is always a big challenge and a great learning experience, even for the seasoned event organizers.

If you are planning for one, be prepared for some really hard work ahead. I hope that this page will assist you in your conferences or event planning. First, you will have to start by asking yourself the following questions:

Starting point

Is it an annual event? Or are you planning the first of its kind? Is it just the main event or part of a bigger event? Is organizing the conferences more effective than special events for example an exhibition? There are the golden "4 Ws" and "1 H" to help you plan your conferences.

1. WHAT are the goals and objectives?

It is pinnacle that you start with this very important task of identifying the objectives. Is it your objective to launch a new product or announce an important research breakthrough or changing the perception of the public towards your industry?

2. WHY you want to organize this conference and why now? For example, ABC medical association organized a medical conference on SARS in 2004, one year after the SARS breakout in Asia, 2003. These groups of medical experts had some findings to share with professionals in the field. It was their hope that the medical professionals will use the information for research and a cure.

3. WHO are your target audience? Participants? You may need to examine their demographics.

4. When. Choosing the date time and venue, is a delicate task. You will need to get hold of the local or international events calendar. Your competitors� events dates, time and venue.

For example, if you are organizing a parenting conference cum exhibition. You may wish to organize it during the school holidays or weekends. If the event is for accountants or Chief Financial Officers (CFOs), then you will have to take into account most companies' book closure dates, corporate announcement dates and Investor Relations community dates.

5. How? Consider what type of publicity to attract the right type of crowd or participants. How to make the theme attractive? Is it for profit or non-profit? Is the event for the public or professionals in the field? Will participants have to pay or is it free?

Here's 16 essential tips for organizing conferences:

1. Theme and duration

Choosing the theme is the most essential task in your event planning.

2. Choosing your organizing committee

Do you have a team of committee members who are experts in their own fields? Do they understand the local, regional and international knowledge of the issues to be discussed at the conferences? Are these individuals able to commit up to 7-8 months or even a year of their working time to attend meetings and or even work on the project part or full time? Do you have a dynamic and hands on committee head that will steer the committee and events team to achieving success? Can this individual get through all the red tapes in the organization and budget approvals and board meeting approvals for this project?

The organizing committee must come up with the name of the conference. It is not an easy task. Much consideration must be put into giving the event an appropriate name and the name or title must be "catchy", easy to read and understand and lastly, it must be meaningful.

3. Budget and approvals

Obviously, a well written, persuasive proposal and budget will probably help. Budgetary approval plus support from the top executives and board members for the project will give you a good head start on your project management. (In the budgeting process, if you are seeking to have a high profile international speaker, you may have to seek approval for a big sum and you will certainly need very good justification, like your very positive projected ROI for that speaker fee to be approved!)

4. Booking venue, dates and time and knowing your competition

It is very important to book the right location, venue, dates and time. Badly time conferences that clash with competing or similar events will dilute both your event and competitor's event attendance. For example, if you know your competitor well and they are bigger, well established and longer in the market, you can consider to strategically place yours as a complimentary one to theirs.

5. Marketing, media and other publicity

Whether you position your conferences to be discussing current topics, issues or latest development in the field, you will definitely need a comprehensive marketing strategy for the event. Get a dedicated team to manage the media and another team to do the publicity like advertising and promotional materials. The timing will be of essence when doing your promotion. For example, selling or advertising the event too early, you will have interested participants who forget to register. Promotion that's too late or close to the event, you may not get the right people to fill up your seats or face with unsatisfactory tickets sales.

Getting media coverage for your event is an important part of your event�s success. Do send your media partners, information about the event before, on and after the event. Getting positive reports is one of the ways to get good and free event publicity.

6. Budget costing and expenditure allocation

Careful and meticulous cost allocations for each and every item is a must. However, an experienced event or conference organizer will be able to allocate costing close to the actual expenditure or even make savings for careful and good bargains with vendors and service providers. All these are essentials of a good events organizer.

7. Sponsorships

Put a dedicated committee or team members in charge of sponsorship. Soliciting sponsorship may need legal approvals etc. The team will make sure all these are done before they embarked on their sponsorship calling or net working.

8. Detailed planning

Calendar - Whether the conferences are a 2-day or 2-week event, meticulous working event or conferences calendar or timetable is a must.

Administration and manpower allocation - you will need competent people who can manage the database, registration, name tags, payments and so on.

Professional organizers will not compromise on having the state-of-the-art-technology booking and payment system. Those without the system will outsource it to a third party. This way, the organizer will focus their energies on achieving success in terms of publicity, ensuring that the speakers and participants' needs are met and all targets and objectives of the events are successful.

Branding - Companies spent millions on branding and conferences are one of the best events to ensure the company's branding is applied in all the publicity materials like banners, posters, websites, partner sites, printed materials like event hand book, program sheets, stationeries and goody bags. Even speaking platforms and sometimes even table clothes and mint are not spared!

Computers and equipments - It is the events team's responsibility to ensure that all laptops, videos, slideshows, wireless or clip on mikes, laser pointers, sound systems etc works.

Food and beverage - Careful event organizers will ask for a food tasting session before signing on the contract with the caterer or hotel or restaurant. Quality and quantity control and careful selection of food and beverage will be one that make or break the events' success.

Social programs - It is a good and nice gesture to organize some social activities for keynote speakers, your company's management, special guests and participants. It is also an opportunity for net working and a special way for saying "Thank You" especially for those who are out-of-town guests and speakers. You may want to customize the entertainment, sports, tour or leisure activities to the theme of the event.

Program designing - It is important to spent a major part of your planning time to work on the program and sometimes you have to work with the main speaker or anchor keynote speaker or an experience industry expert on the flow of the program and its topics to be discussed. You can use technology like internet or web cast by connecting to speakers who cannot physically be present.

Rehearsal and briefings - The worst nightmare for any event organizers is miscommunication. Insist on a rehearsal at least a few days or the day before the conferences with your speakers, hotel staff and entertainers etc. Go through the program to ensure everybody understood the proceedings of the event and each of their roles. Testing of all technical equipments should be done at the same time.

9. Keynotes speakers, speakers, master of ceremony, moderator/facilitator

Committee members or CEO or board members of the company may be the ones in charge of the getting the high profile keynote speaker. For example, if it involves a head of state or governor of a certain country, it is only appropriate that the invitation (it may be a phone call followed by a letter) be signed and sent out by the Chairman of the company.

Selection of the keynote speakers needs a high level if not intimate understanding of the person, his or her works in the industry (sometimes and his or her personality). Determining the mix of keynote speakers, the invitations and the keynote speakers' social, academic or government rankings and protocol is very important. It will affect your program structure and detail planning.

Invitations to keynote speakers will have to be made in advance at least 7-8 months, sometimes even a year ahead. This is because these high profile speakers are usually well sort after by other organizers and they do have very busy work and speaking schedules.

Next, it is important to book the master of ceremony and facilitator early so that they are available during the conferences and they can practice and write their scripts.

11. Hotel accommodations, transport and miscellaneous

Block book enough rooms, appropriate transportation for your out-of-town speakers and participants. Ensure that you have written to all of them detailing the terms and conditions of the hotel and its payment rate. If your company is paying for the all the expenses for special guests, do ensure you write to them to inform them AND the hotel.

12. Prize giving, scholarships, lucky draws and awards ceremony

Ensure that all prizes, scholarships scrolls, certificates, lucky draws and awards are wrapped and arranged on stage. Make sure that you have security personnel to ensure that the gifts or prizes are not stolen.

13. Video and photography

Ensure that you brief your video and cameramen at the rehearsal. It will be good to explain the objectives of your conferences and events. Get seasoned professionals for the job. The video quality and photographs will be a good investment for media coverage, post event reports, promotions and future reference.

14. Medical, insurance and security issues and contingency plans

All event organizers will know that you can't organize an event without ensuring that you have medical officers, insurance and security in place. Similarly, in organizing an event, there's a need to have a contingency plan or alternative events plan.

15. Post event management

Feedback and evaluation - All conference participants will be given a conference kit or pack. Ensure that you add in the evaluation or feedback forms. Make sure that you capture your audience attention to fill in the forms before they leave. The forms are also a good source of contact database for future events.

Do take an opportunity to get feedback from your keynote speakers and others involve in the project so that you can organize a better event next year!

Disseminating the results or outcome of your event - Gather a meaningful and useful post event report is a good practice for 2 purposes, it tell your readers:

a. Success of the event with data and charts to support it

b. Feedback on the various speakers and topics discussed and its usefulness

c. Areas of improvements

d. Whether the company should organize the event again

Certificate of attendance - All participants should get their attendance certificates at the end of the conferenceshowever, there will always be some who left earlier or forgot to take or there's a name spelling error. So mailing out these certificates should be done as soon as possible.

Thank you cards or letters - All thank you letters should be prepared even before the start of the event. The "Thank Yous" should be sent immediately the day after the event.

Post-conference media management - Media releases should be issued so that the media can do a positive report on the success of the event.

Post event advertisement - Some organization, do advertise to thank all participants or to mention the success of the event.

16. Planning for the next conference

Yes, it's the start of the work for the next conference.

All the best and wishing you many successes in events management!

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