Education

Post 7 of 15 Defining the target audience Potential sponsors and exhibitors will most likely be interested in knowing the following about your event: How many delegates are expected to attend the event? Is that figure based on past events? What is the profile of the delegates? How is the event a good fit for the company? Designing sponsorship packages, including pricing One way to design sponsorship packages is to look at what other conference organisers have done in the past....

Post 6 of 15 The scheduling process, in a nutshell The process can be summarised as follows: Choosing a theme Call for presentations Estimate the number and types of presentations needed Select and reject presentations ‘Stranding’ presentations and workshops Communicate session titles with potential delegates Prepare a first draft, and communicate with presenters Prepare reviewed draft, and communicate with presenters Prepare final draft Perform final check with presenters Select software to present programme Communicate programme with delegates Constantly review programme based on cancellations and number of delegates Organise networking opportunities, including social events Choosing a theme for the conference The theme for the ECIS Technology Conference 2015 was ‘Building engagement’....

Post 5 of 15 The website for ECIS Technology Conference 2015 is by no means perfect, but it served its purpose well and can be found at www.bis-school.com/ecis-tech While planning for the website, we identified four main stages it needed to cater for: Before registrations open While registrations are open During the conference After the conference Each of those stages require a different approach and focus. The information presented for each stage is also likely to be different....

Post 4 of 15 Here is a spreadsheet with all of the basic formulae and income/expenses if you don’t like to read. Income There are quite a few ways to generate income when organising a conference. Here are the three main sources of income: Ticket sales Sponsors Exhibitors Other sources of income could be Advertising space (programme, website, mobile app, etc.) Streaming of presentations/workshops Access to video archive or presentations/workshops Expenses This post is a little bit trickier, as it really depends on your needs....

Post 3 of 15 Once the boss has agreed to the idea of organising a conference at your workplace, it is time to perform a feasibility study. While I felt that we could organise a conference at BIS, we needed to ensure that we indeed could. Here are the fifteen criteria we looked at to determine for sure whether BIS would be a good venue to organise a technology conference....