When planning a conference, many pitfalls can arise in your process. We’ve built a list for you including our conference planning guide.
You guys have busy jobs, heaps of responsibilities, and already overstretched task lists. What you don’t have is days to spend on conference planning admin. Organising a conference can bring up all sorts of challenges, these guides aim to keep you on track making the most of your team. Whether it’s building a realistic event budget or delegating important tasks to the right people on your organising committee, a useful guide will give you a friendly steer in the right direction when you need it most.
With some planning, a proactive team and the right software, you can organise a great conference – without the late nights. And what can be really helpful in getting you there is a decent conference planning guide.
So we’ve compiled a list of event-planning guides to help you get there. These guides will help you cover all your bases, from doing a stellar job of managing submissions to setting up your conference venue.
The No-Panic Guide to Organising Successful Scholarly Events
At Ex Ordo, we understand the challenges event organisers face when dealing with unintuitive systems, manual data exports, and time-consuming workarounds. That’s why we’ve created The No-Panic Guide to Organising Successful Scholarly Events, designed to provide practical advice and support tailored to conference organising teams needs.
The No-Panic Guide points you in the right direction on everything from creating your conference timeline to compiling your post-conference report. It’s filled with actionable insights, expert tips, and real-world examples that will help you streamline your planning process, improve your attendee experience, and ensure your events are a resounding success.
By downloading this guide, you’ll gain access to:
- Detailed checklists and timelines to keep your planning on track
- Strategies for effective communication and collaboration within your team
- Tips on leveraging technology to simplify tasks and reduce workload
- Guidance on managing budgets, sponsors, and stakeholders
- Best practices for creating engaging and memorable attendee experiences
Each chapter comes with a reminder of where in your conference timeline the big milestones fit. Plus it’s got some handy questions and checklists so you can ensure you’ve covered all your basis.
Some highlights include…
Get your free conference planning eBook.
The Professional Event Planning Guide
In the past ten years or so, technology has become smaller, smarter, and more accessible. Whether you’re a first-time conference planner, or you’re looking to keep up with the trends, there are all sorts of mobile tech tools you can use to streamline, measure, and make your conference more engaging.
Guidebook build fantastic mobile event apps (we love their tech so much it powers our conference app), and they’ve also produced a useful conference planning guide that looks at using tech to save you time and effort.
This guide will walk you through the planning process while also offering up some ideas for how you can make the most of mobile technology during each phase. Use it to plan a conference that exceeds expectations, delivers value and gives you truly useful feedback.
Get your free conference planning guide.
Reimagining Luxury Venues for Meetings and Events
The definition of luxury varies depending on the group you’re gathering for your next meeting. However, one thing is clear across the events industry: Meeting these luxury expectations is becoming increasingly difficult as costs rise. As budgets tighten, finding the right talent to bring these meetings to life is also becoming more challenging. The hospitality industry often faces a shortage of experienced staff, causing significant issues beyond a few frustrated leisure guests.
With the meeting industry on the path to full recovery, planners must navigate these challenges to deliver VIP experiences that ensure long-term attendee loyalty. In this evolving landscape, high-end hotels in secondary destinations are emerging as an ideal solution, leading planners to seek high-quality venues outside tier-1 markets.
But what defines ‘first-tier’ quality and service today? In this report, Skift Meetings partnered with The Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City to help event organizers keep pace with changing attendee expectations and industry trends, exploring the shifting concept of luxury in today’s meetings and events.
Get your luxury shifting venue guide.
The Ultimate Guide to Event Management
Asana a leading project management tool, has helpful advice beyond project planning for small event organisers. This guide focuses on avoiding starting from scratch with every new event by creating templates for common types such as workshops, virtual events, in-person gatherings, and corporate functions. Their templates help ensure you never miss crucial steps like planning your budget or booking a venue.
Successful event planning requires keen attention to detail. For each event, your team members need to coordinate various aspects, including catering, marketing materials, sponsorships, and social media. Asanas guide can help all small event organisers effectively track these details to streamline your workflow and ensure nothing falls through the cracks.
If you’re a small event organiser, organise all your event-related tasks in a project management hub that includes your partners, contractors, and vendors. This approach eliminates the need for constant check-ins, allowing your organising team to see progress and collaborate in real-time.
Get your project planning guide to event management
The Power of Personalization (Cvent)
Your delegates are living in a world of increased expectations. From Amazon recommendations to Spotify playlists, we’re now surrounded by algorithmic personalisations serving up our favourite content first, and recommending purchases we didn’t know we couldn’t live without.
Our interaction with highly personalized content enhances our engagement and brand loyalty as consumers, while also raising our expectations for engagement in other areas. This is a crucial factor to consider in your conference planning.
Cvent’s guide focuses on what tapping into event personalisation means, why it’s important, and how to implement it. Access your copy, and start planning how you can use tech and delegate data to create thousands of individual experiences at your next conference.
Your Guide to Planning a Conference (The Balance Small Business )
Before a single delegate arrives at your conference venue, you need to consider a hundred tiny practical details about how people will experience your event. Everything from how your delegates will navigate the space and how your session rooms will be laid out. Even to how refreshments will be distributed throughout your conference.
The Balance have put together a handy conference planning guide that will talk you through these details. It help you get into the mindset of your delegates so you can solve venue problems before they even arise.
We hope you find them helpful, go forth and conquer.