How can conference organization tools save you time?

It is also important to understand and outline your attendee types. By doing so, you can create registration paths that are personalized to the attendee journey. This may include creating registration logic. At the end of the day, you want to create the most simple, personalized process in order to heighten registration conversion vs overcomplicating that could lead to a drop-off in registration.

Having worked in an international convention centre I reckoned that Registration and accreditation is usually a tough part. You need a functional system, complete with auto response mechanism to show the participant's details have been captured as well as how to print their badges. If it is not well planned and coordinated, it can mess up the first day of the conference as participants will be scrambling to verify their details, get their badges and conference packs.

In my experience, this is called speaker management solutions or call-for-papers; having a submission or nomination process for potential speakers & topics helps fuel community involvement and heighten attendee satisfaction. The other area to assess is having a true process around speaker rehearsals & coaching, if the speaker is not as charismatic or powerful it may lead to a drop in attendee satisfaction. The other area is death-by-powerpoint; less words on slides, more stories, facts & numbers and diagrams.

This is the a.k.a scientific program in conference. This is what attracts the participants besides the networking aspect. Identifying topics that are click with the participants as well as getting speakers of reputation and with great knowledge of the topic is the icing on the cake. I have seen situations where participants are out of touch with the topics and also where speakers do not connect with the audience leading to boredom or at worst, participants walking in and out one by one as they engage in more captivating endeavours of their own.

One big area to also focus on is your top advocates and partners; within your organization's community it is important to lean-in and identify those who can promote by word-of-mouth or cross-promotion this can heighten registrations in a major way.

Something that I've found helpful in the marketing and promotion of any event or conference is to be unafraid to rely on the kindness of your friends--that extends to friends of friends. Word of mouth is a powerful tool that immediately boosts credibility.

There's also solutions that empower matchmaking and birds-of-a-feather, which allow for attendees with similar interests to connect with one another onsite. This is important to foster dynamic connections that are meaningful and help with future attendance.

This is not limited to only conference or event management solutions, but project management overall. There's tons of tools within the market today that create workflows and assignments of tasks, ownership, and real-time updates. The other major thing to consider is communications; creating an easy way to connect with all the planning groups onsite is crucial whether its via text or messaging applications available at no cost.