Organizing a conference is becoming one of the most challenging things in colleges or schools. As an organizer, there are several things you need to take care of in order to organize a successful social science conference. Colleges, companies, universities and schools use conference for sharing information about new topics, trainings or for promoting an event. With the help of technology and right set of tools, you can plan a social science conference in a good way. Below are some of the tips which can be helpful for organizing a Social Science Conference successfully;
- Create an agenda for conference
Before you set up a conference, you need to decide on the agenda or topic on which conference needs to be conducted. For deciding on the agenda for conference, you can hold a conference call with speakers, organizers and presenters. An agenda should also include the order of speakers and duration of each segment.
- Plan your conference budget
Before starting to plan a conference, it is important to understand how much money would be required to hold the conference i.e. space, tools, snacks, or meals. You can ask for conference packages in a hotel or college space. Many conference vendors provide services for holding small or large conference event. You also have to decide whether there will be any cost for attending the conference or will it be free of cost.
- Reserve equipment and space
One of the key things about planning any conference is reserving a conference room or other space where there are not many chances for interruptions or background noise. You may choose a hotel or a hall as a conference space. It is also important to choose the equipment required during conference such as headsets, phone, speakerphone, mic, laptops, power cords, speakers, network cable, projector and other electronics required to conduct a conference. The key is to arrive at a decision of using a tool which is based on your goals and audience requirement. Keep consideration your audience, subject matter and time to cover your topic while choosing the tool so that audience interest is maintained throughout the conference.
- Recruit speakers and support team for conference
There are three main players for any conference: organizer, presenter and assistants. Organizer is the person who is responsible for collaborating topics, marketing the event, set up registration, communicate with participants before and after conference and decide the judge panel or VIP for conference. Presenter could be the subject matter expert who begins the conference and introduces the conference panel, topics and participants. The main role of a presenter is to engage people in presentation. Assistants are those people who help the organizer and presenter during problems related to technical problems or organizing the complete event. Assistants could be responsible for arranging the technical set up and other related things. For larger conferences, there could be more than one organizers and presenters depending on requirement.
- Determine format of your conference
There could be different formats of conference depending on topic for conference such as one speaker presentation, Interview style, interactive mode and moderate panel discussions. Depending on the requirement of a conference, you may decide on the format of your conference.
- Plan Visuals for your conference
Most of the conferences mainly rely on audio and visuals in order to demonstrate the message. So it should more properly organize in a better manner so that conference could be made engaging. Plain slides generally don’t work so it is important to introduce slides with animations, describe conference agenda, topics covered, and introduce presenters and panel in proper manner.
- Get professional help
As an organizer or academic person, you can probably be not so great in managing or organizing the event. It is important to stick to the academic side of things and select the papers and keynotes for the conference while you can use professional support for performing conference arrangements such as technical set up.
- Schedule a practice session for conference
A few days before holding a conference, you can schedule a 30-60 minute practices session with participants in order to make them understand about the conference agenda and tackle all those unresolved questions or queries.
- Set up registration
Before starting to market your conference, you need to involve the attendees for the conference. Many conferences also hold registration options for attendees that may also involve sign up options using an event registration tool distributed to prospective attendees over email or phone. You can also charge for the conference and how much fees you would want to charge in advance. Some of the conference also charge free of cost attendance.
- Market your conference
The final step is to publicize your conference and send information before 2-3 weeks before event gets started. You can create an engagement through newspaper advertisements, emails or other mediums. One of the best places to advertise your conference event is through your college or company website, distributing newsletters over email and using local social media communities on Facebook or Twitter.
Contented By: www.conferencealert.com