Conference running handbook

Some (but not comprehensive) guidelines for running a conference--supplied by some folks with years of experience in the tech event scene. This information is not canonical. These practices have worked for us. Run at your own risk!(you'll see <3)

Contents

Organizing Team
Timeline
Picking a Venue
Picking a Date
Format
Code of Conduct
Dealing with Money
Expenses
Ticket Sales
Sponsorships
CFP
Speakers
Accomodations
Promotion
Design
Website
Tools
Day-Of Event Running
Links

Organizing Team

Building the team is the single most important thing that you will do. We strongly advise for your conference that you have a minimum support of three organizers(we require this of our own conferences). We have found it useful to break the roles down. A diverse team of individuals(demographic, background, industry, age, etc.) who are excited to tackle these roles is beneficial to the conference outcome and experience.

Producers

Accounting/Sponsor experience(reimbursements, payments)
Logistics/Venue coordinator(vendors, hotel, taxi credits, etc.)

What's expected We believe that in order to maximize the success of an event that someone MUST be in charge. These people are ultimately accountable for everything that happens. These are often the same people who are financially on the hook for the event. Responsible for roles below, intersections, and overall project management. Producers agree to the Code of Conduct and execute on any reports of violation.

Time commitment: Roughly 5 hours/week when the conference is 4+ months away and ramps up to 10 hours/week leading up to the conference. The week before the conference is essentially full-time (40+ hours).

Organizers

Marketing/copy/social media(influences ticket sales through managing these)
Speaker experience(cfp, acceptance/decline)
Website
Content and Program Curator
Workshop Curator
Artist/designer/branding

What's expected Organizers agree to the Code of Conduct and execute on any reports of violation with guidance of a Producer.

Time commitment: for organizers can vary by the responsibility, but 50% of the time commitment of the curator is a good proxy.

Volunteers

And finally, volunteers make up the life blood of the live event. These folks assist during the conference itself, including the set-up and tear-down.

What's expected Volunteers must be agree to adhere to the Code of Conduct and alert organizers/producers to any reports.

Time commitment: Volunteers should expect to work the duration of the conference plus 1 day on either end for set-up and tear-down.

The Conference experience

Think about the overall feel you want your audience(speakers, attendees, sponsors) to walk away with. Check in on your plan and how you're executing on this to make sure you're still meeting this feel.

Take care of your speakers. Manage expectations and schedule. This means reimbursing quickly, as soon as you are able. Communicate often and kindly.
Always publish all of the locations of your events, including after parties. Surprises are not appreciated by all, even if intended to be fun.
Your organizing team is the face of your conference. It's tough when you're tired, but a smile and a hello go a long way towards making sure your attendees feel included.
Check in on sponsors during the event to make sure they have everything they need. They help keep the wheels turning! Have sponsors gotten breaks?
Promote self-care to attendees, speakers, sponsors, and organizers. Happy people make a happy conf.
Parties !== booze. Providing events where folks can meet each other, wind down, and nerd out is awesome. Alcohol should not be the primary form of entertainment at any scheduled event. Always make sure non-alcoholic beverages are provided.
If you're providing food, being sensitive to the needs of those with dietary restrictions is very appreciated. Make it known you are doing this! Another in is easy-to-grab-and-go food makes for quickly satisfied attendees.
Introduce your team to the entire conference. Make sure everyone knows who they are and how to identify them if they need anything. Try to repeat this often.

Timeline

You want to begin planning for your conference at least 6 months out. Here is a sample timeline:

T - 6 months: Pull together a core group of conference organizers.
T - 5 months: Lock down venue and complete the sponsorship brochure.
T - 4 months: Lock down top-tier sponsors.
T - 3 months: Batch #1 tickets go on sale.
T - 2 months: Batch #2 and #3 tickets go on sale.
T - 1 month: Batch #4 (last chance) tickets go on sale.
CONFERENCE
T + 1 day: Thank you email to attendees and survey.
T + 1 week: Personal thank you emails to speakers and sponsors.
T + 2 weeks: Post-mortem with organizing team, photos, videos, etc.
T - 1 month All vendor payments, speaker reimbursements, and sponsor money reimbursement should be wrapped up.

See email templates

Picking a Venue

Your budget will dictate what you can do here. Don't think that you need a fancy venue to have a successful conference. Ultimately, your venue simply needs to provide the following things:

Seating for your attendees.
A/V for your speakers.
Good (preferably great) Wi-Fi and bandwidth.

You will very likely need a deposit to secure a venue. If you're a first year conf or operating on a very small budget, it is recommended to check out your local university for donated space or in exchange for sponsorship.

Researching Venues

Pour through all types of sites - places that were used for art events, warehouses, studios, past tech events, conferences.
Build a list containing details that are relevant to whittling this down.
Build contacts and confirm that the capacity and requirements of the conf are met by an email/phone call.
Go tour!

TEMPLATE TO TOUR: Some things to look for:

Broadband: what does their pipe look like?
Wi-Fi: how many connected devices can it support?
Plugs: what's the plug / power strip situation?
Power: do we have to pay any surcharge for above average power usage?
Is there any vendor lock-in regarding internet or WiFi?
Seating: Can they comfortably accommodate 300 seated individuals with laptops?
What's the line of sight like for the stage area? Any obstructions?
Is the seating elevated/stadium?
Are the chairs comfortable?
A/V: What kind of projector(if provided)
A/V: What kind of screen?
Are there additional monitors/feeds in the event space or in breakout areas?
What about sound / mics? Is there a system already provided on-site?
Who will be running the A/V for us? Is there a vendor lock-in for A/V?
Is there space to chill out?
Is there space for workshops? For casual breakouts?
Where will the sponsors set-up their booths?(if applicable)
Can we choose our own food vendors?
Is there a fee for going outside of preferred vendors?
Can we provide alcohol to our attendees?
Are we required to carry insurance for our event?
Is parking provided? Where?
Are we required to provide a security team?
Cost: What is included in the cost?
What's not included? (set-up, tear-down, A/V, etc)
How much is the deposit? When is it due?

For managing lodging(destination conference):

Is there any on-site event management offered? What does this include? What's the cost?
What is the process for selling rooms? Is this managed by the lodging company or us?
What are the hours for check-in and check-out? Can this budge at all for our event?
How would we manage conference events mixing with others staying at the resort? Will there be friction with non-confers?
Is WiFi provided in every room at no additional cost?

These questions may seem tedious, but each one of these can make for a very poor attendee experience and increase expenses for the conference dramatically.

Event insurance

It turns out, people will sue you. Acquire event insurance for the days of your event.

Picking a Date

Build a list of every conference that is similar to the one you're trying to organize and cross-sections of audience that could miss out by too many good conferences occurring. Make sure you pick a date that conflicts as little as possible. Date conflicts will not only affect your ability to attract attendees but it will also block potential speakers.

Here's a crowdsourced list of conferences that might be helpful.

Format

First, how many attendees do you expect?

0-100 people: 1 track, 1 day conference.
101-300 people: 1 track, 2 day conference.
300-600 people: 2 track, 2 day conference.
600+ people: too many people.

Code of Conduct

This is not optional. It provides a safe space by demonstrating to all those experiencing your event that you are aware and able to act on any challenge that comes up during your time as a responsible party. This is a common guideline for behavior and should have both The Code of Conduct itself as well as Reporting Guidelines that allow your team to know how to execute on reported behavior.

Dealing with Money

Please see the Conference Budgeting Template.

This spreadsheet will be your lifeline for keeping everything on track for your conference. Many people don't aim to make money off the conference they are excited to run. Great! Protect the hard work you're doing. If budget isn't top-of-mind, it might very well come out of your own bank account at the end of the run(or leave you saddled with debt). If you can't stay in the black, it's unsustainable.

Sponsorship dollars alone will funnel through quite a bit of money, even if only to be passed on for venue, food, and logistics. You'll need some sort of entity(hopefully not your own checking account) to operate this conference. You don't need to necessarily start your own LLC. There are foundations and groups in your town that are often willing to help make this happen.

Taxes are a thing. Someone will need to assist you if you aren't already versed in this. No worries! That's what professionals are for.

Expenses

A basic list of expenses you can anticipate are listed in the accompanying How to Conf master spreadsheet under 'Expenses'.

Ticket Sales

We choose to release tickets in 3-4 batches where the price of the ticket increases with each batch. This strategy has several nice benefits:

Selling "early bird" tickets at a discount rewards your most passionate and enthusiastic community members.
You give your team a more achievable goal (sell 30 tickets as opposed to 300).
Affords multiple opportunities to promote your conference over time.
You can be more agile and react to feedback on pricing (too expensive, too cheap, need a bigger venue, etc).

Sponsorships

Build a target list of potential sponsors. Use other similar conferences as a guide for companies that might be interested in sponsoring your event. Have at least 50 companies in your target list.

Consider 3-4 tiers of sponsorship. Let's use an example to see how you might calculate these tiers:

Imagine that your conference budget is $100k. Sponsorships should account for roughly 50% of your budget, so that would be $50k in sponsorships. If you had 3 tiers of sponsorship, this would be a reasonable set of prices for each tier:

Tier 1 - $8k (3 companies)
Tier 2 - $4k (6 companies)
Tier 3 - $1k (2 companies)

You might also consider a $0 "community" tier for companies that cannot afford a sponsorship but can contribute in other ways such as labor, services, promotion, etc.

CFP

The call for presentations helps communicate how you build your content and community for the conference. There are many options for submissions to your call that include Github Issues or pull requests, a Google form, or email. These different formats can be chosen for ease-of-execution or minimizing barriers to entry. Past calls have been a hybrid approach--GitHub submission with a template provided to include necessary information. This was for those comfortable with an open source workflow and having their abstract published publicly. To respect privacy and allow encouragement for submitters intimidated by that process, we also created a private email submission.

Check out the EmpireJS 2016 CFP process and also read up on our past Reviewing Guidelines to see how you can help minimize bias and solidify a rad lineup!

Speakers

Building your most diverse, knowledgeable community takes work. You want awesome speakers and attendees? Reach out to your local meetups, code schools, universities, and conferences and share your Call for Speakers. The more inclusive you are in your process to share, the better result you'll see in the community you've built. Reach out to people you see doing awesome work. If you don't know them? It's a compliment you even asked! Better to ask and see a 'no thanks' to the submission process than to not ask and lose the chance at lifting up someone that didn't know you were interested in what they had to say.

It is recommended that budget is allocated for speaker travel and accommodations. This allows for increasing access to conferences for speakers that might not have the luxury of a good paycheck(this is a reality). It's also a treat and a huge appreciation to those who have spent time creating awesome content for the conference.

Accommodations

Assuming your conference isn't a destination event (i.e. far away from where the majority of your attendees live) then accommodations need to be arrange for 3 groups of people:

Organizers who are coming in from out of town
Speakers who are coming in from out of town
Attendees who are coming in from out of town

A reasonable-sized hotel (50+ rooms) should be able to handle your needs. Make sure to set aside budget to pay for the hotel stays of groups (1) and (2). Work with the hotel to create a discounted rate for group (3). This rate will probably be for $10-20 off per night and the hotel will likely set a deadline by which the rooms need to be booked before they get released back in to the general pool. Make sure your attendees are clear on what the discount code is and when the deadline is.

Promotion

Assuming that you start planning your conference 6 months out, here is a timeline for thinking about how to communicate this event both to attendees and potential speakers. The important thing to remember is that everything that you say is a promise. So start small: make few promises and sell tickets at a discount to account for this. This rewards people who "make a bet" on you and your organizers.

As you lock-down more details, you can increase the scope and specifics of your promise and charge more. A regular cadence of these bits of news will help keep your conference top-of-mind and will help you as you solicit speakers, talk to sponsors and sell tickets.

Assuming you begin organizing your conference 6 months out, here is a sample timeline for promotion:

T - 5 months

Put up a basic website with the following information:

Name of event
Theme
Location
Date
Link to early bird tickets
Link to CFP
Link to sponsorship brochure

T - 4 months

Close down CFP and review talks. Release next tier of tickets. Start to announce sponsors.

T - 3 months

Release next tier of tickets. Continue to announce sponsors. Start announcing speakers.

T - 2 months

Release last tier of tickets. Finish announcing sponsors. Continue announcing speakers.

T - 1 month

Final announcements, which can include:

Last minute sponsors
Details about social events and special activities
Keynote or special speakers

Design

During the planning for your event, you will have many things that you will need to design. Good design is critical to establishing a cohseiveness to your conference and brand, and can help excite and impress people. Remember, design does not exist just to look pretty; it's more than just pixels. The primary goal of your overall design should be conveying information to your participants in a good manner.

Having someone who is well versed in graphic design is a huge boon. You will need to get designs for things like:

Website
Apparel (Shirts, Hoodies)
Badges
Totebags
Stickers
Physical handouts (maps, flyers, bingo cards)
Standing Banners
Videos

You will also have some design assets provided to you, such as

Sponsor logos

Types of printing

There are a number of different methods that things will be created with, and depending on what method you use there are different constraints to be aware of.

Silkscreening

Typically used to produce apparel (shirts, hoodies), but can also be used to make other things (totebags). Each individual color that appears in your design adds to the cost of the items, and each location that you need to print can also add to the bottom line. It's best to limit yourself to 1-2 colors and 1-2 print locations.

Digital Printing

Digital printing is typically used for badges or paper handouts, but can also be used for large format standing banners. It's faster, generally cheaper, and more flexable then silk screening, but it usually doesn't work on fabric. You don't have any restrictions on colors or placements using digital printing.

Lasers

Sometimes, you'll want to make things that are unusal objects. An example of this is CascadiaJS's wooden badges. They may have irregular shapes, or ones that printers don't typically carry. You can make items in any shape or size, only limited by the size of the laser platform your vendor has. These items can be unique and very impressive, but come at a higher cost. The complexity of your design is directly coorelated to the cost to prodce the item. Vendors can do etching (not cutting all the way through your medium) and staining which can add to the design, but you don't have much flexibility with colors in laser cutting.

Embroidery

Embroidery is rarely used, but does happen for things like hats that don't take well to silkscreening, or to give something a bit different look. Colors are limited, and vendors are very picky about revisions.

Die cutting

Should you want to produce something that has a shape that printers don't usually carry, you may need to also have your items die cut. The process is to make 2 shapes out of metal and squish your swag between them. There is usually a cost to setup the die.

Videos

If you are producing videos of any of your conference, you may be asked to provide various assets to use in the videos. Fortunately, these are fixed size (1920x1080) and vendors prefer pngs.

You may need to provide a title image (think logo), an image of your sponsors, and an image with your speaker's name, talk title, and your logo.

Picking apparel

Generally, whomever is doing the printing for you (silkscreening, embroidery, etc) will have a list of vendors they work with to provide apparel. They may give you a list of apparel manufacturers to pick from.

Vector assets

You may be required to print your assets on a variety of materials and mediums, so it's best to make sure all your core assets are available in a vector format. It can be svg, or ai, or eps, but you will beed to put these assets on many things so make sure your assets are flexible.

Font Selection

Have caution when picking a font for your conference. You'll want to make sure you get a webfont as well as a ttf or otf format if you are using it on apparel.

While fonts can cost hundreds of dollars, the importance of picking a quality font should not be ignored.

Website

The website (especially for a web development conference) can be a fun opportunity to create something fun that uses some bleeding edge tech. But don't let that keep you from focusing on what really matter: the content. As we noted above, there should be a regular cadence at which you are sharing more and more information about the conference. But at the end of the day (i.e. the week before the event at the latest) your website should include:

Name of conference
Location of conference (including name of venue, map and directions)
Code of Conduct
Call for talks(details, speaker perks)
Location of accommodations (including map and directions)
Dates
Agendas for each day (including registration, meals, talks and evening events)
List of speakers (with photo and talk titles)
List of sponsors
List of organizers (with photo and contact information)
How to purchase tickets

Make sure your website works on phones as well as laptops & desktops--many people at the conference will be using your site.

Timing

Additionally, as your conference gets closer and closer, the needs of your website audience change.

If your conference has a Call for Proposals, people will need to know how to submit a talk and why they should think about submitting.

Two to three months before your doors open, people are deciding if they want to attend your conference. They will need to see where your conference is, who is speaking, how to purchase tickets, and potentially who else is going to be there.

Approximately 6-8 weeks before your conference, people will begin to make detailed travel arrangements (if they haven't already). They will need to know how to get to your venue. They will be looking into flights, trains, and travel by car. They will need to what airport to arrive at, and if they need to make connections between that airport and other travel (train, rental car, etc). Depending on where your conference is, you may have a little or a lot of people buying tickets to attend.

In the week or so leading up to your conference, the most important information for participants will be getting to your venue and travel information. Especially if your conference is in a remote location, people will need to know what the address is, and how to get there. A lesser need will be schedule information. Some people like to plan early, and want to figure out what they will be doing. It's unlikely, but possible, at this point that participants will still be buying tickets.

During the conference, the primary focus of the website is your schedule. People need to know what is happening, when, and where. Having a map of your venue on the website can be very helpful.

Web Team

It's best to have multiple that are contributing to the website, but only one person that is responsible for it overall. You want to make sure that your website is setup so that multiple people can deploy content, whether that be via an online administration tool or other means. Having a staging or test environment for your website is also helpful to preview changes before pushing them to the general public. If you use a stage/test environment, make sure as well that multiple people can deploy to it.

Organizer Information

Your organizers should have clear headshots on your website - not obscure avatars. Your attendees may need to find you, and knowing what you look like is very important.

Code of Conduct

Make sure that your Code of Conduct is prominently displayed on your website, as well as how to report an issue. People will need to find this information quickly in a difficult situation, and you don't want to make a bad situation worse by making this information harder to find.

Privacy Policy

You should have one!

No sharing of any attendee contact information to sponsors. They will ask. Just say no.
Minimal access of data and payment info to organizers

Tools

These are tools that we've used:

Twitter - conference promotion.
MailChimp - mailing lists.
Google Analytics - website analytics.
Github - create a new organization for your conference.
ti.to - ticket sales.
the Conference Budgeting Template, of course!
the Volunteer Coordination sheet
Email templates for
- sponsor outreach, confirmation, instruction
- speaker acceptance and decline
- volunteer coordination
- marketing and promotion to prior attendees and current registrants
YouTube
Image storage service(Flickr)
Payment service(Stripe, Paypal)
team communication(Slack, IRC bouncer)

Day-Of Event Running

The final game plan of the events you will be running should be laid out in a detailed schedule for all staff/volunteers. Volunteer schedules(see Tools above for this) that make sure volunteers and staff know when/where they need to be leading up to/during the event will help keep things chugging along smoothly. Reviewing this ahead at a staff meeting allows for a playbook to be laid out for everyone involved and will make sure those organizing are confident in making decisions on the fly when problems arise. Keep a cool head, and you'll have a great time along with everyone else already enjoying what you've worked so hard to provide!

Links

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

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