When you are dealing with many dozens of sessions, you need to make sure you are planning well ahead of your event, even before you open registration. Speaker programs often start 6-18 months prior to the actual conference, depending on the number of speakers and the breadth of the tracks and sessions you plan to offer. This typically requires multiple managers, reviewers, chairpersons and support personnel.
Depending on the size and scope of your speaker program, you may need to manager the following.
- Create a committee focused on managing the speaker program.
- Produce a call for papers, accepting submissions for presentations by type, length, format, etc.
- Develop a submission system (using an EventsAir Portal) to accept submissions from prospective speakers.
- Assign chairpersons (and other Session Roles) for specific tracks, and reviewers to look at, read and rate all submitted presentations.
- Create an approval process (usually by committee or track chairperson).
- Create a follow-up process for communications of acceptance, invitation to accept, and a speaker registration process.
- Create a speaker checklist (also in EventsAir) to track all speaker deliverables, such as biographies, photos, final presentations (in the correct format), travel, and accommodation arrangements.
Different Kinds of Speaker Programs
There are as many ways to deliver a speaker program as there are stars in the sky! Every conference and event is different, based on many different factors. Only you and your team will know how to best approach a speaker program. Here are some of the more common program scenarios one might encounter:
- Associations and Academic Programs - many associations and schools host conferences focusing on education and training. It could be a conference dedicated to Global Warming studies, mathematics teacher symposiums, an insurance association's annual education event, and many more possibilities. Often, these are larger, multi-day events where educators, professionals, consultants and other specialists propose their presentations for the conference. Typically, these presentations are reviewed by a committee, and either accepted or rejected. There may be literally hundreds of presentations, workshops, panels and training classes spread across dozens of meeting rooms and conference halls.
- Corporate Meetings - these types of meetings tend to be more focused, scheduling presentations, workshops and training classes to support the skills and training of the attending employees. These types of meetings can be large or small, but typically, the company organizing the event will hand-pick their presenters and completely avoid any submission review process.
- Government Meetings - these types of meetings can be as small as 25 attendees or can number in the thousands. Government agencies will organize meetings of all sizes, and speaker programs will vary in size and complexity as well. Every meeting will be unique unto itself; it is very difficult to categorize the types of speaker programs found at Government meetings.
Using EventsAir to Manage your Presentations
In EventsAir, you can capture all information pertaining to the speakers at a conference. This can include details about the presentation, the room, the time, audio-visual requirements and special requests. If you have a checklist of things you need the speakers to supply, such as a bio or high-resolution photo, the system will manage that too.
This tool also manages the paper review process and includes the ability to set up a sophisticated review process according to keywords, themes, presentation types and sessions. You can also include panel reviewing and blind reviewing, and create a portal for reviewers to log in and perform their tasks. The tool facilitates easy allocation into sessions and rooms, and it manages the entire delivery of presentations. You can also correspond with speakers, reviewers and presenters.
Additional Tools
In addition to the Presentation Module, you can leverage additional features, such as Run Sheets, which let you manage and coordinate sessions, venue details, A/V, onsite check in and much more. Run Sheets are a great tool for managing your onsite team and making sure the dozens of presentation related tasks are handled and completed.
Reviews
Only visible from the Attendee Panel of a Reviewer, this section lists all presentations that this person will be reviewing.
If you click on one of these presentations, it will jump to the presenting author's attendee record, and open that presentation for quick and easy editing.