Program

Having a variety content makes it more likely that someone will find a way to engage. I've found that the following types of content cover most bases:

  • Talks
  • Workshops
  • Lightning talks
  • Unconference

The talks and workshops are the content that you'll want to go through a submission process for, the lightning talks and unconference are intentionally unstructured.

Committee

You'll want to put together a committee for putting together the program. An odd number of people is ideal because it allows you to break ties. The first time around we shot for 5 and ended up with 4.

Submissions

For software, just use Sessionize. It was $500 and it was easily worth it. Here's a list of what it provides off the top of my head:

  • A portal for speakers to submit talks
  • A portal for speakers to create their own profiles
  • Auto-generated social banners for marketing purposes
  • Built-in submission evaluation features
  • A schedule builder
  • Group mailing features
  • A web app that contains the talk schedule and speaker profiles

It's good to provide a few different sections in the submission form:

  • Abstract
    • Pitch the talk to the audience in 500 characters
    • Short, publicly visible
  • Description
    • Pitch the talk to the organizers
    • Long, only visible to organizers
  • Details
    • Not part of the pitch, just a space to leave any other notes for the organizers

You'll get at least half of your submissions at the last minute. It's also good to solicit submissions from individuals in the community. This can help draw interest, so don't be afraid to reach out.

Evaluation

Give the committee members a couple of weeks to review submissions. A star rating that gets averaged is how we did it last time around, but there may be better ways to do it. It's ideal to do the entire evaluation process blind to avoid bias.

You'll need to decide how many tracks you want. This is based on expected attendance, size of the venue, and the number of exciting submissions.

You'll want to come up with the "first choice" submissions, but also keep a list of "second choice" submissions in case someone drops out, declines, or just never responds. If there are multiple submissions that are highly rated but covering the same topic, you'll need to dedup and just pick one.

One decision you'll have to make is whether to allow product demos as submissions. We didn't have to make this decision the last time around because there were enough highly rated submissions that weren't product demos.

You'll want at least one backup speaker. This job sucks because you have to

  • Make a talk you probably won't give
  • Pay to attend the conference
  • Pay to travel to the conference

Notification

Notify and confirm all the "first choice" submissions. Notify and confirm any "second choice" submissions. In the notification email ask the speakers to keep it quiet until we've confirmed everyone. You don't want someone declining to give a talk simply because they found out that they weren't one of the first confirmed talks. Only once you've confirmed all the speakers should you make the general announcement that everything is decided.

Run-throughs

It's ideal to do run-throughs with the speakers about two months out. This serves multiple purposes:

  • It gives speakers feedback without enough lead time so they have time to make changes.
  • It forces speakers to not be throwing their talk together last minute.
  • It gives you confidence that there will be no surprises when it comes to the day of the conference.

We didn't do run throughs this time around due to time constraints, but I'd like to do them in the future.

Schedule

There's only a few guidelines for the schedule:

  • Put talks that you think will get a lot of attention first and last.
  • Put talks that you think will generate a lot of discussion right before lunch so that people can spend lunch talking about it.

Timeline

  • 7 months out
    • Pick the committee
    • Create the CfP
  • 5 months out: close the CfP
  • 4 months out
    • Finalize evaluations
    • Notify speakers
    • Start publicizing selections
  • 2 months out:
    • Run-throughs
    • Finalize schedule