New Feature: Scheduling Module

One of the most critical tasks for any conference organizer is building the session schedule. Not only do you have to figure out how to arrange the sessions so they tell a story, you also have to make sure you don't put someone in two places at the same time.

Unfortunately, we can't help you with the story-telling part (at least not yet). We can, however, help you easily check for scheduling conflicts with our new drag-and-drop Scheduling Module.

All you have to do is create a scheduling "grid" with your available dates/times and locations. Once the grid is built, you just drag and drop sessions onto it. If the system detects a conflict, it gives you the option to schedule the session anyway (ignoring the conflict) or to cancel the assignment. You can even move sessions around on the grid and the module will continue to warn you of any conflicts.

Where Is My Logout Button?

Some of you may have noticed some changes to the design of the site. We've been working on new features and needed a little extra "real estate" in order to keep things from becoming overcrowded. Plus, the average size of monitors (even on laptops) has continued to increase, so why leave all that extra white space unused?

For details about what got moved where, see our Design Notes.

Crowdsource, Curate, or Combo?

The most common model for selecting presenters for educational conferences is pretty straightforward:

1. Announce a call for proposals (or call for papers, call for abstracts, call for speakers, etc.)
2. Collect proposals
3. Have a committee of volunteers review the proposals
4. Select presentations based on the reviews
5. Build a session program that accommodates the selections

Although the process works for the vast majority of meetings, it's hard to argue that it can't be improved.

One suggestion we've noticed recently is to open the process up to crowdsourcing. Basically, the idea is to leverage the power of social media by turning over the selection (and possibly scheduling) tasks to attendees. For a more detailed explanation, see Michelle Bruno's post at TSNN.

Another suggestion, seemingly at odds with crowdsourcing, is to have a curator manage the selection and scheduling tasks. The idea here is that conferences, like museum exhibits or other curated collections, are far more effective if the content is carefully selected and organized to "tell a story" to attendees. For more information, see Jeff Hurt's post on Velvet Chainsaw's Midcourse Corrections blog.

So which is it? Crowdsourcing obviously works for larger conferences, like SXSW, but does it also work for smaller meetings with more focused content? And how about curating? Does it work for every type of conference or only for those that can be organized around a clear theme? How about a hybrid? Is it possible (or even desirable) to combine the two into a single model?