How to plan a conference
A conference is many events at once: keynotes, tracks, sponsors, catering and registration, all running in parallel. This guide breaks the work into a timeline you can actually manage.
The Event70 Team · 3 min read
- 1
Set theme, date and venue (4 to 6 months out)
Pick a theme that shapes your speaker pitch and marketing. Confirm a venue that fits your expected headcount with room for an expo and breakouts.
- 2
Open the call for speakers and build the agenda
Source speakers early, then map sessions into tracks. Balance each track for level and topic so attendees always have something relevant to attend.
- 3
Launch registration and ticketing
Stand up a registration page with clear tiers, and track sign-ups against your venue capacity and catering minimums as numbers come in.
- 4
Sign sponsors and plan the expo
Sell sponsorships against real attendee numbers, and design an expo floor and schedule that gives sponsors genuine traffic during breaks.
- 5
Confirm production, AV and recording
Lock staging, sound, screens and recording for every room. Multi-track means multiple AV setups, so confirm each one with a single point of contact.
- 6
Build the master run of show
Create one master run of show plus a sheet per room, with owners and durations. Breaks and room changes are where conferences fall behind, so time them tightly.
- 7
Brief volunteers and run the day
Brief room hosts and volunteers on their slots and the schedule, then run from a live run of show so every room stays on time together. Assign one floating producer whose only job is to walk between rooms and unblock problems; everyone else owns a station, the floater owns the gaps between them, which is where conferences actually break.
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RSVPs
- JAJordan Avery+2confirmed
- SPSam Patel+1confirmed
- RCRobin Cho+1pending
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Event70 turns this into a working plan: a live run of show, an assignable checklist, RSVPs, a budget and the day-of, all on one event.
How to write a run of show
A run of show is the minute-by-minute script that runs your event. Here is how to build one that holds up on the day, step by step, with a free template.
Read 5 stepsThe event planning checklist
A practical event planning checklist organized by how many weeks out you are, from first booking to the day of, so nothing slips through the cracks.
Read 7 stepsHow to budget for an event
How to build an event budget that survives contact with reality: the line items to include, tracking estimated vs actual, and where costs quietly hide.
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