Running an academic conference for the first time is a formidable undertaking. It requires coordinating dozens of moving parts simultaneously: a venue, a budget, a programme committee, a submission system, a publisher, and a community of researchers who are counting on you to deliver a professionally organised event. This guide gives you a realistic map of the whole process.
Start With the Why
Before committing to organise a conference, be clear on its purpose. Are you creating a new annual event in an emerging field? Taking over an established series? Running a one-off workshop co-located with a larger conference? The answers determine scale, workload, and budget requirements. A co-located workshop of 50 people is a fundamentally different undertaking from a standalone international conference of 500.
Timeline: Work Backwards From the Event Date
The most common mistake first-time organisers make is underestimating lead time. A realistic planning timeline for a mid-sized conference:
- 18 months before: Confirm venue, fix dates, secure publisher agreement, form organising committee
- 12 months before: Open website, publish first call for papers, invite programme committee members, open submission system
- 9 months before: Submission deadline, assign papers to reviewers
- 7 months before: Reviews due, programme committee discussion
- 6 months before: Author notifications, open registration
- 5 months before: Camera-ready deadline, finalise proceedings
- 3 months before: Confirm keynotes, publish detailed programme, hotel block deadline
- 1 month before: Final logistics review, volunteers briefed, printed materials ordered
- Day of: Execute
If you are running a smaller workshop, compress this timeline proportionally — but never try to run a submission review process in less than six weeks.
Venue Selection
The venue is one of the largest cost items and one of the most consequential decisions. Key considerations:
- Capacity: Confirm maximum room capacity for plenary sessions and breakout rooms. Under-capacity is a serious problem; slight over-capacity is recoverable.
- AV infrastructure: Projectors, microphones, and — increasingly — hybrid streaming capabilities. Always test everything the day before.
- Catering: Many venues require you to use their own catering provider. Get pricing in writing for coffee breaks, lunches, and the conference dinner separately.
- Accessibility: Ensure the venue is wheelchair accessible and that this is communicated in all materials.
- Proximity to accommodation: A venue in a walkable area with multiple hotel options at different price points is significantly better for attendee experience than a venue that requires transportation.
- Contract terms: Read the cancellation policy carefully. A force-majeure clause is essential — the COVID-19 pandemic taught many organisers this lesson painfully.
Building the Programme Committee
The programme committee (PC) is responsible for peer review. A strong PC is the single most important determinant of submission quality. Guidelines:
- Aim for PC members who are active researchers in the conference's core topics — not adjacent fields.
- Ensure geographic diversity. A PC composed entirely of researchers from one country signals a regional, not international, event.
- Confirm availability before listing anyone's name publicly. Listing people without consent is a serious professional breach.
- Each PC member should review 3–5 papers. This means you need roughly one PC member per expected 20 submissions.
- Appoint a Programme Chair who is responsible for resolving review conflicts and making final acceptance decisions. This is a significant time commitment — ensure they understand this before accepting.
Submission and Review Systems
Do not manage submissions via email. Use an established conference management system:
- EasyChair — the most widely used, free for standard use, reliable
- HotCRP — popular in computer science, strong reviewer assignment features
- Microsoft CMT — free, widely used by IEEE and ACM events
- OpenReview — increasingly common for open peer review, especially in machine learning
Configure the system at least two months before the submission deadline. Test it thoroughly — broken submission systems on the deadline day are catastrophic for your reputation.
Budget Planning
Conference budgets are driven by venue costs, catering, proceedings publication, invited speaker expenses, and administrative costs — offset by registration fees and sometimes sponsor revenue. Build a conservative budget:
- Estimate attendance pessimistically (50–60% of expected) for revenue calculations
- Add a 15% contingency buffer to all expense categories
- Set registration fees to cover costs even at minimum attendance
- Student registration fees are typically 40–60% of regular fees — budget for a substantial student proportion
- Secure institutional or sponsor support to cover fixed costs before the event, so you are not relying on registration revenue
Proceedings and Indexing
If your conference publishes proceedings, negotiate the publisher agreement well in advance. Common options:
- Springer LNCS / CCIS: Prestigious, Scopus and DBLP indexed, relatively strict acceptance and quality requirements
- IEEE Xplore: Standard for engineering and computer science, requires IEEE review process compliance
- ACM Digital Library: For ACM-affiliated events
- CEUR Workshop Proceedings: Free, open access, Scopus indexed — excellent for workshops and smaller events
Confirm indexing in writing before advertising it. Promising "proceedings will be submitted for Scopus indexing" is not the same as confirming they will be indexed.
Day-of Management
On the day, your job shifts from planning to problem-solving. Common issues and how to handle them:
- Presenter no-shows: Have a backup plan — a discussion session, a pre-recorded video, or simply moving to Q&A on previous talks.
- AV failures: Confirm the venue has on-site technical support and their contact number is in your phone.
- Registration queue overload: Pre-print name badges in alphabetical order; have enough staff at the registration desk for peak arrival times (30–60 minutes before the first session).
- Catering delays: Build 10-minute buffers into coffee breaks and lunches rather than scheduling back-to-back.
After the Conference
Within two weeks of the event:
- Send thank-you emails to PC members, volunteers, and keynote speakers
- Publish proceedings (if not already live)
- Send a post-conference survey to attendees — this data is invaluable for future editions
- Write a brief post-mortem document noting what worked, what failed, and what to change next time
Organising a conference is exhausting and deeply rewarding. The research community relies on organisers who give their time to create spaces for knowledge exchange. When it goes well — and with enough preparation, it will — the experience is one of the most professionally satisfying of an academic career.