README.md

awesome-conference-practices

Did you like anything in particular about a conference? Did you hate anything? Let's make organizing conferences an easier task ?

The initial document is pretty one-sided, biased, and based on my own experience and perspective. It's probably missing tons of things. That's why it's on GitHub and it's not a Medium article. Please help me cover everything and make this document amazing ?️

If you're lazy to send a PR you can also tweet me things and I'll just add them here.

Communication

?️ The Bible Email™️

For God's sake don't send out a huge email the size of the Bible with all the information about the conference because nobody will actually read that. Send information in smaller relevant chunks. Before I arrive you can tell me about the travel and accommodation arrangements. After I arrive you can inform me about the rest of the stuff that I need to know, etc.

?️ Calendar invites

Send calendar invites for every event at the conference. Attach locations and descriptions to the events. Speakers dinner, my talk, mic-check, after-party, hiking, that extra tour, etc. Then every speaker can accept the events they want to attend and they don't need to open that huge email 90 times in order to figure out what's going on.

?️ Sending the talk upfront

LOL, it's never gonna happen. Most of the speakers finish their presentations on the flight to the conference, or at the actual event, so just don't bother.

?‍ Native app

Do not, I repeat, DO NOT make a native app. Most of the people won't even bother to install it and those who do will just delete it after the conference is done, so it doesn't make any sense. Make a nice PWA instead, it's the perfect use case for it.

?️ Accommodation

• When the conference venue is in the hotel where the speakers are staying it's just amazing. Having access to your room in order to practice your talk, or go for a nap, or cry a bit because you agreed on doing a talk but you're having second thoughts ... it's just the best.
• Ask speakers if they want to stay on a boat? It sounds interesting but some people may not enjoy it.
• Attempt not to split speakers in different hotels

Transport

✈️ Booking flights

There are 2 options here:

• Let me know the travel budget, book my own flight/train/bus, and invoice you later
• Let's have a short call about it

Sadly, the option we always end up with is sending 20 emails back and forth until this is arranged.

?️ Airport to Hotel

This is totally not necessary, but after a full day of travel, it's nice when someone just picks you up from the airport and takes you directly to the hotel.

Finances

?️Travel and accommodation

The talk is only 30 minutes, but in order to give that talk, we need to spend at least 3 days of traveling and weeks of preparation. The minimum you can do is pay for the travel and accommodation costs. It's silly to bullshit your way around it. Some speakers will fall into the trap and pay for themselves but it shouldn't be that way.

?️ Workshops

There are conferences who are not paying the trainers and that just blows my mind. Maybe it's because right now it's my primary source of income and I wouldn't do it for free, but I'm pretty sure that there is something wrong here. If you're making extra money from a workshop you should pay the trainer at least 50% percent of the profit, period. Otherwise, you should list the speaker or their company as a sponsor.

? The talk

If you decide to pay one speaker, pay all of them. This kind of information leaks out and it makes you look like a douchebag.

The actual conference

?????‍?‍????‍ ??‍ Diversity

You would think that by now conference organizers finally figured this out, but you would be surprised. Just don't do a conference with 80 male speakers, or 80 female speakers, or any 80 speakers of the same gender/nationality/race/age/etc. Make sure to strike a nice balance and invite people of every geneder, nationality, race, and age. Don't discriminate on any level.

?️ Speakers room

So many conferences got this wrong, and it's so simple. It shouldn't be anything fancy or crazy, just make sure you have the basics:

• Have ?️ good ?️ WiFi ️️?️ coverage.
• Have ?️ extra ️️?️ extension ?️ cords.
• Have ?️ some ️️?️ food ?️ and ?️ water.

? Food

• The amount of food that you're planning? Just make it double. Don't underestimate the hunger of people. It can bring their mood down and they can judge the entire conference based on that.
• Have a variety of food for breakfast and lunch. Assume there will be people will allergies and different food preferences (Vegetarians, Vegans, Pescatarians, Pesca-pescatarians, etc.)
• If people are paying more than 300 euros for the conference and your breakfast is just one croissant ... don't even get me started. Fix that.
• If the weather is hot, have an ice-cream fridge. This was an amazing idea by the JSHeroes conference, and everyone enjoyed it ?️

?️ Intro

I cannot stress this enough. Don't have a long conference intro. Yes, I know you have 95 sponsors and you want to thank everyone including the city mayor and Janice in accounting but people are just so anxious to hear the first speaker that they're not even listening to you. The intro should be short and sweet and then you can announce the rest of the information before the breaks or when the next speaker is preparing on stage.

?️ MC

An MC can either make or break a conference. Make sure that you get the right person. Don't fall into the trap of just hiring a random person that's popular in the community, because he / she might be terrible with audiences.

? Badges

• One-sided badges are terrible. They will twist and turn all the time and you gotta make sure that people can read your name. Print the same info on both sides.
• Find a way to include the conference agenda on the badge. It's just amazing. Here is an example.
• Include Twitter nickname on badges? When Derp Derpowski approaches you, you will have no idea who he is, but if you see @zderp you'll be like "YO WHAT'S GOOD I KNOW YOU FROM TWITTER". Please do it.

?️ Equipment

• Don't make me hold a microphone, please. I may have some live-coding examples and I want to have my hands on the keyboard.
• Don't mic up speakers on stage, it's just awkward.
• It's also nice when the headworn microphone is not a big, bulky, black ball that covers the entire side of my face.
• Don't have a bunch of spotlights right in the speaker's face.
• Make sure people can read code from the projectors. A low-budget projector simply won't cut it.
• Have every type of adapter. Yes, some people with have the new MacBook Pro with a single USB-C port, and you being judgy about it won't help them connect to the projector. Just have the adapter ready.
• Use a cable, please. Connecting to the projector via AirPlay or Chromecast sounds good in theory, but there are always unexpected problems with it. The 3-5 second delay when changing slides can ruin a presentation.

?️ Live Twitter feed

Do not, I repeat, DO NOT show public unfiltered tweets on a screen. It may look fun but it always goes south. People are dicks. If you want to do this you should have a person that's gonna choose approved tweets.

After the conference

?️ Speaker Gifts

I don't think that anyone would complain about this, no matter what's the gift (except someone told me that sometimes they cannot transport the gift because they don't have enough space etc.) If you need speaker gift ideas:

• Socks
• T-shirt ?️
• Sneakers
• Chocolate with the conference logo
• Handwritten note/letter

Also keep in mind that certain items are not allowed on a plane (wine bottles, certain kinds of meat, etc.) and many speakers will travel with hand luggage only.

Extra ideas

?️ Feedback envelopes

I loved this idea! JSHeroes had a booth where everyone can write a small note and put it in an envelope for the speaker to read it. At the end of the conference, we got our envelopes and it felt nice to read the notes and bring them home as a physical memory.