As any good events planner knows, there are so many elements to making an event successful. With quite a few collective years of experience under our belts, we looked at our offering to identify where we could add value and support our internal colleagues to make their events a bit easier from an organisational perspective, but also contributing to a more seamless experience for their delegates.
Over the past couple of years, our Conference Services Manager, Katherine Boyling, has been busy establishing our Conference Management Service, available for our internal colleagues and offering an alternative to external Professional Conference Organisers (PCOs). The service offers support with delegate registration, the management of abstract submission and review and the creation of event websites and conference apps meaning we can dramatically reduce the burden of organising a conference for our academic colleagues. This allows them the space to focus on the content of the conference, ensuring the programme is topical and relevant for delegates.
Of course, we all know how tricky these last couple of years have been and just as we were about to launch the service, the pandemic hit. However, every cloud has a silver lining and in fact, that time has allowed us to learn so much more about the software and our own capabilities.
Back in June 2022, we welcomed Dr Matthew Alexander, Reader in the Department of Marketing at the University of Strathclyde and delegates for the 12th AMA SERVSIG Conference who experienced our registration services, abstract management, web design and conference app. Dr Alexander said:
‘Running a conference is an enormous amount of work for what can be a pretty short duration and it requires a skill set that a lot of academics don’t have so this is where having support is really important particularly when looking at the management of abstracts, creating a conference website and also managing the registrations. It brought us a lot of confidence knowing that we had a service in-house to provide us with this support. It takes a huge amount off your shoulders and allows you to perhaps get more involved in the fun aspects of the programme.’
Now we’re fully open for business, it’s time to spread the word across campus and demonstrate the immense value the service provides to our academics. We’ve already supported a number of events with two recent conferences using apps which really enhanced the attendee experience, as well as saving a few trees, contributing to our commitment to being more sustainable.
If you’re a member of staff and keen to find out more about our Conference Management Service then why not check out our new SharePoint site which can help with your event planning. If you’re keen to host an event and want to find out more (we’re open to everyone for events!), then we’d love to hear from you!