Authored by: Leslie Bailey

We plan and we plan, and we plan… but no matter the amount of preparation, no process is without its hurdles or pain points.

Processes are created to organize content, maintain an always evolving program agenda, as well as manage speakers and moderators. With multiple teams and players involved, we look to said process to regulate, balance and structure, allowing some flexibility for those curve balls that are inevitably thrown our way.

If some of you out there are just starting out in an education or events role, or are complete perfectionists and are not familiar with these pain points I refer to, let’s identify a few examples.

· Missed content deadlines

· Inefficient session development calls

· At odds panelists

· Lack of technical knowledge

· Time itself

While some of the examples listed above cannot be completely mitigated (i.e.  we all would like to control the hours in the day) let’s focus on four ways we can attack and potentially eliminate obstacles from our process.

Calculate Frequencies

‍This sounds daunting, I know. I don’t mean literally get out that calculator and tally up the frequency of items, what I do mean is pinpoint the item that seems to occur for most events. Consider the quote from ol’ Albert Einstein, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result”.  If you continuously use the same process and experience the same complications, then something has got to give. Use your colleagues as “reviewers” of the plan to see if there’s something you’re missing since you’re so close to the project.

Survey Speakers and Moderators

Provide evaluations on the preparation and production experience to your speakers on the process. They may have beneficial external feedback that will open opportunities to improve the plan going forward.

Assess Accountability

‍Review your team resources and record if you’ve had more success with speakers taking on the responsibility of content upload and session development, or if using team members for these tasks resulted in a smoother outcome.

Review Communications

Why did the speaker and I take eight back and forth emails for one question? Take a glimpse back at your number of communications and more importantly, communication style. Analyzing how a message or conversation could have been handled differently is typically a “shoulda, coulda, woulda” afterthought. Good communication is key and with all of us trying to respond as quickly as possible, messages get lost in translation, resulting in more time, confusion and in some cases, frustration.

Conclusion

Perfecting a speaker and session management process is an artform. Does the first draft always look like a Picasso? Definitely not. As with anything pertaining to events, to move forward we must strive to beopen to feedback, constructive criticism, (I’ll let you be the judge of how others define “constructive”), and changing a process that we’ve used for months, years, etc.

For more information on how to build or refine your own speaker management process, and specifically how as speaker management platform can be a part of a successful process, find us on LinkedIn to connect.

Sessionboard:  https://www.linkedin.com/company/sessionboard/

Leslie Bailey: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leslie-wingler-events/

About Sessionboard

Sessionboard is a next generation speaker & content management platforms that simplifies the complex workflows and disjointed communications that exist around speaker and content management. From call for papers, abstract evaluation, awards, applications, agenda building, speaker onboarding and communication, Sessionboard helps event organizers work smarter, move faster, and improve their ROI.

The results? A faster-growing event, more productive staff, seamless collaboration with speakers and more time back to do what you do best—building epic experiences.

Sessionboard integrates with platforms like: ExpoPlatform, SwapCard, Gleanin, Snoball, Fuzion and many others.

Schedule a free demo today.

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