February 4, 2026 — Sessionboard, the next-generation speaker, abstract, session, and content management platform, today announced the launch of its Awards Management product—designed to help organizations run fair, scalable awards programs that are fully integrated with their event programming, agenda, content, speakers, and year-round marketing strategy.

Traditionally, awards programs have been managed separately from session and education workflows—often by different teams, using disconnected tools, spreadsheets, legacy systems, and manual processes. While sessions and speakers shape the content and experience of an event, awards recognize excellence within that same ecosystem. Managing them in isolation has created unnecessary complexity, fragmented data, and missed opportunities to strengthen programming and marketing over time.

Sessionboard’s new Awards product brings these workflows together in one unified platform.

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"Managing awards is often as vital and complex as managing speakers, abstracts, or sessions, yet they’ve always lived in a separate world. By launching Sessionboard Awards, we’re bringing recognition into the core event lifecycle—saving teams time and capturing the insights needed to build better programming."

Said Chris Carver, Co-Founder and CEO, Sessionboard

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One Platform for Content, Recognition, and Year-Round Impact

Modern events are no longer one-off moments—they are the foundation of year-round content, community engagement, and marketing strategies. Sessions, speakers, and awards all contribute to how expertise is showcased, validated, and trusted across an organization’s ecosystem.

By managing sessions and awards in the same platform, organizers can now:

• Save Even More Time: Consolidate and streamline nominations, evaluations, voting, and communications, all in one system. And reduce manual work and duplicated effort across teams

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• Build a Powerful SME Ecosystem: Automatically identify award-winning experts to fuel future speaker lineups and marketing activations. It’s your most powerful marketing asset, built to enhance your Sessionboard speaker CRM.

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• Kill "Portal Fatigue": You’ve told us how often nominees and winners are also speakers or sponsors. Now, those individuals have one single home for every task and key communication.

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• Engage Your Community: Use built-in Community Voting to make your audience feel heard and deeply invested in your brand.

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• Best-In-Class Tech: Your awards team deserves the same level of powerful technology that you rely on today.

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• ‍Integrated Payments: Leverage our fully integrated payment solution for any submissions or awards you wish to monetize.

Even when awards and education are managed by different internal teams, a unified platform enables each group to work more effectively while aligning outcomes across the organization.

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Building your Ecosystem of Subject Matter Experts

Unlike standalone awards tools, Sessionboard connects recognition directly to speakers, sessions, and topics—transforming awards from a one-time ceremony into searchable institutional knowledge that compounds in value over time.

With Sessionboard Awards:

• Award winners automatically enrich speaker profiles

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• Finalists inform future agendas and programming decisions.

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• Recognition ties back to topics, expertise, and past performance.

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• Awards become searchable, long-term content intelligence—not just a list of winners.
  

This enables organizers to quickly identify subject matter experts for future sessions, understand which award recipients are also proven speakers, and see how recognition aligns with audience engagement and program goals.

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Harness the Power of Community Voting

Turn your audience into active participants and identify your strongest brand advocates.

Community voting is more than just a polling tool; it’s a strategic gateway to deeper audience investment. By allowing your community to help shape your awards or content, you transform passive observers into dedicated stakeholders who feel a true sense of ownership in your brand.

Why Community Voting Matters:

• Boost Engagement: Move beyond one-way communication. Built-in voting makes your audience feel heard and deeply invested in the outcome of your event.

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• Identify Brand Champions: Uncover your most passionate, influential, and dedicated members. Voting data reveals the "super-users" who are driving conversations within your industry.

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• Crowdsource Excellence: Use the collective intelligence of your community to ensure your awards and programming reflect the real-world interests of your audience.

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• Viral Growth: Empower nominees and voters to share their participation, naturally expanding your brand’s reach through organic social proof.

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"Community voting allows individuals to participate directly in the recognition process, turning a moment of celebration into a movement of engagement."

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Built in Partnership with Customers and the Industry

Sessionboard built its Awards product in direct response to customer and partner feedback—particularly from organizations managing large conferences, awards programs, and year-round content strategies.

Customers told Sessionboard they needed:

• Less time reconciling data across tools

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• Better collaboration between awards and education teams

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• Stronger insights to improve programming year over year

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• A more unified experience for speakers, nominees, sponsors, and winners

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Sessionboard Awards addresses these needs by treating recognition as a core part of the content lifecycle—not an afterthought.

Learn More

Sessionboard Awards is available now as part of the Sessionboard platform.

To learn more about how unified awards and session management can strengthen your event content strategy, visit www.sessionboard.com/awards 

About Sessionboard

Sessionboard is a next-generation speaker, abstract, session, and content management platform built for modern associations, event marketing, and conference teams. Trusted by leading organizers worldwide, Sessionboard helps teams save hundreds of hours per event, reduce operational complexity, and unlock the long-term value of their content—while integrating seamlessly into today’s event technology stacks.