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The Week Before
In the week prior to any conference, there’s a large “push” for ticket sales. Don’t be surprised if you see an alarming number of page views and ticket sales on Eventbrite — those who’ve been on the fence about attending will usually decide in the final days.
Make sure you have everything set for your badges. You'll need the artwork and printer lined up. Often times shops like FedEx Office, SirSpeedy, or the UPS Store can help for reasonable rates. Another option is to use a service like conferencebadge.com.
This is an opportune time for you and your team to make the final pitch. Statements like, “don’t be left out!”, “sales ending soon”, “you won’t want to miss this” all evoke a sense of urgency.
Make sure your social feeds are active, asking what people are most looking forward to, if they’ve got any questions, and generally being available to moderate minor details.
Before the conference, you’ll want to give your venue a call to make everything is on track. Find out the scoop on parking, when you can be there to set up and break down, and which areas are designated for your event. Send all parking passes (if necessary) to your guests as a PDF, and remind them to print their tickets for housekeeping purposes.
Eventbrite’s barcode system is unmatched, allowing you to stay organized as you hand out badges to guests. You’ll come away with a good idea of who showed up, who didn’t, and how you can provide demographic information to future sponsors. This is also available through Eventbrite, which breaks down your event into a handy report with information on page views, total number of tickets purchased, and geography of all attendees.
You’ll also want to check in with your catering company to make sure that all orders have been placed, and anyone with special allergies or food preparation preferences is taken care of. Verify the quantities of everything, the delivery time, and what the final cost will be.
In the week prior to the event, book any remaining flights for traveling speakers, and confirm that they’ve received all tickets, boarding passes, or car rentals they may need once they get to town. Re-send them if need be; these all-important details have a special tendency to get lost in the shuffle.
Expect for last minute tweaks. Get all the decks together (including fonts!). Set aside some time to review the decks, and get them organized in the correct order your speakers will be in. You’ll want to allot time for two 15–20 minute intermissions throughout the afternoon, so keep that in mind as you put together decks from your speakers. It’s a good idea to ask everyone to put their decks into a shared Dropbox folder. Barring any technical mishaps, you’ll want to keep everyone’s slides in one place, and accessible no matter the method. You can invite your speakers to the shared folder, and give them a reasonable deadline (7 days prior to) for submissions.
We’re also big believers in thanking our speakers for accepting our invite, so you may want to throw a speaker’s dinner the evening before. Be sure to pick up anyone who needs a ride from the airport, let them get settled, and have a feast. They’ll love meeting their conference cohorts, and learning from new colleagues.