Herding Cats – How to Run a Successful Conference

They say running a conference is like herding cats. It’s more like herding cats, then feeding them, taking them to the vet, changing their litter boxes and showing them love while getting back a cold shoulder – all while avoiding scratches and fleas.

And that’s when they run smoothly!

I’ve been the technical chairman of SPTechCon – BZ Media’s SharePoint Technology Conference – since its inception, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that when all is said and done, someone’s going to have scratches and fleas – and it’s usually me.

I’m about to give you a rare peek behind the curtain of what goes into making a successful conference. Names have been avoided to protect the innocent, and so that I can remain on very friendly terms with all the folks who help make our event so great!

My first task when a conference is coming up is to put out a “Call for Speakers.” This gives our speaker base a heads-up that it’s time to submit sessions for the next event, and (we hope) attracts some new voices in the community. When we did the first SPTechCon, I had to beg speakers to participate. Those that did would offer a session or two, and I’d have to go back to them to see if they could present six or seven. Most often, they were tremendously accommodating, considering we were a new player coming into the space.

Now that we’re more established, I find myself in the unenviable position of having to turn speakers and their submissions away. For the last SPTechCon, in San Francisco in February, I had 163 session pitches from 57 speakers; I could only use 81 sessions, and didn’t want to impose upon speakers to travel to present just one session.

After the “Call for Speakers” closes, I get a veritable flood of emails from people who claim they never saw the call for speakers, and can they still submit sessions. Sorry, I reply with a smiley icon, but by now I have more than enough sessions for the program.

Now it’s time to look through the submissions. Usually, I have about 15 session pitches on upgrading to SharePoint 2010, metadata and taxonomies, SharePoint governance and the always popular farm administration and maintenance topics. So, after much give and take, we get sessions that more closely reflect the broad capabilities of the platform.

Then they need to get slotted into the program. We try to move from introductory sessions to more advanced and esoteric, while ensuring we have something for most job titles in each time slot. We don’t want a developer or an administrator or a business user, for instance, to have to choose from three sessions at 10 a.m., and not have one targeting him at 2 p.m.

After much more deliberation (I use sticky notes on a wall – quite high tech!), we get all the sessions slotted, take a step back, and do a considerable amount of self-congratulation. Off we go to get the catalog and program printed up.

Within a week, the printed materials arrive – all shiny and new, full of promise of a great conference, with great classes and great speakers.

Not so fast. No sooner do we have the printed materials in hand when I get the first email from a speaker telling me that now he can only speak on the first day of the conference, or from a speaker who only now realizes the dates conflict with something else in their lives and they’re sorry, but they have to withdraw from the conference. (I’ve probably been told no fewer than 10 times from speakers that their wives are due to have a baby at the same time as the conference, so they’ll have to stay home! No kidding! At LEAST 10 times! There are a lot of SharePoint babies in his world! Talk about sharing the love!)

No worries, I reply with a smiley icon. But in fact, I now have to find someone willing to present another session in that time slot, or switch with another speaker.  And you can’t do an easy switch, because we try to switch a developer session for a developer session, but other speakers also have limits on when they can speak, so moving one class to another time slot usually involves moving a half-dozen classes around. So much for those shiny new programs and catalogs!

So we print an “addendum” to the catalog, listing the new order of classes, with the new speakers replacing those who have dropped out along the way, in the room in which the session will be presented. Finally, success, right? RIGHT???

Almost. We get on-site, and see that a class that only a few attendees indicated they would attend is suddenly overflowing, and folks have to stand in the back, or skip the session entirely. So we scramble to find chairs and make people comfortable.

As I said, scratches and fleas.

But all kidding aside for a moment, working with the SharePoint community – speakers, third-party product providers and especially hearing the stories from our attendees of the projects they’re working on and the problems they face – has been a remarkably rewarding experience for me.

And based on the most important feedback of all – people actually showing up – we must be doing a good job. SPTechCon 2010 in Boston sold out six week before the event, so for this year, we’ve moved to a bigger hotel (which will help us overcome one of our most frequent complaints – too few, too slow elevators!)

We hope you choose to join us in Boston this June 1-3 at the downtown Sheraton Hotel. I promise you will leave with a lot more knowledge of SharePoint than you came with.

And no fleas!