Conference Planner Blog

Perfect Jewelry for Women Planners!

Kelly — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 21:22:17 +0000

One of the newest trends in USB drives is to disguise them as jewelry. This trend is great for women who are conference and event planners. You can easily have your speakers’ PowerPoint presentations and other files right around your neck with SanDisk “Eye of the Tiger” necklace and still look stylish.This item is still in the concept stage. Other companies have some pieces out, but they don’t look quite as classy as SanDisk’s. Keep your eyes open for more USB drive jewelry!

Thanks to Techie Diva for pointing out this great tool!

clipped from www.techiediva.com

Cool Websites and Tools for Planners

Kelly — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 19:53:28 +0000

Everyone that knows me professionally knows that I love any technology that can help me do my job better and quicker. So I am always on the look out for new tools to help me work better rather than harder.Here are a couple of sites that I use quite regularly:

Meet-O-Matic – Here is a cool meeting scheduler that requires almost no effort. Easily plan and coordinate the ideal meeting time with as many people as you need. All you need to do is to type-in a meeeting name and select a number of possible dates. Following this, Meet-O-Matic will give you two links, one needs to be forwarded to meeting attendees and the other, to be used to follow-up on progress.

clipped from www.makeuseof.com

Another interesting website is slidelive. Here you can invite and walkthrough your colleagues through live powerpoint presentations online. Simply upload your presentations and invite others to live walkthrough. Once the participants are in, they will be able to follow the slides in their browser as you click through them. It’s free, easy to use and lightweight.

Some of the cool features are:

Upload and store up to five Powerpoint presentations.
Manage and schedule presentations from your Slidelive account.
Host live presentations and invite others to join, regardless of their location.
Share live Powerpoint presentations with up to hundred people simultaneously.
Attend someone else’s live presentation.
Keep a history of all prresentations you have seen.
Resize presentation window to any size you like.
Share stored presentations with others or keep them private.
Allow participants to download presentation document to their computers.

The Tough Get Goin’

Kelly — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 18:16:38 +0000

No matter how well you plan…no matter how well you organize, things are occasionally go wrong with an event. I have always kept the attitude that you fix the problem as quickly and as well as possible. During an event is not the time to try to figure out who is to blame and point fingers.

As I have explored the blog world, I found one website, Zenhabits that has a lot of good organizational articles, but also discusses how to face those trying days when nothing seems to be going as planned. If you ever have those types of days, and I am sure we all have, you should read this article.

It takes a Village to Raise a Conference!

Kelly — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 19:45:58 +0000

No one can organize a large conference by themselves. The LBJ School’s Office of Conferences and Training is a 3 person operation, and the three of us would never be able to organize the Student Leadership Conference without the support of many other people.

The Center for Ethical Leadership organizes the program content and identify qualified graduate students to act as Team Leaders. The Team Leaders are responsible for developing breakout workshop content and teaching and mentoring the approximately 170 students who participate in the conference.

In addition, the center also hires an additional student to serve as “Sync Speaker”. That person’s role is to handle all of the travel and other needs of the program speakers. They also recruit other students to act as escorts. This person’s role really connects all of the important pieces of the conference together.

We also have another group who are responsible for all of the audiovisual needs for the Team Leaders’ sessions. These folks take a lot of pressure off of the Conferences and Training staff.

Finally, the Office of Conferences and Training handles all other logistically items for the conference. This includes registration services, all communications with the student prior to the conference, providing logistically support for the Team Leaders, conference check-in, and much more.

It is important to keep in mind the importance of your staff and ensure they are functioning as a well oiled machine. When working with a small team it is important to keep your eyes open for opportunities to partner with other organizations. These partnerships open up the size and type of programs that you can be involved in and successful at.

A Great Website for event organizers.

Kelly — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 22:18:49 +0000

bitBomb text message reminders lets you schedule and send free text message reminders to your mobile phone. You can schedule memos online or on your mobile phone.

bitBomb features:

Create, Edit and manage your reminders in an online calendar.
Create Buddy lists and send reminders to groups.

This is a great tool when you are running around at a conference, but need to remember to do something at a certain time. I’ll often schedule a reminder to make changes to AV and other reminders at times when I know I won’t be by my computer for my To-Do-List reminders. It is a very big help during those hectic moments during an event.