Conference Record

The Programme Is the Product

A conference sells a venue, a city, a reputation, a networking opportunity and a programme. Four of those are packaging. For a separate operational reference outside conference evaluation, see this resource .

The programme is the thing you are buying, and it is the element people examine last, if at all. For broader independent context, see Think. Check. Submit. .

What gets examined instead

The reputation. Which describes the average across years rather than this year's sessions.

The keynote names. Three talks out of eighty, and frequently the least useful three — a keynote is broad by design.

The city. Genuinely part of the decision and not part of the professional case.

And the fact of an invitation, which for a fabricated event is the entire product.

The programme is examined after booking, when the question has changed from whether to go to what to attend.

Reading it properly

Fifteen minutes, before paying.

Count the sessions relevant to your actual work. Not interesting — relevant. Three or more in a four-day event is a good conference for you; one is a talk you could have read.

Check the parallel tracks. Two sessions you need at the same hour means you attend one, and a programme where your interests cluster in one slot is worth less than the session count suggests.

Read five abstracts, not five titles. Titles are written to attract; abstracts say what the work is. The abstracts page of the 2015 conference archived here runs to 16,000 words — that level of detail is what a serious programme publishes, and its absence is informative.

Look at who is speaking, not who is keynoting. The people doing work adjacent to yours are in the ordinary sessions.

And check the ratio of talks to everything else. A four-day event with a day of tours and two half-days of plenaries has less programme than it appears.

When the programme is not published yet

Common, and it is a real problem for early registration.

Look at last year's. Same organiser, same scope, usually similar shape — and if last year's is unfindable, that is a finding about the record rather than the programme.

Weigh the early-bird discount against the uncertainty. Saving on registration by committing before the programme exists is buying blind at a discount, and for a distant event with large travel costs that is a poor trade.

And ask. Organisers will usually say roughly what the shape will be.

What this changes

It reorders the decision. Programme first, then total cost, then legitimacy checks if the organiser is unfamiliar — rather than reputation first and programme never.

It makes small conferences competitive. A regional event with four relevant sessions beats a flagship with one, on any honest reading, and the flagship wins on packaging.

And it makes the annual habit visible. Re-reading the programme each year is what surfaces the year when the conference stopped being about your work.

The corollary for organisers

Publish the programme early and in detail, with real abstracts.

It is the product. A site heavy on venue photographs and light on session detail is selling packaging, and the attendees who read carefully — the ones worth having — will notice.

The short version