Online events and web conferences are often spin-offs or extensions of physical ones. Offline more than online, the organizations and logistics of an event requires adequate resources and the ability to coordinate multiple simultaneous tracks.
If your next online conference is based on a set of physical events you may want to consider technology as a possible helping hand in creating the foundation for a well organized and supported event.
Photo credit: tripeak
Is there some computer software that might lend a helping hand?
Well, the answer is a resounding yes.
There are indeed a number of event management software products on the market that aim to provide you with some assistance. The three main areas of event management addressed by this type of software are marketing, reservations & scheduling and registration.
a) Marketing - It's no good organising an impressive event if no-one shows up. Marketing effort is crucial to realisation of high attendance figures, and several products help with the organisation and execution of email campaigns and other marketing activities.
b) Reservations and Scheduling - These areas of event management concerning the booking of spaces, such as meeting rooms and classrooms, but also include the allocation of equipment and other resources. The reservation process is usually combined with a scheduling component, because you will not just reserve a meeting room, but also book it for a certain amount of time on a particular day. You might imagine that a simple spreadsheet would suffice, but the complexity of the scheduling task can quickly become unmanageable with such a basic approach. In fact, there are various mathematical algorithms that deal specifically with the problem of scheduling and these are employed within software products to provide efficient scheduling functionality.
c) Registration - This area of event management concerns the registration of event attendees and can encompass numerous functions including invitation management, participant information gathering, payment processing, membership management and the production of management reports.
Photo credit: vixs
Event management software products fall into two broad categories:
1) Those that focus on particular aspects of event management or types of event -
2) Those that cover a wide range of event management activities -
These lists are by no means exhaustive, and your own investigation and exploration will no doubt unearth many more products that could have been listed here.
