Getting invited to present a conference is an honor many academic scholars aspire to reach. If you’ve been entrusted with this responsibility, it’s not something you should take lightly. There are a lot of people, both presenters and attendees, relying on you to make the experience one where everyone enjoys their time and learns what they came to find out.

This means you’re going to wear many hats in your role as a conference presenter. You’ll need to allocate resources, create and follow up on budgets, and manage time well. One way to do this is to utilize the data at your disposal to streamline the conference experience.

Data Collection Tools That Can Help Reduce Your Work

Starting from early in the conference planning timeline, you’ll be able to access data in various places. Here are a few of the most helpful resources you should be monitoring to aid you in planning your conference:

●      Registration forms: Gone are the days of mail-in RSVPs and registration submissions. Now, your conference is likely connected to an automated system that takes care of the registrations and associated data. Your system collects names, address, and contact information that you can use to track who is coming to the event, and build your presentation around those attendees. Certain registration systems will break this down for you based on filters you design, such as sponsors, speakers, etc., and what their intent is for coming. If most of the audience is there to learn about “Category 2: Funding Sources,” you’ll know to put the bulk of your focus on preparing that category.

●      Surveys: Some of the information that couldn’t be collected with an expensive registration tool can be gained for free with online surveys. Check with previous similar conferences and find out of the sponsors sent out a post-event survey. If so, what feedback did they receive that could help you streamline your next event? Plan a survey for this one, as well, and use the info to adjust how you handle your next conference, should you be asked to present another one in the future.

●      Management software for events: Similar to registration software, event management software helps you break down the conference into manageable categories. However, this does so much more than focus on attendees. The right event management software serves as a dashboard that puts everything pertaining to the event in one central area. You can analyze reports about sessions, payments, retailers, and anything else that you need to include to put your conference together, and assign users to access and input data as needed.

●      Mobile data collection apps: If you’ve been to a concert, airport, or conference lately, you’ve seen QR codes in action. Mobile apps make it possible to collect data with QR codes and other scanning features, enable live polls and question and answer sessions in real time, and conduct many other forms of data collection. These tools aid you in making in-the-moment adjustments to your conference, allowing you to answer questions that many members of the audience have, or skipping sections that would already be known by almost everyone.

With these tools, not only are you engaging in high-tech innovative systems that enhance the conference and your scholarly reputation, but you’re learning essential data that will guide your decisions from the very beginning.

Take Your Conference to the Next Level With Impactio’s Research Tools

Since networking is the main goal of many attendees, you can’t skip this vital part of conference planning. One way to network around the globe is to use Impactio, and the platform’s research tools can help you plan your conference and enhance networking connections. 

With Impactio, you can scan the profiles of the audience attending your conference, and plan ways to help them network with other attendees. Impactio’s research tools give you the information you need to see where your VIP guests are so you can connect them with the right people. Use your survey features to collect everyone’s Impactio profile information, and ask for permission to share it with other guests, and you’ll be enhancing the networking opportunities for all of your guests seamlessly.