Academic Ventures - Personal, Cost-Effective Conference Planning

Anything But Tedious

    I am happy to say that conference and symposium planning in the academic environment is not nearly as tedious as it sounds.

 

    Rather the opposite – regardless of the topic or academician composition of the attendee, conferences and symposiums by their very nature are social, sharing, networking events so the mood is light even if the topic is heavy.

 

    (In fact one definition of Symposium is "in ancient Greece, a drinking party at which there was intellectual discussion")

 

    And occasionally you get involved in some projects that are just plain fun.  I have been lucky to have more than my share of fun projects – a symposium on Comics and Graphic Fiction comes to mind.  But today I am referring to an annual softball game that serves as a reunion for two departments of a liberal arts college.

 

    The event originated from an on-campus rivalry between two departments that shared campus facilities.  The rivalry was good-natured and stemmed from pride in their department’s accomplishments.  The rivalry was nurtured and an annual “showdown” was planned at the end of the academic year with both sides fielding a softball team to play for bragging rights.  This tradition continued for several years before it ran its natural course and eventually faded away.

 

    However, when the grads from that era wanted to get together with their friends and acquaintances the rivalry and softball game became the “theme” for an annual reunion which has surpassed the longevity of the actual event on which it was based!

 

    So once a year alumni from the past 20 years meet and network with recent grads and all these grads are motivated to return to campus for an event that is meaningful for them.

 

And a good time is had by all.

 

    Our organizational efforts include picking a fun theme for the event each year (this past year we spoofed the movie and board game CLUE ©), distributing the information to appropriate alumni, managing a social media-based marketing campaign, arranging the facilities, coordinating the F&B (part BBQ, part potluck) and making sure the College is familiar with the success of the event so they continue to support it.

 

    While this project is a meeting (of sorts) within an academic environment, it is not typical of the work we do but the same elements of delivering a good conference/event/symposium apply nonetheless.

 

    I would love to hear what “non-traditional” meeting/conference experiences you have had.

Budgeting - Why F&B is so darn tricky

I referenced the “back” of the budget – those supporting documents that give us those all-important budget estimates.   Perhaps if we think in terms of the “bottom” of the stack we can better see these documents more correctly as the “foundation” of our budget.

 

Typically one of the largest percentages of our conference budget is going to be Food and Beverage (F&B).  It is also one of the hardest issues to get, and keep, in a firm grasp.

 

What makes is so difficult to estimate and track?  F&B is difficult to estimate and track because there are several meals; each meal is comprised of several parts; each with several variables.

One only needs to plan a multi-day conference to realize how many “organized” eating opportunities there are in a day:  breakfast, morning break, lunch, afternoon break, cocktail reception, dinner, and dessert reception.  (It can get even more cumbersome if your conference includes pre- and/or post-reception receptions for VIPs or others!)

 

Each of these eat-fests is comprised of multiple parts.  We know at a minimum there are “food” parts and “beverage” parts.  And the multiplication continues as you drill down further – lunch alone is no less than five parts on the food side (bread, vegetable, main dish, side and dessert) and no less than three on the beverage side (water, iced tea, coffee).

 

While the minutia of bread-vegetable-main dish-side dish is typically part of the “lunch” option you order the variables of each meal – the menu options, serving options and estimating the number of attendees adds to the complexity of F&B budgeting.

 

I know many folks that really enjoy picking the menu.  I am not one of them.  Perhaps I am just not a Foodie.  I am bored by reading menus and can figure out my order pretty quickly in a restaurant.  Luckily I work with someone who is very good at selecting the actual menu and enjoys doing it.  We also will typically rely on the input of our clients but more on menu selection at another time.  The point here is that menu options increase the complexity of our F&B budgeting.  As does the methods of serving – plated or buffet (or boxed); by the glass or pitchers/bottles on each table; display or passed?  And of course the number of attendees is yet another layer of mystery that makes divining for the F&B budget rather maddening.  Not only can the number of attendees be a guessing game but factoring in that each F&B opportunity will yield a different number of mouths can make any head spin.

 

Thus, one of the largest line items in the conference budget is mired in difficulty due to so many meals, so many parts of each meal and so many variables of each meal.

 

Is there a way to attack this challenge?  Yes.  And we will explore those soon.

Budgeting - Starting from the back...

While working on a budget for a conference the other day the idea of a front/back (or top/bottom) came to mind.

Typically the results of creating a budget is that one or two page document that lists each line-item, the planned spending/revenue from that line-item and a comment or note that puts that number or assumption in context.

Behind that document are a host of documents that lead to that key budget document -- the all important supporting information.

When putting together a budget I begin by systematically going through each of these supporting documents.  This is where I "start from the back" with the goal of moving that information forward to the overall budget document.

My supporting documents are Excel worksheets that are part of the overall budget workbook.  By doing this I can have the later pages pull numbers from the "back pages."  These back pages contain a lot of detail -- the number of drink tickets for that reception, the number of rooms that will have a rented computer projector, etc.  All this detail is worked out in a "back page" and when something changes -- perhaps one of the four presentations rooms will not need a projector -- I can update that information on back page and have that new budget estimate appear on the main budget document.  This is much better than having to re-calculate the number on the main budget document (and clutter the comments with a note that "only 3 rooms have projectors" so I recall how I arrived at that number).

Starting from the back, I typically have the following worksheets that feed sub-totals to the main Budget document:

• Food & Beverage
• Room Fees
• Audio Visual
• Plenary/Guest Speakers

More on each of these next!