Objective:
Define precisely the aim of your conference to avoid any misunderstandings and gain time.

Participants:
Know with precision how many guests will be invited.

Scheduling:
Make sure that your speakers and main participants will be available at the time scheduled. Set the arrival and departure dates. Set the number of meetings and conferences, and their starting and finishing times.

Room(s):
You usually need a meeting room big enough to host your general meeting, and several smaller rooms for your workshops. For your general meeting, you should place your tables and chairs in lines. And if you want to facilitate discussion in workshops, it is recommended to set your tables and chairs in a U-shape, or in a circle.

Conference Manager(s):
Ask him or her for the equipment that he or she needs, and what is expected in terms of organisation (ex : over-head projector compatible with Macintosh or PC, Internet, paper board, etc...).

Place:
Know with precision where you want to organise your meeting according to various criteria : time of the year, participants expectations, duration of transport, length of the seminar.

Budget :
Set a fixed price per person per day (without transport). You will find useful information in this guide.

Specific needs:
Make sure that the facilities are available for making photocopies, sending and receiving faxes and e-mails, that there are translation services, and rooms adapted to specific requirements (for VIP, or handicapped), etc...

Leisure – Incentive activites:
It is very important for the team-building. Adapt your activities to the style and age of your participants. Avoid long gastronomic meals at midday.

Agenda:
Prepare it as early as possible (theme, names, subject and time for each speaker). Once it is set, communicate it to the team working on the event (leader, speakers, technicians), then to your participants with the invitation.

Welcoming – Signposting:
Look after your welcoming as much as possible. Make sure that the cloakroom is big enough for all your participants, and that the restrooms are well signposted. Provide badges or identifying markers for your participants. It is recommended to prepare for each participant a pen and paper, a bottle of mineral water and/or fruit juices.

Agenda:
Important :
Check that all electrical equipment is functioning properly. Make sure that you follow your agenda and respect the time allowed for each point. It is even recommended to write them on a board.Make sure that there is a clock that can be seen by everybody. Good management of the meeting time improves the quality of the organisation and create an interaction. It has been proved that at the end of a meeting tongues tend to loosen up.

Stick to the subject matter but be flexible:
If the discussions go beyond the agenda, list the questions / suggestions / difficulties on the paper board for later discussion. Avoid immediate debate on such matters as this will make refocusing on the agenda more difficult.

Satisfaction survey:
To improve organisation of further meetings, it is recommended that you measure the quality of your seminar, in terms of form and content. To do this, you can invite your participants to fill in a satisfaction survey. It mustn’t require more than 5 minutes to be filled out, and must be easy to analyse later.

Report:
Prepare a report summarizing about the discussions that took place during the seminar, and send it to all the participants (present or excused) as soon as possible. It will be your common basis, very useful for further meetings.

Information :
Make sure that what was agreed during the seminar is effectively done ; and do not hesitate to communicate this to the participants. Future meetings will then be even more productive.