If you want to hold a conference at my university, you need to fill out a delightful form called a “risk assessment” in which you list all of the potential dangers attendees might encounter and speculate about how to avoid them. Those risks include delegates getting lost on their way to or from the campus, tripping on their way to dinner, or not knowing the location of building exits in the event of a fire.
As I completed the risk assessment for my conference on cannibalism — in which I admitted the possibility that participants could become ill while hearing some of the papers presented — I realized that I had some thoughts about organizing my first conference. From bureaucratic hurdles to choosing catering, I learned some things about what I’d do the next time to try to make everything run smoothly.
The idea for the conference began with a book contract to edit a volume on cannibalism. The contract’s existence made it easier to persuade people to submit a paper proposal, because I think they hoped their proposals would turn into conference presentations, which would in turn become book chapters. The book contract may also have made it easier to obtain grants for the conference because funders could identify a potential result.
I’m sure that at some point in the future I’ll be able to ruminate on the pros and pitfalls of putting together an edited volume. At present I’m content to say that because I knew I was committed to editing a collection of essays, I wanted to gather potential contributors together so that I could hear their ideas before inviting them to write for the collection. Having a presentation already in hand, I hoped, would help contributors meet deadlines when it came time to submit their essay chapters for the book.
In seeking grants for a conference, it can be helpful to think broadly about your conference topic so that you can seek out small pots of money from venues you might not have considered. Because incidents of shipboard cannibalism appear in various historical documents, I felt comfortable approaching a center for maritime studies on my campus. That institute agreed to pay for a conference reception. Because people in the early modern period consumed mummified body parts for medicinal purposes, I was able to apply for and win money from an organization connected to the medical humanities.
Look for websites or blogs in your field that compile lists of institutions that provide grants for conferences. I systematically went through the ones applicable to history to try to figure out which might be a good fit. As is usually the case in any grant process, my first application was unsuccessful, and I had to try again before I won the money.
Having to apply to more than one potential grant agency helped me to think carefully about marketing the conference and budget planning.
To publicize the meeting, my university’s IT department was essential in helping me set up a conference website. That gave people a place to submit their paper proposals and CVs, and it gave me a spot where I could acknowledge the grant agencies supporting the conference. Some independent knowledge of social media also helped me share the call for papers on multiple listservs and set up a conference Twitter handle.
Twitter has an automated screen that tells you “we’re glad you’re here” when you sign up for a new account. I’d entered a first name of “Cannibalism” and a last name of “Conference” for my Twitter handle (@CannibalismConf). In the midst of preconference budgeting, I was delighted to see the words “We’re glad you’re here, Cannibalism” appear on my computer screen. Moments like that gave me the drive to confront the necessary task of budgeting.
On that front, it was useful to have help from staff members in my university’s finance department. Those staffers, together with experts in the university’s conference and hospitality office, helped me estimate the cost of room bookings, hotel accommodations, guest Wi-Fi access, and catering.
Now that I’ve learned conferences can take up to a year to organize, I’ll know the next time I plan one to inflate my budget figures for housing and catering by about 10 percent, in the event that costs rise over the course of the year. In the future I’ll also be more prepared for unexpected costs. I tried, for example, to save money by buying wine at the grocery store rather than asking the conference office to provide it, but ended up spending almost as much because the conference office charged a high corkage fee (a fee you pay when you bring in your own bottles).
Wine brings me to the subject of meals, which are always somewhat challenging to plan for large groups, but perhaps more so for a conference on cannibalism.
I spent a long time debating the merits of going symbolic and having a hog roast for my conference dinner — everyone would probably get the “long pork” joke. Eventually I decided that people studying cannibalism might have more varied dietary preferences. In the end I was glad to have made a more careful choice of a family-style Indian menu for dinner, held at a restaurant close to the campus that offered vegetarian, vegan, meat, and seafood options.
For lunch, I’d arranged for meals to be sent over from a campus cafe. But there was a bit of confusion when the vegetarian and vegan meals failed to arrive despite the fact that I’d confirmed the need for them the day before. After a discussion with the campus cafe staff and a panicked call to the conference office, everything got sorted out. Next time, I’ll know to check at the cafe on the day in question, and to keep the conference office telephone number close at hand so that I don’t have to look for it if something goes wrong.
Ultimately I was very happy with the food itself, but some of the financial arrangements for the meals were challenging. The Indian dinner was delicious, but it proved a problematic choice because the restaurant was not a university partner — which meant that if I wanted to have the dinner there, I’d have to pay for it out of my own pocket and then get reimbursed from my conference budget.
Or so I thought. A colleague who had organized her own conference saved me from going down that path by telling me that the university had an advance payment form, which would let me have the estimated cost of the dinner deposited into my bank account ahead of time so that on the day of the conference I could enjoy the dinner, get a receipt, and then submit the receipt as verification that the dinner had occurred (and claim additional money if we went over the estimated budget, which we did because more people came along than anticipated).
What I learned from this aspect of conference-hosting is that it’s always smart to ask advice from people who have held their own events on your campus, and to push back against the administration when faced with choices you’re not entirely enthusiastic about.
There were still other problems for which I was unprepared:
- The conference registration page took forever to go live because I’d dithered on my decision of a dinner venue and didn’t know the cost of the meal for paying nonpresenters.
- I realized in the week before the meeting that I hadn’t thought about name badges, and my departmental administrator saved me by making amazing clip-on ones.
- It occurred to me on the second day of the conference that I’d ordered coffee for the midmorning panels when I should have had it waiting there first thing in the morning, thus committing the cardinal sin of leaving conference participants under-caffeinated.
In the week before the conference, I was surprised to find myself feeling like I couldn’t wait for it to be over. I was ready for that feeling to disappear entirely once the conference was off and running. And it did disappear, as I marveled at how amazing it felt to have everyone in a room together, talking about topics I care about. That feeling, more than anything, was gratifying enough to make all of the stress and worries disappear, especially now that I know a bit more about how to avoid them in the future.
Among the lessons I learned for future conference planning from all of these last-minute blips:
- Be prepared for the fact that some aspects of conference-organizing — such as securing grants and planning catering — take longer than anticipated.
- Anticipate higher expenses.
- Build administrative time and grant money into my budget.
- Write myself a note to buy chocolate to thank my excellent administrator.
- Err on the side of more caffeine.
I’m planning to hold another workshop next summer, but have tried to be wiser about it: I’ve got a co-host who will make the stress of planning and decision-making much easier, and we’ve gotten some money from my university so that I already know my budget well in advance. This time around, at the very least, I’m confident that my risk assessment will be decidedly less alarming — albeit sadly absent of cannibalism.
