Here's how you can avoid the potential risks of not utilizing strategic thinking in conference organization.

Kepner and Tregoe’s Potential Problem Analysis is a great tool for protecting strategic plans. Identify and rank all potential problems. Consider for each problem the probably of it happening, the likely causes and the effects if it does happen. For each likely cause put in place preventative actions. For the effects put in a contingency plan together with how it is triggered, by who and how it is actioned.

Before you can do a risk analysis, you have to know what is the goal of the conference. What are you looking to get out of it, and what will attendees want to get out of it. Once that is done you can apply a SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, Threats) analysis to determine your risk and how to address it.

Strategic thinking is key when organizing a conference. By doing a risk analysis, we can spot and tackle potential problems like low attendee engagement or wasting resources. The plan? Spend time on strategic planning, get stakeholders involved, think through different scenarios, and keep an eye on things as we go. Sharing these plans and learning from each conference helps us get better every time.

Important reason why budget needs to be controlled is to hit a quality conference. Prioritize budget planning, analyze the necessary variables and uncertainties, consider prioritizing the expenses in order of importance for the conference. If the budget is planned, it can be controlled.

Conference sponsorship is another area for careful planning, especially as it relates to revenue and benefits offered. Conference organizers should look to make a substantial component of their overall revenue goal through sponsorship sales, but make sure you have one or more team members dedicated to fulfilling all the promised obligations.

To ensure budget control, know and have your budget before you spend your first dollar. Determine the cost of the venue, speakers, audio engineer/DJ, decor, tables even in some cases and any other expense you will have and then add 10% on top of the total. Once you max out you max out. Cut something if you need something

Engaging your audience implies many factors, some may consider irrelevant or not of primary concern. To capture your audience's attention the speakers should be relevant, yes: you want to make participants think and engage because the discussion is stimulating. The guests should represent different areas in a field, speakers from different backgrounds, an academic, an author, a consultant, and a speaker representing a perspective originating from another region, or approach to the same issue. The venue, intimate, airy, natural light - definitely not one of those bland convention halls with the coffee table. A lot of opportunity for connecting and discussing during meals breaks, in the off hours. And please, never mind the warm ups!!

While it’s important to hear from leadership at any particular meeting, it’s equally important to include peer to peer participation. Not only does it allow people to develop and grow, the audience is excited and engaged to see their peers bringing valuable information.

The conference is not about you, it's about your audience. Survey a few people in your target audience demographic and ask them what they want. Ask them what their challenges are. Address this and you will have a great conference.

Ask for samples of the work from your vendors. make sure they can do what they say they can. Once you find a good vendor stick with them and use them first for other events.

Start on the hour and end on the :50 minute. Give 10 minutes in between for bathroom breaks and getting to the next session. Have cue cards for the speakers Green for the :30 minutes Yellow for :35 and Red for 40 minutes into the session. This will help them rap up and leave time for questions.

Survey feedback is invaluable to enhancing future experiences as long as the planning team is open to listening and incorporating future changes. It’s also important to remain open and not get feelings hurt if we don’t agree with the feedback. Let’s face it, we all take so much pride in our events and feedback can become personal. Let your attendees know they are heard and what future changes they can expect to see - sending messages like ‘we heard you, and here’s what you can expect’ will go a long way. Also remember, you can’t make everyone happy, try to strike a good balance.