1. The Life Cycle of a Conference
Jon Crowcroft,

2. Stakeholders Official Sponsor/Publisher
Usenix, ACM, IEEE, other
Steering Ctte, Org Ctte, Prog Ctte
Community memory, admin, tech
Habitual Attendees
Phds, postdoc, academic, industry
Recruiters (from above)
Public/Post Hoc
Readers of proceedings/blurbs
Citers of papers/users of results etc

3. Timeline Steering Ctte finds OC&TPC chairs OC chairs find OC
(T)PC chairs find PC members
OC find venue(s)
TPC&OC fire of CfP/web,publicise
PC create review sys (hotcrp, easychair)
OC create (and maintain) budget
Run event
Wrap up proceedings/budget (weeks after)

4. OC tasks Budget, venue, vitalls, registration
100 people 3 day event takes team of 10+
Use shared doc/repo/im tools
may inherit standard budget model/constraints (e.g ieee/acm tax)
Sponsorship, Web, Publicity
Team need to be responsive (<same day)
Deliver profit to org (or break even)
What if loss?
Insurance&contingencies

5. PC tasks Help advertise CfP Choose/Review papers (poss abstracts)
Discuss reviews (poss. update)
Attend (possibly online) PC meet
Resolve differences, select program
Possibly shepherd papers
See also Shadow PCs.

6. Getting on OC or PC Why? What’s in it for you
See process in detail
Understand how to use best
Goes on your CV:
research, teaching, service to community
May meet future nice referee
May get hired
How? Volunteer, mention in talks
May have to have been at prior event

7. Annoying details Late registers Visa invite letters, no shows
Dietary complexity
Venue cancels
Demo/poster complexity
Broken format papers
Bad (rude, wrong) reviews
Non-responsive author (camera ready)

8. What more can go wrong? Not enough (decent) submissions…
Cancel, downsize, invite...
Not enough attendees...
Invite, guests,
TPC don’t do reviews well
Get more TPC members
Fire bad ones

9. References, examples