A for Amanda

My role

I planned this conference with the Centre Director. I led the communications, marketing, budgeting, scheduling, and coordinated with external vendors.

The event

Once a year, the CPA Innovation Centre hosts a free full-day conference centred on the topic of innovation for faculty, students, and the general public.

The Centre Director initiates the process by inviting a professor from a university abroad to present their latest work as a Keynote speaker. Beedie School of Business faculty and PhD students are also invited to present their current papers.

Planning

I connected with the Centre Director to understand his vision for the conference.

I asked questions to gather the requirements and understand the scope. What are the preferred dates? Where should it be located? What is the agenda? What is the budget? Who is the audience? How will the Beedie School of Business speakers be selected? I then created a comprehensive list of required resources and tasks for the event (before, during, and after). I worked backwards from the end of the event to create a timeline of when everything needed to be completed.

Executing

I closely followed the timelines I created to get the event ready.

I worked closely with the marketing team to create the materials to promote the event: communicating deadlines, providing content, and giving feedback for any changes required. I sought out the best communication channels to reach the target audience members and followed a schedule I had set to distribute the information at a good pace. The Director preferred an easy and personal way to register for the event, so everything was done by email and I tracked this information.

Monitoring and controlling

Leading up to the event, I took the registration information and updated the room layouts, catering, and any other areas that would be affected in the changing number of attendees. A final update was done once I had sent out a reminder email for the event as I anticipated cancellations. During the event, I tracked attendees and monitored the progress of the presentations to make adjustments to the schedule if necessary.

Closing process

Following the event, I compiled all the information I tracked and submit the updated budget and attendee list to the Director. Tracking information allows us to make better informed decisions for future events.