ConferencePlanning

How to Run a CITCON

The organizers use a pretty straight forward process for running the CITCON conferences. Below are the details.

JTF and PJ are known for their classic opening speech for the conference. They have been doing the same speech since nearly the inception of CITCON. More details...

Venue Search

Finding a suitable venue for CITCON can be challenging. It takes some creative searching. As a non-profit conference, we try to minimize the venue cost as much as possible. That tends to be the biggest hurdle. Here are the criteria for a venue that would typically be good for hosting a CITCON event.

• No cost, or very low cost.
  • Frequently we try to seek out a venue that would be "sponsored" by the company that owns the space. For example, Bank of America/Merrill Lynch in Singapore.
• One larger room, and 3 or 4 smaller rooms
  • We usually have one large room that can accomodate everyone at the conference (125) with 3 or 4 smaller rooms for breakout sessions that run in parallel.
  • We arrange the chairs in circles, instead of traditional classroom style. That changes the number of people that fit into one room.
  • We frequently use concentric circles to increase the capacity in the room.

Conference Registration

Once the website has been setup, for example the Sydney 2013 site, the organizers decide when to open registration. Once agreed upon, the following steps are followed to create the EventWax event and link it in to the CITCON conference site.

1. Log in to https://citcon.eventwax.com/admin/account/login
   • For obvious reasons, the username and password are not included on this page. Email the committee mailing list to get authorization to do this.
2. Click the "Events" drop down and select "New Event".
3. Fill in the Event Name, e.g. "CITCON Sydney 2013".
4. Fill in the Venue, e.g. "Sydney Marriott".
5. Fill the Capacity, e.g. 150
   • We have traditionally always set the capacity to 150. That allows 150 people to register. We expect about one-third no-show. So, we expect about 100 people to attend the conference. Sometimes it is more. Sometimes it is less.
6. Set the Currency, e.g. "Australian Dollars"
7. Status should be defaulted to "Open".
8. Set the Timezone, e.g. "Australia - Sydney".
9. Set the Start Date, e.g. "Feb 8, 2013".
10. Set the End Date, e.g. "Feb 9, 2013".
11. Set the Start Time, e.g. "18:00".
12. Set the End Time, e.g. "19:00".
13. Click Create Event.
    • The new event should now be listed in the upcoming events on the admin page.