Interview notes

Owned by Paul Seiler (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Mar 27, 2017
4 min read

Notes from the interviews with various stakeholder, intended to gather requirements and discover the lay of the land.

Lorena De la Torre Parra


Jenny Ritchie, Education

Has run two conferences (one last year at VUW, one 2-3 years ago from Unitec), neither time was there usable software available centrally

Has experience of good software (name to come) while co-convening an Australian conference

Unique differences of academic conferences from the simpler events at VUW seem to be:

  • 'call for proposals' process
  • Creating and changing the 'timetable', especially with if there are concurrent sessions
  • Uploading of full papers: We use http://www.aera.net/
  • Maybe also the 'publication of full transcripts/proceedings' following the close of the conference. Might only be 'made available online'

Call for proposals

Prior to this one or a few web pages are published that define the theme, dates, venue, basic speaking programme structure (how many sessions, what type, length, etc) costs etc of the conference, along with a 'call for proposals'.

Aspiring speakers submit an abstract for review to speak in one or more of the available sessions. Public access okay.

Convener (and maybe administrator) does an initial review and allocates each proposal to a reviewer. Authenticated access only

Very important (to PBRF standings) that reviewers don't know the identity of the author. While they may 'deduce' this (small community, everyone knows everyone), the system should separate 'cover sheet details' from the body of the proposal, but be able to associate them for power users.

Proposals are reviewed by one or more people. Either 'approved', 'approved with changes' or 'rejected'. Authenticated access.

Convener reviews all work of all reviewers (especially for professional appropriateness of comments) and 'notifies' all respondents.

Only then can people seek funding, leave, book tickets and accommodation, etc. 

Conference programme

Some complexities emerge in making and changing the programme (i.e. who speaks on what, where, and when)

First draft is created once all proposals are evaluated.

This is published and then the change requests start coming (due to travel and working hour limitations, conflicts, preferences, etc).

Can involve room changes in the event of changing availability (e.g. earthquakes)


Publication of proceedings

While only abstracts are released initially, it is common to publish the full transcript/paper later once the event has ended. This is both for the attendees (revisiting content), public  (wider audience, those who couldn't make it) and the presenter (linking to in publications listings)

Ideally, presenter uploads and sets 'embargo' dates themself. Reduces work for administrator.

Jill Purvis, Vic Venues

Administrates access to VUW facilities for non-teaching purposes. Probably approached by 20-25 academics per year regarding conferences. Suspects there are more who don't ask, either beacause they know the limitations (must be VUW facilities, capacity constraints, time of year constraints, previous bad experience, cost, etc).

User pays, up to 250 PAX, outside of teaching time, recent constraints due to construction and earthquake

Provide conference organisers with access to Certain, cloud software to gather/store/report on attendee details, including the registration, payments and invoicing/receipting. Link to it from conference web page/site.

Considering moving to Events Air (recently purchased by Engagement), as the total costs are lower, especially because there are no 'attendee charges' for using the system.


Could also speak to:

Sarah Ross in English: Running one now/soon.

Andrew Mackintosh, Antarctic Research Centre: Will run one this year.

Lorena De la Torre Parra, SGEES: Ran two conferences last year, back-to-back.

Sarah Lanigan, Finance: Understandings issues with invoicing and receipting monies


Marc Aurel Schnabel, Architecture and Design

Has run and participated in organisation of many conferences

Has experience of good software (name to come) while co-convening an Australian conference

Echoed Jenny's need for 'call for proposal' functionality, but extended on this:

  • Submission of papers follows 'approval' based on abstract. Same functionality but for full paper. Iterative.
  • Matching of proposal to reviewer is automatic, based on key words. Manual over-ride (for mis-matching, over-allocation, etc)
  • Organisation affiliation prevents reviewers being from same organisation as proposer., to prevent bias.
  • Scoring/marking schedule, pre-set cut-off based on mean. Those with divergent marks are manually considered.
  • Semi-automatic emails to those who are accepted and those declined.

Good software previously used includes:

Publishing proceedings

Having your paper published in the proceedings of a (high abstract-rejection-rate) conference can, in some disciplines, be more prestigious than being published in academic journals. Eg computational-intensive aspects of architecture, Computer science, etc

As such, the organisers seek to transfer as much of the content loading/formatting to the speakers and software as possible.

Good packages can make automate much of the 'formatting for print'. Examples include:


Bernie Hambleton, School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies

Claims that staff are too busy to run conferences so they outsource all theirs to uses Paardekoopers, who manage everything very professionally, for a fee. This includes building the website, registrations, invoicing and receipting, etc.

The most challenging part is the interface with Finance, invoicing, receipting and directing the money. Seems like they are not well set up for this.

She wants the University to offer a professional events management service, not just provide access to software.


Diana Burton, School of Art History, Classics and Religious Studies