Preliminary arrangements

Ensure the budget for the conference is prepared and submitted to the ADSA Executive in plenty of time to make changes. 

Budget for one part-time Administrative Assistant who can co-ordinate everything.  

Have weekly planning meetings with everyone in the runup to the conference. 

Attracting and communicating with paper-givers and delegates

Paper/workshop presenters must be members of ADSA.

Prepare a flyer and call for expressions of interest a year in advance, to be circulated at the conference the year before.

Involve the University's Publicity Office early. Try to get (inter)national publicity for the keynote speakers, prizes, etc.

Invite one major overseas theatre practitioner (director/actor/designer/playwright) to give a paper touching on or leading out of their own work, and advertise this widely to the theatre profession.  

Ensure that there is enough time on the program for a proper keynote paper. Schedule time for questions and try not to let this session become too encumbered by other events.  Invite a senior academic to introduce the guest speaker and act as a chairperson for the session.  This will ensure that question time will be quite formal.

Allow/encourage workshop sessions.

Encourage paper-givers to form themselves in to panels, which reduces the timetable problems. 

Advertise on email lists: TheatreOz, ATHE, Shaksper, ?  

Invite at least one Australian or New Zealand keynote speaker. 

Posters should be sent to all University Theatre Departments, major theatre companies, etc. 

Intending delegates must be told about precise starting and finishing times for the conference to enable them to plan arrival and departure flights etc. This information should be on the poster, the call for papers, registration brochures etc. (It is very frustrating not knowing if the first day will start with the one keynote speaker you really want to hear at 9am, or is just registration and drinks in the evening.) 

All advance information should make it very clear that paper-givers will have to join ADSA. 

Give a substantial discount for early payment of registration (or penalty for late payment). 
Advance payment procedures should provide for delegates to pay ADSA subscriptions. 

Make provision for a day rate for the conference, but at a level that encourages people to join the Association and come for the whole time if they can. (Assuming the whole conference is four days, the day rate should be between a quarter and half the full registration for non-ADSA members.) 

Notices and calls for papers should be sent to all who attended the two or three previous conferences, all current ADSA members, and all individual subscribers to ADS. This information needs to be centralised. 

Delegates should be sent, at least 3 weeks before the Conference starts, instructions about getting there, ie: a map, times to arrive by, where to go first, accommodation details, where to register, etc. Ideally the draft timetable should go out at the same time. 

Keep a constantly updated, accurately typed and very carefully checked database of all interested people, whether or not they are giving papers. This should be the basis of all mailouts, the program and everything else. A list of all the database fields is attached at the end. 

Communicate as much as possible by email, but keep separate lists of people without email access who need to be contacted by fax or (horror of horrors) by post.  

Scheduling

Wherever possible, keep papers to 20 minutes and have three per session: it reduces the need for parallel sessions. Many international conferences are very strict about 20-minute limits. 

Arrange an ISBN for the booklet of abstracts. 

Schedule the executive meeting, perhaps the first lunch time, with food provided, or at the first dinner, ditto. A private room is preferable to a table in a more public space. 

Schedule the AGM about halfway through the Conference. 

Keep the timetable and the book of abstracts separate so the abstracts can be sent to the printer in plenty of time, and the timetable can be altered up to the last possible moment as people join or cancel. 

Schedule plenty of time to proofread the abstracts (they will be full of typos) and make decisions about which papers should be put together. 

Leave time for questions in keynote/plenary sessions. 

Try to leave some time leeway in sessions early in the day so that the whole day doesn?t get thrown out by overruns. 

Schedule plenary sessions at the start of each day to attract people early and enable communication of changes etc. 

Keep the different conference rooms close together if possible. It makes a big difference if you can do this. 

Avoid scheduling papers on clear special interest topics in competing sessions. 
Check that all special events are scheduled at convenient times, e.g. caucuses (Women's, GLQ, Postgrads, Performance Studies), early career researchers, CHAUTSI AGM, ADSA Executive, ADSA AGM... 

The opening session should include an introduction/welcome from the President of ADSA; a welcome to special guests; identification and introductions of conference staff, especially people overseeing technical equipment; indication of locations and venues; note the AGM and the need for nominations for office-holders; reminder that all paper-givers should be members of ADSA; it should also try to set a welcoming and friendly tone. 

An official opening by a prominent and newsworthy person is also a good idea. The press can be invited. 

The closing session should thank special guests; thank the conference organisers and especially the support staff; provide information about the next conference. Finishing with a panel discussion including the keynote speakers is a good idea to help tie things up and hold everyone to the end. Don't finish with the official lunch/banquet, because many people won't stay on just for this. 

Organize chairs and allocate rooms in advance. 

Arrange extra events involving the overseas invited keynote speakers, e.g. panels on publishing (especially for early-career academics), lunches with postgraduates, updates on what is hot in their part of the world, workshop sessions on their areas of expertise.  

Running the Conference

Name tags should have the names in bold lettering, with people's institutions.  

Get the University's bookshop or somebody to organise the book display. Give them a schedule as early as possible in advance so they can obtain books written by delegates, especially the keynote speakers. 

Provide water and glasses for paper givers. 

A designated informal meeting place/watering hole is very important, either a convenient pub, or a conference bar at the venue or the college. 

Tell everyone you can think of locally about the conference, and give them timetables and maps, so that delegates who get lost can find themselves: University Security, main telephone switchboard, the college office, taxi companies etc. 

Have a preliminary list of all delegates, with their institutions and addresses, available at the beginning of the conference, with a complete follow up at the end. 

Stress to all delegates and chairs of sessions the importance of keeping strictly to time.  

Emphasise that the published order of papers should be adhered to wherever possible, to enable people to hop from one parallel session to another. A general policy of keeping questions to the end of all papers will also help facilitate session-hopping. 

Provide a photocopier, computers (Mac and PC) with printers for delegates to print papers, a phone with STD and ISD access, a fax etc. 

Set up an official message board where urgent messages can be made, such as changes to the schedule, arrangements for outings, etc. 

A message board where delegates can leave messages for each other helps with extra-curricular activities. 

Arrange booking facilities (at the registration desk) for workshops and performances. 

Morning and afternoon tea should include herbal teas, water and fresh coffee (not instant). 

Give daily updates to the timetable if necessary. 

Make sure that there is technical support for the delegates. 

Video some sessions.

Notes for ADSA chairs
(Compiled by Jacqueline Coats)

The role of the Session Chair is important to the success of the conference. Student helpers should  be available to assist the Chairs at the start of the session, but the Session Chair should make sure that s/he is familiar with the room layout and facilities.

Most sessions have three speakers, but a few have two. Each speaker will have 20 minutes for presentation, 5 minutes for discussion, and we allow 5 minutes for speaker changeover. During the session, an important role of session chairs is to keep the session running smoothly and on time - please be very strict with time.

The order of speakers is shown in the conference handbook and website. You may make variations to the session format to suit special circumstances, but only with the agreement of all speakers in the session. Be aware, that some attendees will switch between sessions to hear specific papers and it is disappointing if the order of papers is changed.

Suggestions

To help the Session Chairs to prepare for the session, it would be good to send them the abstracts of the speakers in their sessions.

Consider how the session might be introduced and enlivened. Prepare a couple of questions that might be used to seed discussion.

At the conference, seek out the speakers before the session. Be in the room 10 minutes prior to the session starting. Agree with speakers whether there will be a short discussion after each paper (recommended) or a single long discussion at the end of the session (sometimes desirable where paper content is very closely aligned).

At the beginning of the session announce the session topic and announce the names and affiliations of yourself, and the speakers. Also make any announcements requested by the Organising Committee. Very briefly introduce the topic (say 30 seconds).

At the end, thank the speakers, and the participants.

After the Conference

Remember that there is always much more tidying up to be done after the event than you ever plan on. 

Sending out a complete list of delegates and their contact details encourages post-conference contact and the possibility of greater information flow, circulation of ideas, references, plans for research projects and funding applications? 

In particular the accounts need to be finalised and submitted to ADSA, together with reimbursement of the up-front money and any surplus.

Database

Details of fields for database of delegates for ADSA Conferences: 

• Title
• First Name
• Surname
• Preferred name and form of address
• Position
• Department/School/Discipline
• Institution
• Work postal address
• Work phone
• Work fax
• Home postal address
• Home phone
• Home fax
• Email
• Paper-giver: yes/no (Paper-givers must be members of ADSA.)
• Guest: yes/no
• Ordinary delegate: yes/no
• Student: yes/no
• Title of paper/workshop
• Duration of paper/workshop
• Abstract received: yes/no
• Key terms/approaches/methodologies/etc.
• Any preferred dates for paper/workshop
• Any compatible co-presenters?
• Technical equipment
• video (PAL, NTSC, Secam)
• OHP
• microphone
• 1 slide projector
• 2 slide projectors
• audio player
• whiteboard
• data projection/powerpoint
• other
• Food preferences (i.e. vegetarian)
• Arrival time and travel plans