The Challenge of Building the Perfect Schedule

May 30, 2008   Comments

Of all the things that are difficult about planning a new conference, one of the hardest is putting together the schedule. Originally, I thought my biggest challenge would be making sure there was no overlap in where the speakers were.

For instance, my first schedule had Stoney deGeyter leading a workshop AND being part of a Site Clinic panel at the same time. Now Stoney is good, but he's not THAT good. (Part of me thinks Debra Mastaler could pull that off though...) So it was back to the drawing board.

My next schedule had to get tossed because Mack and CK's blogging site clinic was scheduled before Mack's Blogging workshop. That wasn't going to work...there has to be a semblance of order to these things.

The next time around I thought I had things just right. Then I realized I'd scheduled myself to speak during CK and Michael's sessions. Since CK and Michael are our newest additions to the Unleashed team, I really wanted to make sure I could catch their sessions myself. So, once again it was back to juggling things around.

Then things got funny.

I published the schedule, I let all the speakers know what was going on, and I rejoiced in my brilliance at finally putting things in place.

Then the complaints started.

Matt McGee emailed to say I had him scheduled at the same time as Debra. Stoney instant messaged to say he was booked at the same time as me. Everyone and their brother said they didn't want to go up against Matt Bailey. Matt McGee wanted to see Debra's workshop and Stoney wanted to see mine. Then I remembered I'd gone up against Stoney last time and that I wanted to see his session too.

*headdesk*

This conference planning stuff is hard.

So, despite the site having gone live, I did one last round of shuffling. Everyone seems happy now, but I've already heard from more than one attendee that they can't decide which sessions to attend because they want to see several.

Ultimately, I guess 'it's a good problem to have.

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