The event experts blog

…One Schedule, With Liberty & Justice For All

Submission Forms and Admin Approval

by Marvin

In The Beginning…

SCHED* was born in February 2008 for South By Southwest. We became pretty popular, virtually overnight. Taylor initially made the site for himself but ended up telling a few friends. Those friends told a few more friends and the next thing we knew, we were being mentioned in the New York Times & Wired Magazine.

A lot of the popularity of SCHED* was tied to the fact that we had better information: we had the official schedule but also a listing of unofficial events, like parties and shows. 

After SXSW ‘08, we immediately began receiving requests from conference and festival organizers to set up a SCHED* for their events. Ever since then, we’ve been laser focused on making scheduling and data management as easy as possible for organizers, culminating in the release of Session Manager, our free events management database.

What About Everybody Else?

But this left us wondering: what about everyone else? What about the attendees having Tweet Ups and Cocktail Parties? What about exhibitors who have demonstrations or giveaways happening at their booths? What about sponsors who are holding special events for select groups?

We’ve seen organizers being asked to include outside events like parties and Tweet Ups several times. Even though these aren’t “official” events, they would not exist without the larger conference or festival and many of these events help enhance an attendee’s experience while there.

Speaking from first hand experience as an attendee, having a centralized schedule of all events makes navigating a conference or festival much easier as I no longer have to use multiple tools to track what I am interested in doing.

“Simple. Social. Scheduling.” Revisited

After reflecting on our own beginnings and realizing this burgeoning need, we began brainstorming ways to solve this problem. We then hit on a solution which can oddly enough, be traced back to our ”Simple. Social. Scheduling.” motto: why not let EVERYONE be involved in the creation of the event’s schedule? 

Our simple and elegant solution: submission forms with admin approval. 

Example: Submission Form

Session Manager and the Social Scheduling Package now include submissions forms that can be used in a variety of ways, including:

• Internally: let colleagues submit events to be added to the schedule without giving them administrative rights and full access to Session Manager
• Exhibitors: let exhibitors post both schedules and events like demos, contests and signings
• Sponsors: let sponsors list special events they are planning or times when they will be available for meetings with groups
• Attendees: allow attendees to submit events of general interest like Tweet Ups, parties and outside meetings 

Submitted events must be approved by an admin, can be edited and can include a “non-endorsement” and “courtesy to attendees” disclaimer.

Example: Administrator Approval

We’re very excited about the submission and approval process as this will help make your events even better. To try submission forms out, sign up for Session Manager, our 100% free events management database.

How would you use submission forms for your event? What types of attendee related events would you include? Let us know in the comments below!