I like to see tech demos of software personally. Also "birds-of-a-feather" sessions allow smaller groups with common interests to meet at lunch or otherwise.
If you are doing this under aegis of a bioinformatics society in Europe that is affiliated with ISMB then you could use ISMB's meeting infrastructure?
I only helped organizing a small conference (~80 participants) a while back, but here are some things I learned, mainly general stuff:
have a small core organization team that distributes the jobs and tasks.
be aware that no matter how clear your guidelines towards abstracts are, there will be people who will ignore it, so be ready to spend quiet some time on manually read/edit everything
be sure that you include a field in the online registration form for the gender. Guessing gender (and by this people who could share a bedroom) solely from the name might cause some, lets say, "false-positives", especially with asian names^^ (admittedly a beginner's mistake)
do not try to save money by using free registration software or even writing one yourself. it will save you much!! time and efford to get a professional one.
free beverages (coffee!), notebooks, pens and a handy agenda are always appreciated. also consider to incldue a free page in the agenda after every abstract so that people can notes notes right away.
make sure you ask people in advance for food preferences (veggy, vegan) and food intolerances
make sure that you provide enough free time so that people have the change to get to know each other and talk
have a backup laptop ready in case the speakers hardware fails (win, mac and linux including common adapters for the beamer)
assign one guy per room who takes care that the windows are opened frequently. sounds stupid but people will get tired and annoyed quickly if you lack oxygen in the room.
the best team building is a party on the final evening that includes a buffet (makes people meet there and talk) and a notably number of alcoholic drinks =)
I allude to the formation of a conference in Europe in my post here: The push toward standardisation, but in the context of standardisation. If your lab is already planning a conference, then I'd be happy to help out / attend / assist.
I have attended many conferences, mainly in Europe, and two of my closest colleagues own a company whose sole business is in organising conferences.
Some things that work very well:
'Personalise' the conference by giving out free eco-friendly bags,
which have free pens, notebooks, a conference agenda, etc.
Encourage the audience to have a 'voice', by asking questions and
encouraging them to share their opinions. I've been to too many talks
where the disconnect between the speaker and the audience made it
seem as if there was actually a brick wall separating them. This is as much the speakers' roles as it is the conference organisers
'Theme' each day or section of each day
Include panel discussions on hot topics, like standardistaion,
utility of clinical testing, etc. (these work very well)
Don't forget lunch / dinner, and free coffee. As it will be in
France, make some fine French wine available in the evening
What genomax says is also very beneficial, i.e., leave time and space
available where people can just group up and talk (typically during short breaks and lunches).
Out of all of these, the one that you just cannot do without is the panel discussions (more than one)
Something I really dislike at conferences is having parallel sessions - which make me chose and that's often hard, I often miss things I actually wanted to hear in favor of something else that seemed interesting. At the same time, my opinion is that speaker slots are often too long and they could say the same but more to the point in half the time...
I've found parallel sessions most effective when topics are divided into categories such as "Beginner - Intermediate - Advanced", so they might have more mutually exclusive audiences.
I don't think I agree with that - it might be difficult to estimate your own level in this (imposter syndrome?) and extremely beneficial as a beginner to be in a session with more advanced discussions/questions/talks.
I want of kind of confirm this. I don't know if I would call it an 'unconference' session .... just in general. The most discussions happen during coffee break at every conference, not during 100s of flash talks. So, don't organise too much, make sure there is space and especially time for people to chat, exchange ideas and potentially come up with a project together. So it might sound strange to people from the business world, but have 30 minutes or even 45 minutes coffee break.No harm done. Scientists tend to talk about nothing else but science anyway.
A session for young/less experienced participants where they would not feel pressured (designate moderaters to oversee the session) even if they were to make mistakes. An ignite session may be great for this. Also a "get help in-person" type session.
Is there a main topic/focus for the conference?
I like to see tech demos of software personally. Also "birds-of-a-feather" sessions allow smaller groups with common interests to meet at lunch or otherwise.
If you are doing this under aegis of a bioinformatics society in Europe that is affiliated with ISMB then you could use ISMB's meeting infrastructure?
not that will be a conference with a broad list of subjects.
Be sure to add a session on BioStars/online BI forums :)
Starring "how do I change the identifiers in a fasta file?", "Another TopHat question", "absurd awk/join oneliners" and "single sentence questions".
:-D
And if you could ask the Germans to not go through Belgium if they want to invade your conference, well, that would be great.
unfortunately in the previous instance of this meeting, people said that the sessions were too technical/ not enough science ... fair enough.
People complain about everything these days - impossible to please everyone.
You need to invite non-Bioinformaticians too, and clinicians, if you can. We need to get through these research problems together.
those "people" give the money ;-)