How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Our conference planning checklist will show you how to get a handle on the mammoth task at hand. Dr conference organises one day conferences, however if you are considering a much larger set up over a longer period of time, then this guide may assist you in your endeavours. It usually takes event planners 12 – 14 months to organise an academic conference . At the outset, it’s totally normal for the sheer volume of admin that lies ahead to feel a tad overwhelming when conference planning. But with a proactive team, the right software, and a well-developed plan of action, you should be confident in your ability to pull off a great event, without having to burn the candle at both ends. Having a comprehensive checklist to guide you can alleviate a lot of unnecessary stress in conference planning. Whether you’re a once off conference or organising your conferences annual meeting a checklist structures the work you need to get through. Once you break down the gazillion tasks you need to accomplish into specific time frames, everything seems – and usually is – far more manageable. Working systematically through a checklist will also provide you with a reference to revisit at the end of the conference. It can help you determine what was successful, and where there is room for improvement for future events. Defining Your Conference's Core Vision and Objectives Before any practical steps are taken, the "Why" of your conference must be crystal clear. This isn't just about picking a theme; it's about articulating the specific academic, professional, and community impact you aim to achieve. Consider: What knowledge gap will it fill? Is it to disseminate new research, foster interdisciplinary collaboration, or address a pressing societal challenge? Who is your primary audience? Are they senior researchers, early-career academics, industry professionals, or policymakers? Understanding your audience informs every subsequent decision, from content relevance to marketing channels. What are your key success metrics? Go beyond attendance numbers. Are you aiming for a certain number of high-quality submissions, specific networking outcomes, media mentions, or post-conference publications? Clearly defined, measurable objectives (SMART goals) will guide your entire planning process and serve as benchmarks for evaluation. This clarity ensures every task on your checklist contributes directly to your overarching aims. A wise man (with great project management skills) once said: There’s no time like the present. So, on that note, let’s get cracking! Your conference planning checklist: By month & task 12 – 14 months before your conference: Timeline, committee, & website Build your timeline. Factor in enough time to complete each stage of your conference planning, then add some wiggle room around deadlines. You’ll thank yourself later. Make sure to restructure the timeline to match your events plan. Decide if you’re hiring a pro. If it’s your first time planning a research conference, we highly recommend you consider the services of a professional conference organiser (PCO). For a fixed fee, and sometimes also a fee per delegate, they will look after the admin and logistics of planning your conference, and ensure that everything runs like clockwork. From what our customers tell us, a good PCO is worth their weight in gold . If your keynote speaker pulls out the month before your conference, or your AV supplier goes AWOL the week before, a PCO knows exactly what to do, as they’ve seen it all before. Note: If you’re planning to do it all without the help of an event pro, you’ll need to add normal event planning tasks – like sourcing your venue and buying gifts for speakers – to your conference planning checklist. Get your committee on board. Every successful research conference needs an active organising committee . Committee members are there to provide expertise on content and topics of interest to your community. Ideally, your committee should be made up of the type of experts your conference aims to attract as delegates. So, form your committee now and make sure each committee member understands their specific role and responsibilities – before, during, and after the event. Strategic Recruitment: Look for individuals with complementary skills. You'll need academic leaders for programme content (the Programme Chair), individuals with financial acumen, marketing savvy, logistical prowess, and potentially a dedicated technology expert, particularly for hybrid or virtual formats. Don't overlook the value of a professional conference organiser (PCO) for their extensive experience and industry connections. Clear Roles & Communication: Define clear roles and responsibilities from day one to avoid duplication and gaps. Establish a consistent communication rhythm – regular meetings, a shared digital workspace (e.g., a project management tool), and clear minute-taking for action points. A cohesive committee, working towards a shared vision, can transform the most ambitious plans into reality. Virtual and hybrid conferences come with unique challenges, from technology issues to engagement barriers. You need to choose the right conference technology to deliver your virtual and hybrid experience. Boost Engagement: Incorporate live polls, breakout rooms, and networking tools to keep attendees involved. Optimise Hybrid Experiences: Invest in quality AV setups and assign online moderators to manage remote interactions. Ensure Inclusivity : Offer closed captions, transcripts, and sign language interpretation for all sessions. Website and Venue Build your website. If you’re a meeting planner within a membership organisation, it’s important to create a clear distinction between your association website and your conference website Your association website should act as a focal point for your members, and promote your organisation’s work across advocacy and education. Your conference website, on the other hand, should be squarely focused on showcasing your event and converting visitors into delegates. Regardless of whether your conference website is a micro-site within a larger organisation website, or it’s flying solo, it needs to be user-friendly and accessible ready Ensure Venue & Digital Accessibility : Include wheelchair-accessible spaces, high-contrast slides, and quiet areas. Choose a conference venue. There’s a lot to consider when you are trying to decide on the best venue for your next conference. Accessibility and sustainability needs to be top of your list along with the finding the place that fits your costs appropriately. Date Selection: Research major holidays, competing academic conferences, local events in your chosen city (like the Galway International Arts Festival, for instance), and academic calendars (semester breaks, exam periods). Aim for a date that maximises potential attendance and minimises logistical clashes. Venue Sourcing: Consider the required capacity, technological infrastructure (crucial for AV and internet), accessibility for all delegates (including those with disabilities), catering options, proximity to transport links, and accommodation. For hybrid events, ensure the venue supports high-quality streaming and dedicated spaces for virtual interactions. A thorough site visit is essential, allowing you to envision the delegate journey and identify any potential bottlenecks, ensuring the venue truly aligns with your conference's vision. Conference planning 10 – 12 months before: Budget & software Draft your budget. Managing your finances is vital, so create your draft budget now. Then adjust it as you secure funding and sponsorship. Don’t forget to consider things like fixed costs vs variable costs, tax, and budgeting for contingency. Investigate funding pots. The tourism budgets of many countries include funds for conferences with international delegates. When you’re considering a location, check if/how the local tourist board can help. Also check if associations or organisations within your field offer any kind of funding. Pursue sponsorship opportunities. The money you bring in from registrations won’t be enough to cover your conference planning costs. So, you’ll need to look into sponsorship deals to help cover the difference. Sort your conference planning software. While a lot of generic event software boasts some conference features, these can be flimsy at best. And if you’re planning an academic conference, the software you use will probably look quite different to that used by your event-planning peers in the non-scholarly space. So, when you’re comparing packages, just make sure the platform you’re considering can handle all your needs Features of a scholarly specific powerful system for planning a research conference should include: abstract managemen t programme building, delegate registration, and mobile app, with an integrated hybrid platform to support online events. And it goes without saying that all this event tech should be backed by humans, not bots. Making a great first impression on delegates through your abstract management software will help build your event reputation, and this has knock-on effects for all other aspects of your conference. Download task management and project messaging tools. There are some great free apps that can keep your committee members engaged in the planning process and help them stay on target. In terms of hyper-visual task-management, we recommend Trello. And in terms of project messaging, you can’t go wrong with S lack 9 months before your conference: Submissions Define your formats. Before you can think about sending your c all for papers, you need to decide which formats you’ll be accepting. These could be abstracts, extended abstracts, or papers. For example, will you have a maximum word count, or formatting conventions? What extra info do you need from authors? This could include things like: file uploads, anti-plagiarism statements, and copyright transfers. Make sure to include these in your guide for authors. Decide how you’re collecting submissions. If the idea of managing submissions manually seems a bit old school and laborious, software that includes sturdy abstract management capabilities will be a game-changer for you and your team. Just make sure the software you’re considering has a customisable submission process, allows authors to make their own corrections, lets you track reviewers’ progress, and has an online conference platform integration. Work out how many reviewers you need. Inviting enough reviewers for your conference is pretty important. Overloaded reviewers are not happy reviewers. And unhappy reviewers tend to withdraw their offer to review, or go MIA entirely. When they do, you’ll be left scrambling to replace them, or off-loading their submissions onto other reviewers. Aligning Submitters and Reviewers Determine how you’ll match submissions to reviewers. Most of the conferences we work with agree on a list of submission topics. Reviewers then select the topics for which they’re best equipped to review. You also need to decide if you’ll allownin submission allocation. Nepotism happens when an author and a reviewer share an affiliation, such as a country or organisation (e.g. university). Preventing nepotism means that reviewers cannot be assigned to submissions if they have the same affiliations as the authors. Clarify your review process. Single or double-blind review? Single-blind means the reviewer knows who the author is, double-blind means they don’t. In both cases, the author doesn’t know who the reviewer is. How will reviewers score submissions? Hybrid or online component. The pandemic changed the way meetings are conducted, for your conference you need to ask yourself if you will solely go for the physical conference, a virtual event or a combination of both. One thing to consider, is making your conference more accessible to developing nations with a virtual component. Find a software can connect your abstract management to your hybrid or virtual and it can make your conference more versatile. Conference planning 8 – 9 months before: Call for papers Email your call for papers. To make sure your message hits its mark, make it catchy, informative, and scannable. Your conference should immediately make it clear what the conference is about, and who is organising it. The key details of the conference should be the first thing recipients see. If you have a rough idea about your conference schedule, or if you have plans for invited speakers, it would be well worth mentioning these as any kind of special events (even social events), or guest lectures, which could help attract potential authors and delegates. If your conference is partnered with an academic journal, or sponsored by an affiliate, these are all things that you may want to include.all for abstracts Consent to communicate. GDPR requires you to include an unsubscribe feature in every email you send to your mailing list. If a potential author or delegate opts out of your mailing list, and you continue sending them unsolicited emails, your conference could be fined. Not being a pesky spammer isn’t just good practice, it’s the law. Promotional Plan List on conference announcement sites. Virtual and hybrid have extended the reach of conferences further than ever. Scholars from all corners of the globe can now participate in your event, and every day, around the world, new people emerge who are interested in your field. Conference announcement sites are a great way to expand the digital presence of your ideal call for papers . These websites allow you to upload details of your conference under relevant categories. Once you add your event, researchers and academics who are browsing the internet, or who’ve registered an interest in your research category, get an alert about your conference. They can then access your website to submit their paper, register, or just find out more. Ask other conferences to help promote yours. If a conference with similar topics to yours exists (and you’re not competing for delegates), ask if they’ll share your flyers in their delegate packs, and if you can give a short address at their event. Write a media release for relevant publications in your field. To do this, you’ll need to make your announcement newsworthy, keep it concise, and include a quote from the chair. You may also want to post this on any relevant listservs , which are moderated mailing lists used by academics and researchers. Promote on social media. LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook can be a great way to reach interested researchers. Decide which social media platforms you’re going to use, devise a social media content plan , choose someone to manage your accounts, and start posting. Ask your conference sponsors to help promote it. They want people there as much as you do. Ask them to encourage business partners to attend, send your announcement to their contacts list, and promote on social media. Conference planning 7 months before: Registrations Build a limited-access pricing model. Rather than selling all-in registrations, sell separate tickets for events. For example, offer delegates a basic fee that admits them to every session, and add optional charges for events like workshops, social outings, and meals. This gives delegates more freedom to design around their needs. Ask authors to RSVP. When you send letters of acceptance, ask the authors of accepted submissions to RSVP before they register. This can give you a good idea of numbers before official registrations start rolling in. Then, if you have a list of second-round submissions, you can decide whether to accept or reject them, based on your RSVP numbers. Early career researchers. Create incentives for early career researchers to register for your conferences. It’s worth putting some time into planning with the venue and your committees in the best way to support early career researchers at your conference. Will you have a bursary for early career researchers? Will you add early career researchers to your committees to capture their views appropriately? Payment Options Offer payment options. A good chunk of your fees will ultimately come from funding, bursaries, and grants, as opposed to your delegates’ own pockets. But, if you force people to pay by card, they’ll need to wait to claim it back. This can put a stress on their finances. So, give them the option to pay by invoice as well as card. Publicise grants and bursaries. Many early-career researchers (ECRs) can’t afford to attend conferences without a travel grant. If your conference offers any grants, you need to establish what your conference defines an an ECR. Will it be post-doctoral researchers only? Or will you include senior lecturers who are undertaking the first stages of their research careers? And what about students and scholars who are at the undergraduate, graduate, or post-graduate level? Creating clear criteria and making info like this readily available can save would-be delegates hours of funding research. You could also consider offering subsidised childcare , or allow early-career researchers to volunteer in some capacity in lieu of paying fees. Harness the power of early-bird registrations. If you have budget constraints and find yourself having to pick between a physical or online event, doing a big push on early-bird registrations can help clear the path for clearer decision-making. You will be able to gauge how much interest your delegates are showing in an in-person vs virtual conference. This, in turn, will show where you should be allocating the bulk of your budget and resources moving forward. 2 months before your conference: Programme & book of proceedings Build your programme. Bear in mind you’ll be making loads of changes and tweaks as your event takes shape. If you plan to have a hard copy of your programme, signing off on the final print layout can go down to the wire. Recruit your session chairs. They will manage the Q&A session after each presentation, and make sure sessions run on time. Note: If your conference has a hybrid format, make sure your session chairs are tech-savvy, and capable of fielding questions from your virtual audience to physical presenters. Collect camera-ready submissions. These are corrected drafts, ready for publication. Compile your book of proceedings . This is the official record of your conference, and includes: a front and back cover, foreword, sponsors, table of contents, full list of abstracts or papers, abstract images, page numbering, and an author index. Invest in a mobile conference app. It will give you the opportunity to offer delegates an interactive version of your programme and book of proceedings, and allow you to connect with them in a more immediate way. A mobile conference app will also help your delegates navigate the conference, pick their agendas, get crucial updates from you and your chairs, network with other attendees, and more. These apps are quickly becoming a pillar of conference success and of the delegate experience. 6 – 8 weeks before your conference: Accessibility. A quiet room can be helpful for nursing mothers, delegates with physical or mental health issues, and people who need prayer space. Or just anyone who finds networking or big groups a bit overwhelming . Lack of accessibility also hinders the benefits delegates get from attending your event. For example, not providing food that works for everyone means some delegates will be forced to skip the meal. An accessible conference needs social events that all your delegates can attend. So include activities that are suitable for delegates with mobility issues and some events that are alcohol-free. Contact your printers. If you’re planning traditional printed poster presentations mounted on display boards for your poster sessions , as opposed to e-posters that’ll be displayed on screens, now’s a good time to send off the print-ready files. The same goes for the printing of your on-site signage, book of proceedings, programme, certificates of attendance, and conference feedback forms. Contact your branding house. It’s best to get your order in early for conference swag , to make sure there’s enough stock of the promo products you want branded. 1 week before your conference Send your delegates final info. This should include anything they need to know regarding the programme, and how to download your mobile app. Deliver your conference materials to the venue. Arrange for delivery and storage of printed poster presentations, on-site signage, book of proceedings, programme, certificates of attendance, and conference feedback forms. Confirm your registration desk and information point setup. Make sure these will be staffed by friendly, helpful people. Arrange facilities for accepting payments, if needed. 3 days before your conference Deliver final conference materials to the venue. This includes things like: name badges, lanyards, stationery, delegate packs/swag bags and any items that go in them. Send your delegates an official welcome email. Include info about: parking and permits, airport transfers, the venue WiFi password, the conference hashtag to use in their social media posts, and details of the welcome reception. Check the AV equipment. This includes conference laptops and presentation files. Make sure everything is working as it should. 1 day before your conference Mount poster presentations. If you have printed poster presentations, mount these on display boards. Also mount conference signs and directions inside and outside the venue. Update your online programme. If there are any late withdrawals, do a final reshuffle of your programme. Deliver thank you gifts to the venue. These could be for: keynote speakers and VIPs, as well as session chairs and volunteers. Day of your conference Set up your registration desk. Make sure you have the delegate list, name badges, lanyards, delegate packs, and payment facilities, if needed. Hold a pre-conference meeting. Brief your session chairs and volunteers on emergency procedure announcements. Make sure there are enough volunteer stewards on hand to man the registration desk and point delegates in the right direction. Social media listening : Monitor event hashtags and online discussions for candid attendee reactions. End of your conference Clear the venue of all conference materials. Be as sustainable in your efforts as possible. Ask delegates to hand in any items that they won’t have use for after the event, which can be reused or recycled, e.g. name badges, lanyards, etc. If they wish to take their poster presentations home, provide them with eco-friendly, heavy duty cardboard art tubes. Arrange for all other conference materials to be couriered, or disposed of responsibly. Hold a meeting with your session chairs and volunteers. Review any issues that might’ve arisen during the conference, and/or identify any aspects which could’ve been done better. You may want to also discuss next year’s conference and choose a chair. Distribute and collect your conference feedback forms. Or circulate them via your mobile app. After your conference Send a thank you email. To keynote speakers, VIPs, session chairs, and delegates. Collect any outstanding payments. Review all invoices for accuracy, and arrange payment. Post-event surveys: Use Google Forms, Type form, to send surveys within 24-48 hours. Keep them short and focus on key areas like content, logistics, and overall experience. Live polling & in-session ratings : Collect real-time feedback on sessions using tools like Slido or Poll Everywhere. Compile your post-conference report. Consolidate all the budget and financial information, evaluation results, tech reports, and meeting notes. Include suggestions and recommendations for the incoming chair. Gather your team for a debrief meeting within a week of the event. Discuss: What went well? What challenges arose? What can be improved? Prepare a full report. For submission to funding sources, and for internal use when it comes to conference planning. Share event highlights through blog posts, social media, and recap videos. In conclusion, planning a successful conference requires detailed preparation and thoughtful execution.

Our pick of the 15 best academic blogs for 2025. Academic cultural critique is best served in blog form. Thankfully, there is a slew of academic blogs on the web, waiting to dish. Some blogs commenting on funding and higher education policy. Other blogs mulling over early-career research struggles or musing about the ever-elusive path to tenure. Blogs with tips to help you get to grips with conference etiquette, and with toolkits for surviving academic life. Whether you want to discover what’s brewing in the world of scholarly publishing or learn what researchers think about particular areas of academia, academic blogs are a great form of online engagement outside of your regular engagement at an academic conference. You could read all day and your journey would be only part-way begun. So we’ve picked the 15 best academic blogs for you to investigate. Here they are, in no particular order: 1. The Thesis Whisperer “Just like the horse whisperer – but with more pages.” The Thesis Whisperer is the blog of Inger Mewburn, Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne. Inger and her contributing academics contribute thoughtful posts on topics ranging from writing and presenting your work to getting stuff done. The blog also has a helpful review section for PhD-themed books. It’s a newspaper-style blog, that accepts posts from people who have built up extensive experiences as research students or doing their PhD. In the midst of thesis haze? This academic blog will cheer you on. Sample blog post: Bold requests 2. The Research Whisperer “Just like the Thesis Whisperer – but with more money.” (Yep, there’s a theme.) The Research Whisperer helps early-career researchers build professional profiles and navigate the sometimes-treacherous channels of academic funding. It’s edited by Tseen Khoo, Lecturer in Research Education and Development at Melbourne’s La Trobe University, and Jonathan O’Donnell a PhD and grant application advisor at RMIT University in Melbourne. If you’re tackling a funding bid, hit subscribe. Sample blog post: The care and feeding of critical friends 3. Blog on Math Blogs Blog on Math Blogs is Anna Haensch, assistant professor at Duquesne University, freelance math writer Evelyn Lamb and Brie Finegold, co-organizer of Women Advancing Arizona Mathematics. Whether it’s misunderstood political polling, AIs that name paint colors ( Burf Pink or Hurky White , anyone?), mathematically inspired GIFs, or upping your presentation game, they’ve got it covered. Visit this blog and ready yourself for a trip down the rabbit hole. Sample blog post: We Need To Talk 4. Writing for Research Writing For Research is Patrick Dunleavy, Professor of Political Science & Public Policy at London School of Economics. This academic blog aims to help you master writing “creative non-fiction at a research level”, something easier said than done. Thankfully, it’s packed to the gills with advice on everything from structuring research papers to what to consider when choosing which journal to submit your paper to. Subscribe and boost your academic writing skills. Sample blog post: Using social media and open access can radically improve the academic visibility of chapters in edited books 5. Piled Higher and Deeper (aka PHD Comics) “The comic strip about life (or the lack thereof) in Academia.” PHD Comics is the brain-child of Jorge Cham. Whether you’re battling imposter syndrome or dealing with harsh reviewer comments, Jorge’s been there. And his wry sense of humor makes the chewy bits of academic life a bit more digestible. Dealing with a nightmare supervisor? This comic will help. Sample blog post: Average time spent composing one e-mail 6. Get a Life, PhD “All around me I heard that academia eats at your soul, breaks you down, and does not let you have a life outside of work.” So cheerily writes Tanya Maria Golash-Boza, Professor of Sociology at the University of California, and author of Get a Life, PhD . This academic blogs about finding balance as a researcher and a parent in a world where overwork and stress are endemic. Searching for work-life balance? Subscribe. Sample blog post: Why Daily Writing Leads to Productivity 7. GradHacker GradHacker is an academic blog for graduates looking for “stories, tips, and challenges of others who are experiencing the same things.” Written by a community of bloggers, the topics range from software reviews to disabilities, to how to communicate your research to a general audience. Pretty handy during family holidays. Like life hacks? GradHacker’s for you. Sample blog post: Working, Learning and Life Experiences 8. Patter Patter is Pat Thomson, Professor of Education at The University of Nottingham. Pat’s research is primarily focused on schools changing to be more engaging and meaningful for young learners. This varied blog is chock-full of posts about everything from refining your research topic, to academic bad behaviour, to taking inspiration from improv. Subscribe for sound advice with a dash of whimsy. Sample blog post: deep into writing the thesis? don’t forget to yodelayeehoo 9. Nick Hopwood Nick Hopwood is the academic blog of an Associate Professor at the University of Technology Sydney. Though Nick largely writes about his work in educational research, his candid posts publicising his rejection in academia have been widely shared. “Success in academia is not about never failing, never being rejected,” he writes. “It is about not allowing rejections to take hold of you. If I preach this but don’t have the gall to match generalisations with concrete detail, I should just shut up.” Got a stinking rejection recently? This blog will strike a chord. Sample blog post: My wall of rejection and why it matters 10. Catherine Cronin If you’re interested in open educational practices and research, the blog of Catherine Cronin is for you. Catherine is an open education advocate and advisory member of the Open Education Working Group. She’s been heavily involved in research, teaching and advocacy in higher education for over 25 years. And blogs about progress across the communities of open education and digital identity. If you’re interested in how higher ed can better support students, staff and communities, this blog is for you. Sample blog post: Open education in higher education: policy recommendations 11. Research to Action How useful is research on development issues if it lives and dies within the halls of academia? This research has the potential to save lives and lift people from poverty in developing countries but – crucially – only if it’s actually used by policy-makers and those that lobby them. Research to Action is a global guide to increasing the impact of research. Whether you want to brush up on practical or strategic approaches to increasing the uptake of development research, it’s got something for you. Early-career researchers who want to be more effective and strategic in their communications will also find its many free resources on everything from engaging the public to seeing evidence turned into policy helpful. Need to get your research into the hands of decision-makers? This blog is for you. Sample blog post: Partnering for more effective and impactful development research 12. Prof Hacker ProfHacker provides tutorials, tips and commentary on pedagogy, productivity and tech in academia and higher education. Whether it’s detailing the latest Google App for academics or highlighting the importance of including voices from the periphery in academic “international” spaces, this is site typified by creativity, generosity and kindness. Sample blog post: Making international academic spaces international 13. Nadine Muller Nadine Muller is challenging ideas about what academics look like. This senior lecturer in English Literature & Cultural History at Liverpool John Moores University shares often-overlooked academic skills through her blog. However, her refreshingly honest accounts of living with anxiety and depression and her critical examination of expectations placed on academics make this blog essential reading for those who feel they don’t fit the traditional mould.Interested in the conversations that are redefining what it means to be an academic? Head to Nadine’s blog. Sample blog post: The Twilight Zone: After the PhD, Before the Academic Job 14. Faculty focus Most academics, at some point, inevitably transition to the other side of learning; they move from being students themselves to standing at the front of a seminar room, prepared to teach a group of eager learners. Faculty Focus is a blog on effective teaching strategies for the college classroom. The blog is a useful tool for write-ups on the implementation of teaching improvements. You can also use it as the foundation for workshop activities, and additionally, as a resource for transformative readings to enrich the background context. Stuck on how to foster critical thinking in politically polarised times, or just need to developing content for an online course? This site is for you. Sample blog post: The “Big Bang” of Motivation: Questions That Evoke Wonder in Our Students 15. PhD Life (Warwick University) This blog shares a diverse range of experiences and advice from PhD researchers. Topics range from managing imposter syndrome to juggling personal life with academic responsibilities. PhD Lifes content is written by current PhD students at various stages of their academic journeys, making it relatable and authentic. The blog also invites guest contributions, encouraging readers to share their insights and experiences. If you’re navigating a PhD or considering one, this blog serves as an excellent resource for learning and connection.

Your Guide to Academic Conferences:  Plan, Present & Network