Hi, Barry,

No expert in multi-day conferences here, but I have helped with shorter, half-day kinds of events (colloquia/ professional/ academic meetings with multiple speakers).  I'm working on one right now, in fact, and was just thinking that I need to get crackin'.

I did a laundry list of possible considerations to think about.  It's probably not complete, and isn't terribly well organized, but it's a start... if nothing else, it's a prompt to help ID as many items as possible.

The time-sensitive critical path, in my experience, starts at budgeting, securing a venue, and identifying and confirming speakers.

I don't have any experience in publication of proceedings.

Anyway, I hope this is of some help, and I look forward to hearing more about your event.

Content
Theme, topic(s), program, title
Speakers, moderator, availability
--(N.b. A gifted moderator’s skills are absolutely essential.)
Venue
Size, access, hours, availability
Parking, equipment (visuals, sound, etc)
Weather (outdoor?)
Budget
Honoraria
Space rental, equipment rental
Staffing
Printing, copying
Food, beverages
Lodgings
Travel, transportation
Scheduling
Seasons, holidays, accessibility, weather, hours
Lead times, reservations
Deliveries
Publicity
Target audience(s)
--Scholarly
--Students
--Professionals
--Community
Outlets
--Online , websites, email blasts, blogs,
--Print advertising, flyers, press releases, journals, newspapers

hi barry,

i put together this symposium recently. no idea what the difference is between symposium and conference either.

as far as it goes i think in comparison to planning and overseeing construction timeline of a building its easier to organise a symposium.  but needs as much attention to detail.

for us we made a ghant chart with quite a bit of detail in order to plan the event.  that was pretty useful and will definitely be using it again this year.  contents were much as outlined above.

if you make a proper proceedings i recommend giving yourself lots of time to go through transcripts.  if there is a budget def recommend hiring a company to make the transcripts and clean up the english.  they can do quite a bit of the work actually, but you will need to make some time to create a framework for the entire thing and that is time consuming even if you don't try to make it special.

looking forward to hearing more !

Two comments, far less important and insightful than those of Will and Citizen: 

• Make sure that the digital media/powerpoints to be displayed are received and checked in advance of the conference.  I participated in two conferences this fall, both of which had embarrassing* presentation issues that could have been prevented if someone had tried to give them a dry run.  In one case, the podium computer didn't have the right plug-in for a critical animation, and in the other, the individual attempted to present by pdf but forgot to embed their exotic fonts in the pdf.  Is there anything worse than an architect talking with no supporting images!?!
• If your chair is amenable, get a press gang out into the studio and conscript a couple grad students to help you out for credit.  Short term volunteers can do the less critical runner type work (picking folks up at the airport, dropping off packets at the hotel, etc).

*For the speaker

All great suggestions, thank you! I have a meeting with the Dean on Monday to pitch the idea. If he buys in, then we're off and running. Got about 18 months before the big day(s).

As for the proceedings, was thinking about requiring papers to be submitted before the actual event. Probably will have an open call, along with soliciting specific folks with knowledge on the topic.

Perhaps a conference has multiple tracks (and charges), while a symposium is more of a single session with multiple presenter.

Yeah, I will certainly be running several studios on the topic - perhaps even getting an entire cohort to take on the topic and then get into the exhibit/graphic design.

sounds cool barry.  we had presenters submit abstracts one month before the event and ppt presentation one week before.  few stuck to the deadlines of course and most brought changes to the presentation on the last day, so we were sure to have a student in charge of substituting the presentations and also being sure to get a copy to put online later.

proceedings in our case include the abstracts and the conversations but no formal papers.  that will be another publication and on a much longer timeline if all goes well (2 months for proceeding, a bit under a year for the peer-reviewed publication of articles related to the symposium).  we are hoping to have the latter ready for our next conference, but let's see...it is in any case all a crazy amount of work and must be done in free time, which is crazy.

good luck with the pitch!

update 12/17/2012

Had a great initial meeting with several other LA institutions in November and moving forward with planning the Aqueduct Future Symposium for Fall 2013. Still waiting for word on funding.