Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Conference Management Software

I'm in the need of some conference management software. Preferably something that is available as Open Source. I've found one that is close to what I need, Corga. It however is a little rough around the edges, but I can enhance it since it's open source and I have access to the code. However, I'd like to look at some other alternatives. Here are my requirements:

  • Allow presenters to submit abstracts and papers.
  • Catagories for the various papers.
  • Allow reviewers to rate abstracts.
  • Publish a program from the accepted abstracts.
  • Allow conference chair to assign reviewers.
  • Allow people to register for the conference.
  • Control various dates, like when the abstract submissions ends, registration begins, and when registration ends.
Ideally, I would like this all with in one open source application. As I said, Corga is the closest thing I've found that meets most of these needs. The issue with Corga is that it requires a password for each paper, and that presenters have to login in multiple times to submit more than one paper. Anyways, I'd be interested in hearing what other software that people have used, that a non-profit organization could use to run a conference.

8 comments:

Sebastian Sanitz said...

Take a look at conftool: http://www.conftool.net/

bobdc said...

Don't forget to check out Edd Dumbill's expectnation at http://expectnation.com.

Bob DuCharme
http://www.snee.com/bobdc.blog

David Carver said...

Bob and Sebastian: Thanks I'll check them out. Expectnation may be a little out of the price range, but I'll keep it in mind.

Karl Matthias said...

The Foundation's submission system is not yet complete but is open source. It's currently handling all the submissions for ESE 2008. You can find it as the 'submissions' component of the Dash project. It's running live in demo version at:

http://www.eclipsecon.org/submissions/demo/

ale said...

We've been using Open Conference Systems (OCS) here at Bristol university, but people tend to find it too difficult and full of admin screens, as normally they don't want to manage the review and selection of papers, but just post info on the conference and enlist attendees...

I'll look at corga and conftool though!

Martin said...

You may take a look at this tool. It's not opensource but probably worth to ask for an offer: http://www.eveni.com/pages/index.php

The jazoon conference in Zurich was organized with this system.

David Carver said...

Thanks everybody for the ideas. Keep them coming.

Amanda Labern said...

You may want to look at http://www.events.org online registration and conference registration software. 

They have many great features and are very affordable. Here is their link:
http://www.online.registration.events.org