Academic conference organizer

Software	Java or C++ or Smalltalk or another object oriented language with good GUI facilities, or HTML plus CSS with PHP or Visual Studio, probably SQL
Covers	Requirements analysis, interface development, database development
Skills Required	Programming, SQL and data design
Challenge	Conceptual ?? Technical ?? Programming ??

Brief Description

The aim of this project is to develop a software application for supporting the organization and management of academic conferences.

Organizing an academic conference involves making sure that facilities have been booked within the university, not just for large and small speaker sessions but also places to gather between sessions, eat lunch, have an evening drinks reception, and so on. This doesn't just mean making sure that the rooms have been reserved but also making sure that they have the right equipment - both making sure that the right size and type of rooms have been allocated, and ensuring that any extra equipment is there and ready to use. Organization also involves worrying about food and drink either supplied by the university's catering service or by an outside caterer. While many conferences simply rely on hotels, and travel budgets capable of paying for them, some institutions have student accommodation they want to use to make some money during vacations, and many conference organizers want to keep costs down, acutely aware of how limited university department or research grant travel budgets are.

The system will require interface mechanisms for checking and making bookings for meeting rooms, and ideally also accommodation, and associating these bookings with individual conferences, and sessions within conferences, and in some cases with individual delegates. In situations where the conference organization system itself isn't the master register of room bookings (which it probably isn't going to be), records need to be kept of the status of particular bookings. Depending on how the system is going to be used, it may also need an interface for creating or modifying the information held about what rooms or other facilities exist within the institution and are available to be booked. Organizing a conference may involve worrying about different aspects of making it happen at different times, so the organizers might benefit from reminders and checklists for all the things they need to keep track of.

The system will probably employ a relational database accessed using SQL queries, but other approaches to handling information persistence could be used instead.

Variants

The form the system takes, and its major requirements, will depend largely on the target user population. These are the obvious possibilities.

University administrative staff who are responsible for making conferences run smoothly at their own institutions, and supporting the work of academic local organizers.
University academic staff who are responsible for running an academic conference, either at their own institution or elsewhere (not necessarily in a university), but who don't do this for a living and so are in more need of reminders and guidance than professional organizers.
Professional conference organizers who put on conferences for academic clients - either ad hoc groups or learned societies.
Professional conference organizers who put on meetings or shows for commercial organizations, who may have different needs, expectations and budgets from academic researchers. They would usually rely on conference centres or hotels, not on educational institutions.

A decision needs to be made about whether this should be a closed system, for security or convenience reasons, or whether it would benefit from a publicly accessible web interface. It's worth considering what if any access or functionality should be granted to stakeholders other than the conference organizers.

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