Setting up your conference
First-time setup for General Chairs and System Admins — programs, committee, registration, and Stripe.
This page is the checklist new Conference Leadership uses on day one. You can do these steps in any order, but the sequence below tends to unblock the most people the fastest.
1. Confirm the basics
- 1
Open the Conference Leadership Console.
- 2
Verify the conference name, dates, venue, and timezone under Setup. These propagate to every email, invitation, and public page.
- 3
Set the conference visibility — public, unlisted, or private. Public conferences appear in All Conferences.
2. Create your programs
A "program" is a logical container — a main track, a workshop, a tutorial day, a poster session. Create one program per logical submission stream. Each program has its own Program Chair, review form, and timeline.
Create programs from the Programs tab. Once created, invite a Program Chair to each.
3. Build your committee
Use the Committee tab to add Conference-level Program Heads (Workshop Chair, Tutorial Chair, etc.) and any other roles you need at the conference level.
Program-level reviewers and area chairs are added by each Program Chair in their own console — you don't need to add them here.
4. Configure registration (if using)
If you're using AirBalloon's Registration service:
- 1
Connect your Stripe account. Registration cannot go live until Stripe is connected and verified.
- 2
Define your registration types, prices, and dates from the Registration Settings tab.
- 3
Decide whether to issue exemption codes (for invited speakers, organizers, students with grants).
- 4
Open registration when you're ready.
Stripe's identity verification (KYC) for new accounts can take a few business days. Start it as early as possible — you don't want to discover a problem in the week registration is supposed to open.
5. Publish your conference website
The Website Builder lets you assemble a public conference website from sections. Most conferences start from a template, change the hero copy and the call-for-papers section, and publish.
What's next
Once these are in place, your Program Chairs can run their programs end to end. Check the dashboard regularly during the submission and review windows — that's when most operational issues show up.