Langtons

This year, it's fallen on you to organise the annual business conference. You know you've got to create a conference to remember, but you don't know where to start. Because your company runs the conference every year, you know roughly how many people will come, the dates of the conference, and your budget, but what do you need to do next? Find a conference venue, of course!

Every year, writers all over the country attend conferences to network with other writers, learn about the publishing business and how to market their work, and pitch their books to agents and editors. If you're in charge of organising such a conference, here are our tips to ensure it goes smoothly and sticks to the budget.

The golden rule of planning any kind of conference is "don't do it alone." How are you going to keep track of everything and be in ten places at once? You're going to need a host of volunteers and supporters to pull off a successful conference, so you'll need to start recruiting volunteers now if you want to be prepared for the opening day.

Running a successful conference takes a lot of advance planning and preparation, and it's never too early to start looking ahead to your next conference. Here are some do's and don't's when planning a conference to help you create a successful event:

So your boss has sent you off to a leadership conference? Are you simply looking forward to eating lots of free hotel food and socialising at the cocktail party? Or do you want to listen to the speakers and learn from their experiences in your industry? A conference can be a great place to network, learn and discuss new techniques, trends and technology, and of course, have a great time. If you want to get the most out of a conference, here are some tips for you.

Ah, the office Christmas Party – the one event of the year where you see everyone as people, rather than just colleagues and bosses. While a successful Christmas party can be an event to remember, too often they fall into the old trap of setting out a few trays of food, putting a Christmas CD on continuous repeat, and watching everyone get drunker and drunker.

It's that time of year again – sleigh bells are ringing, work is winding up for the year, and it's time to plan the annual office Christmas party. You want this year's bash to be an event that's talked about well into the New Year, so how do you ensure you throw the best Christmas party ever? You make sure the staff is involved, of course.

Is your office Christmas Party falling a bit flat in recent years? Is everyone just sitting and talking in their usual groups, with no inter-department fun going on? There are plenty of ways to change up the format of your office Christmas party and get people mingling – and one of the best ways is by playing secret Santa?

Out of all the parties you'll ever need to organize, decorating for the staff Christmas party should be the easiest. After all – your theme is already sussed. And yet, so many people fail when it comes to office Christmas party decorations. Here's a great guide to help you decorate for the office Christmas party:

When setting up a function room for an important meeting, one of the things you'll need to do is decide how to arrange the chairs. The positions of tables, seats, displays and other materials helps convey the ideal outcomes of the event, as well as creating an atmosphere appropriate to the occasion and format. Here are some of the different ways to organize furniture at an important meeting: