What do you think organizers look for when organizing an event? If your answer is platforms that simplify speaker and session management, then you are likely correct. Managing an academic event can be challenging, given the multiple important elements that need attention. The appropriate platform effectively prioritizes all these elements.

Academic events and conferences are heinous tasks to accomplish. However, with the right platform, catering to your customization can make this task less stressful.

This is why in this blog, we have put together a list of the top 10 academic platforms that make speaker and session management seamless. These platforms specialize in managing speakers and sessions for academic and professional events.

1. Dryfta

Dryfta is an all-in-one platform that is built specifically for academic and university conferences and events. It focuses on the speaker, abstract, and session automation, hence making it a favourite among academic institutions.

Its speaker management system includes speaker bios, roles, and time availability. This allows organizers to assign chairs, moderators, and co-authors to individual sessions, ensuring that every segment of the event is well-structured.

It is a purpose-built facility for research-driven events. It handles abstract submissions, peer review, and integrates them into the program. Dryfta is specifically built to address the challenges faced by academic and university conferences. It helps streamline registration, ticketing, and program building.

2. Eventleaf

This platform provides an all-in-one solution for registration, abstract management, and session scheduling. It is well-regarded by universities and offers features like Q&A, polls, and instant schedule updates via a mobile app.

Here, the organizers can create their own agenda, add speakers, and upload presentation materials from a single dashboard. Speakers are also assigned to sessions, and attendees can view schedules from their mobile devices.

3. Ex Ordo

This specific platform is custom-built for research conferences and scholarly events. It excels at dealing with complex tasks. It includes an abstract management software, a program builder, and an integrated registration system. This ensures organizers have everything they need in one platform.

When you are looking for a platform that provides the ability to sync the full conference program with a mobile app, allowing for real-time updates and push notifications, then Ex Ordo is the right platform for you.

This platform masters the blend of speaker and session management. It is best for scholarly events, workshops, and symposiums of all sizes that require robust abstract and paper submission.

4. Cvent

Cvent is a comprehensive, scalable platform designed for a wide range of tools for professional event planners. Its dedicated speaker management software allows organizers to store speaker profiles in an account-level library, showcasing speaker information and managing resource allocation. This is best for large-scale, professional conferences and conventions that require a powerful, all-in-one solution with deep analytics. It deals with a larger audience globally.

This platform can integrate with other systems to align data-driven analytics. It also ensures access to a large number of venues.

5. Whova

This is an award-winning platform known for its user-friendly interface and strong networking features. It simplifies planning with registration management, attendee engagement tools, and detailed analytics. With the experience, it caters to swift speaker and session management. It makes the navigation thorough, through the paper submissions, abstract submissions, and everything altogether. 

Whova saves time by automating tasks such as creating speaker webpages and setting up big-screen displays. It also offers customizable event agendas and helps facilitate communication with speakers through the platform.

6. Eventeny

A fully integrated platform for program, speaker, and session management with real-time public syncing across the website. Organizers can navigate easily to create sessions and assign speakers easily.

It is best for large-scale events that benefit from a fully integrated, automated system for managing speakers and sessions efficiently.

If you are in doubt and you need a platform for seamless navigation, then Eventeny is the right choice you are looking for.

7. Sessionize

A streamlined tool designed for papers and the session selection process. It simplifies the session proposal and review process, allowing speakers to manage their bios and session details independently.

 This makes it easier to handle a high volume of speaker applications. It is best for event planners whose primary needs are simplifying the submission, review, and scheduling of sessions and speakers.

This platform offers a robust and guided review process with three modes that allow content teams to review submissions much more efficiently.

8. Oxford Abstracts

This platform manages abstract submissions and speaker workflows. It has been widely used by academic associations, scientific committees, and universities worldwide. Managing speakers and sessions can be a tedious task; hence, choosing the right platforms helps make the entire process simple.

It has one of the most advanced platforms in the academic events market, making it ideal for research-intensive conferences with large reviewer groups.

9. PheedLoop

It provides an all-in-one, centralized system that automates and streamlines speaker and session management through dedicated portals, abstract management tools, and real-time synchronization.

Pheedloop provides private, personalized portals where speakers can manage their experience autonomously. They can upload presentation files and biographies, all in one place.

For academic and university events, this platform provides a learning management system and continuing education credit tracking, allowing organizers to create courses and provide attendees with personalized credit reports.

10. ConfTool

It provides a highly customizable set of tools that streamline the entire speaker and session management lifecycle, from submission and peer review to scheduling and communication. It manages the entire process of calls for papers, abstract/full paper submissions, and the peer-review process within a single system.

For online conferences, ConfTool allows organizers to add links to external resources for each session or presentation directly within the agenda.

Parting Thoughts

Academic conferences are unique, and they require a lot more than just venue booking and agenda planning. When selecting an academic event platform, one needs to consider the depth of speaker management tools, session scheduling flexibility, abstract and peer-review capabilities, ease of use for committees and reviewers, etc.

Dryfta is often considered ideal for academic conferences due to its powerful abstract management and customizable scheduling tools. In short, it is the best event management software that meets your goals, needs, and the level of customization you require for organizing the event.

So, what are you waiting for? Try the free demo and explore what you can achieve with the help of a right platform.