Conference Maker^® is web-based software designed originally for the Econometric Society to simplify the job of creating programs for international conferences. Program Chairs no longer have to "reinvent the wheel" and create their own database system to keep track of submissions. In Conference Maker submissions to international conferences are made electronically via a simple form/web page interface, resulting in a "paperless" submission process.

Conference Maker is a web-based interface to an "industrial strength" database and resides on a specially equipped server computer that can handle extremely high volumes of submissions in short periods of time. Such bursts of submissions frequently occur when conference participants decide to wait until just before a submission deadline to submit their papers.

Conference Maker allows a Program Chair (or several co-chairs) and their selected program committee to handle the submission process in a decentralized fashion. All members of the program committee can log in at any time via secure password protected accounts and can view all submissions online. Program committee members are assigned certain subsets of submissions (usually designated by the person making the submission, but with override authority by program commitee members) and can make accept/reject decisions by clicking a button. The program committee members have access to a simple interface for forming sessions, searching for discussants and session chairs, posting/updating the conference program to an automatically generated web page, and sending mass emails to arbitrarily selected subgroups of users (i.e. to all rejectees, all accepted authors, all session chairs, etc.).

The process starts when the Program Chair is given a Conference Maker account for the conference he/she is in charge of organizing. The software is located on a secure, backed up server computer at the University of Maryland,

If you are a Program Chair for an Econometric Society meeting who is interested in using this software, contact The Econometric Society to get their authorization to use Conference Maker at no additional cost for your conference.

If you wish to organize a non-Econometric Society conference using Conference Maker you should contact John Rust. There is a fee for providing backup services and 24/7 technical support to Program Committees and all submitters. This fee is $750 for meetings with over 100 submitters and $500 for meetings with fewer than 100 submitters. An alternative option is to allow a per submission charge of $5 per submission, then use of Conference Maker comes at no additional charge to the conference organizers. We do allow free use of Conference Maker for a single conference on a demo basis for societies or organizations considering using it on a continuing annual subscription fee arrangement, or for conferences in developing countries or for special causes. Contact John Rust to see if your conference qualifies.

Once your conference maker account is created for your conference, uou will be emailed the exact location of a login screen and a login and password which you can subsequently change. Complete instructions on how to use the software are located on a help screen that you can view when you log in, but most users find the software completely self-explanatory. One of your first actions as Program Chair would be to select and enter your Program Committee and the details about the conference (i.e. dates/location of the conference, beginning and ending dates for submissions, etc.) through easy to use web forms. An administrative account can be created to allow the secretary or assistant to the Program Chair to do this if the Program Chair has an aversion to computers.

Once a Program Committee is in place, Conference Maker can be set to start accepting submissions. Anyone who has access to the web can submit a paper electronically via a simple interface. Submitters provide their name, email address, institutional affliation, an abstract (in ascii), and the title of the paper. The full text of the paper (in PDF or any acceptable format) can be uploaded directly or the submitter can enter a URL to their own (continually updated) version of the paper. You have the choice of what information and fields are mandatory for a valid submission and which are optional. The program chair has the choice of whether the conference should be run in "public mode" where everyone can see the identities of every other submitter, or in private (anonmymous) mode where only program committee members can view the identities of submitters and authors. There is also a "user-defined" privacy mode where each submitter can choose whether to make their submission and personal information public or private.

Conference Maker does not preclude Program Chairs from creating their own specialized web site containing travel/lodging information and other information about the conference. The main function of Conference Maker is to simplify the submission and decision process and to prevent Program Chairs from having to worry about these details so the program committee can focus on the important academic/scientific issues involved in forming the best possible program. All the details about capturing information, archiving it, backing it up, etc. are taken care of. The software is ideal for decentralized decision making by a program committee who may be spread over the world, and who are frequently mobile, travelling to other universities, etc. The program committee and registered users can access Conference Maker using any web browser with internet access. This allows a program committee can keep minute by minute tabs on the conference from wherever they may be are located.

Full technical support and backup is available on a 7 day per week and 24 hour basis. For technical questions regarding the operation of Conference Maker contact support. or John Rust.