Jenny Kevan offers the benefit of her experience in organising conference-style leadership training.

I have run conference-style leadership events in the past and have listed some thoughts in no particular order:
* The topics - Ask for suggestions and then circulate a list for people to select before the event. If you leave the selection open ended, you may have a problem finding a speaker or trainer. I always used a mix of compulsory and elected sessions.
* Anticipate that people will either not send in a return or forget what they asked to go on so have something at registration.
* Do not assume that everyone will have done the pre-programme preparation. How will you handle someone who has not? If you have a monitored computer based system, you will know in advance and be able to tell them not to attend.
* Length of session - do the timings match the topics?
* The trainers/speakers - is one person thought of more highly than another? Sessions may end up over-loaded because the participants want to go to a particular trainer or speaker. Others may struggle to find a quorum. This often happens on repeats when word gets round that something is really interesting or boring.
* Allow breaks between sessions - usually needed for people to find the room, go to the loo, etc. and yes they will get coffee more often and make phone calls that hold them up.
* For training records purposes and/or QA, you should ensure that participants sign off an attendance sheet at each session, unless it does not matter to you.
* Use a good guest speaker or the MD/director for the final session to all participants.

This is an edited version of Jenny Kevan's answer to a question on designing conference-style leadership training. To view the question and all other responses, click here.