Conference Management

Conference Overview

Once you have created your boards, you’re ready to develop your online conference system. Conferences are made up of topics and messages. When you create a conference, you establish the main subject matter that users should focus on when they post new topics and messages. For example, the Office Equipment conference may have topics such as Repairing Copy Machines, Purchasing New Equipment, and so forth. As the WebBoard administrator or manager, you need to create at least one conference for each board.

Conferences can have different characteristics depending on their purpose and audience. They can be totally open to the public. They can be moderated, requiring messages to be reviewed before posting. They can be completely private, or they can be read-only. Conferences also form the basis of WebBoard’s NNTP support, mailing list support, and email notification. Conferences that have NNTP support allow users to read and post messages with their news readers, while mailing lists allow users to read and post messages via email. You can also decide whether to enhance each conference with chat, which is completely integrated with WebBoard. So, you can see that you have several decisions to make in setting up conferences.

Conferences are the backbone of your WebBoard—and user participation is key to a successful conference. Think carefully about the conferences you create, keeping in mind both the needs of your organization and what will generate the most user interaction and interest. For example, if your WebBoard is for developing or communicating your organization’s human resource policies, you could create separate conferences on benefits, healthcare providers, vacation policy, perfor-mance evaluations, and salary. Since some of these topics may contain sensitive information, you may want to designate some conferences as private (closed), and others as read-only.

If you plan to use WebBoard for technical support, you may want to create a conference for general user questions and other conferences for more advanced topics. Often these conferences benefit from the postings of other users, so you’ll want to make them public. Or you may decide to moderate the conferences to keep misinformation about your products out of the conference.

You can add new conferences at any time. If one conference gets too large or seems to splinter, break it into two conferences. Or move a topic from one confer-ence to another, more suitable, one. (Administrators can even move a conference to another board.) If you ship a new product, you may want to start a new conference. You may also find it useful to have a suggestion-box conference for users to post ideas about your WebBoard and site in general. A suggestion-box conference lets your WebBoard users have a structured way of giving input to the conferences.

Depending on the volume of users you anticipate, you may want to err on the side of having too few conferences rather than too many. Fewer conferences make navigation between them easier, but may make them less focused. Keeping close track of conferences and determining when to add a new one—or delete an old one— is one of your primary responsibilities as WebBoard administrator or manager.

Once your WebBoard kicks into gear, check the content of postings from time to time, with an eye toward helping your users carry on more productive and satisfying conversations. Ensure that you look at the process from a user’s perspective by becoming a user yourself. Read messages often, post regularly, experience what your users do.