C3 Conference - Working On Site
There is no “how to give a literary conference” kit. So I’m building one.
When we decided to launch the Creatures, Crimes and Creativity conference we knew that one of our challenges would be to prove the event is real. People will only register for a conference if they are confident that something will actually happen. Despite our many connections in the writing community we knew we not only had to BE real… we had to LOOK real. That meant getting our web site in place as early as possible because here in the 21st Century, if you don’t exist on the internet, you don’t exist.
So we looked closely at the web sites of other cons that we love: Thrillerfest, Love is Murder, Bouchercon, Malice Domestic, Balticon and several others. Once we had an idea of what we wanted OUR site to be, we needed a web designer who could turn our vision into reality. We settled on Stevenson Graphics and Design .
We knew the landing page needed to explain what our conference was all about. It also needed links to a number of other pages and to show off our keynote speakers and local guest authors. We also wanted a countdown to the Con (380 days and counting.) Oh, and we wanted the page to not look cluttered.
Stevenson came through with a very nice design and also thought to add an RSS connection. We had also asked for a creative logo. After looking at several options we selected the shield design you see here, an almost heraldic combination of artistic, literary and crime-fighting symbols, complete with a fantasy creature, that somehow manages to look futuristic. We love it.
We wanted all registrations to come through the web site and thank goodness Stevenson knew how to execute that because we had no idea. As it is, the registration form is separate from the money. It lets everyone choose their banquet meal and allows for notes and comments that will help us fine-tune the conference as more people register. And of course it allows registrants to tell us if they are authors so we can get them on the right panels.
We also created a page that will list each attending author with a link to their web site, a place holder page where we’ll display the panel schedule when we firm it up, and a contact page through which we hope to get lots of input.
In fact, I hope you will explore our conference web site and use the link on our contact page to tell us what you think of it.
When we decided to launch the Creatures, Crimes and Creativity conference we knew that one of our challenges would be to prove the event is real. People will only register for a conference if they are confident that something will actually happen. Despite our many connections in the writing community we knew we not only had to BE real… we had to LOOK real. That meant getting our web site in place as early as possible because here in the 21st Century, if you don’t exist on the internet, you don’t exist.So we looked closely at the web sites of other cons that we love: Thrillerfest, Love is Murder, Bouchercon, Malice Domestic, Balticon and several others. Once we had an idea of what we wanted OUR site to be, we needed a web designer who could turn our vision into reality. We settled on Stevenson Graphics and Design .
We knew the landing page needed to explain what our conference was all about. It also needed links to a number of other pages and to show off our keynote speakers and local guest authors. We also wanted a countdown to the Con (380 days and counting.) Oh, and we wanted the page to not look cluttered.
Stevenson came through with a very nice design and also thought to add an RSS connection. We had also asked for a creative logo. After looking at several options we selected the shield design you see here, an almost heraldic combination of artistic, literary and crime-fighting symbols, complete with a fantasy creature, that somehow manages to look futuristic. We love it.
We wanted all registrations to come through the web site and thank goodness Stevenson knew how to execute that because we had no idea. As it is, the registration form is separate from the money. It lets everyone choose their banquet meal and allows for notes and comments that will help us fine-tune the conference as more people register. And of course it allows registrants to tell us if they are authors so we can get them on the right panels.
We also created a page that will list each attending author with a link to their web site, a place holder page where we’ll display the panel schedule when we firm it up, and a contact page through which we hope to get lots of input.
In fact, I hope you will explore our conference web site and use the link on our contact page to tell us what you think of it.
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