Sessionize is a cloud-based event content management software. Sessionize is here to help you organize an event of any size and complexity, either in-person or online. Our powerful tools allow you to easily organize a call for speakers (call for papers), evaluate the sessions, fully manage the submitted sessions and speakers, build the schedule, and take care of everything in-between. Sessionize can also be embedded into your event's website, offering you a seamless way to have your schedule visible, nice-looking, and constantly up to date. Want an event-specific mobile and web app for your audience to use? Good, because our software builds it for you.
Your speakers will love using Sessionize, too. They're able to build their profile, which they can use to quickly and seamlessly submit their sessions for any Sessionize-powered event. Their profile also keeps them in the loop with all of the important happenings in the event(s) they submitted their sessions for, without overwhelming them with stuff that's not important. Last but not least, there's an option to make their profile public and use it to flash their job experience, social media links, and industry-recognized awards.
Sessionize was built by a small team of seasoned event organizers and goers. We created software that offers everything we missed when organizing or speaking at events across the globe ourselves and presented it in an intuitive, user-friendly way.
Don't just take our word for it. Log in with your existing work, school, or social network account for fast access, or create a classic account using an email and password and try Sessionize out for yourself. Our trial mode is completely free and transparent to use, and it lets you experience Sessionize in all of its glory without stripping any of its functionality. There are no catches; we won't ask you for your credit card number until you decide you like what you see.
Here are some of the ways Sessionize can take a huge load off your shoulders when you're organizing an event!
Quickly organize and launch a Call for Speakers
After you create your event, Sessionize can help you prepare a call for speakers (call for papers). Our Call for Speakers form will get you going in minutes. After you set it up, the call for speakers will open and close automatically. You get to decide how many submissions per speaker are allowed, as well as the number of co-speakers each session can have. The list of submitted sessions can be made public, and we're even offering a secret link for speakers that allows them to submit their sessions after the deadline. We all know you'll need it. You can use our Submission form to add custom fields to your call for speakers in order to gather any other information about the speakers themselves, as well as the sessions they're applying with.
As an event organizer, you have the liberty to add everything mentioned above manually. Sessionize keeps its full functionality regardless of your preferred approach.
We recognize that some of your speakers prefer to have their assistants and PR managers submit their sessions for them. That's why added the so-called Agent mode, which allows users to submit sessions as someone else.
Manage your sessions and speakers
Sessionize includes a comprehensive set of tools and options aimed toward managing the sessions that were submitted for your event, as well as the speakers who submitted them. You can leave comments only visible to the approved members of your team, add live stream and video recording links for your online audience, and edit just about any other session's detail. The same is true for your speakers.
On top of a few required information fields, your sessions and speakers can have an unlimited number of fully customizable fields, which you can use to find out anything you might find relevant. Does your speaker have special dietary needs? Are there any unusual technical requirements for a certain session? By adding the appropriate additional fields in your submission form, you'll have a straightforward, unobtrusive way to gather such information. Your submissions can be quickly searched, filtered, and browsed.
Aside from individual editing, Sessionize lets you change the status of your sessions in bulk, saving you a ton of time in the process - especially if your event has a large number of submissions.
Three powerful ways to evaluate the sessions
Once the sessions start pouring in, you and your team need an intuitive way to evaluate them and decide which ones qualify for your event. With only a couple of clicks, you can create an evaluation plan (or multiple plans) and assign your team members to it. Sessionize offers three different evaluation modes: Stars rating, Yes/No, and Comparison.
When using the Stars rating evaluation mode, your evaluators have to rate each session with 1-5 stars. You can add custom multiple criteria options for a more elaborate star rating. This evaluation mode works best for smaller events that don't have a huge number of nominated sessions.
The Yes/No evaluation mode is self-explanatory. You go through the sessions one by one and decide if they're a yes, no, or maybe. This evaluation mode can be the backbone of your whole event, or you can use it for initial screening before moving on to one of the more advanced modes.
The Comparison mode has your evaluators comparing and ranking sessions 3 by 3. Your evaluators only have to concentrate on three sessions at a time, making their job much more focused and easier. An advanced chess algorithm working in the background calculates the rankings of all sessions your evaluators go through. This is by far the fastest and most efficient way to evaluate a large number of sessions handled by a lot of evaluators.
Once your evaluation plan has been created, we'll keep track of it with detailed statistics about the work your evaluators are doing. If you want to keep your speaker's name and details private, you can turn on the Anonymous mode for any team member. This option is particularly useful when you don't want your evaluators to see whose sessions they're evaluating.
Easily create the schedule
Building an event schedule can be a nightmare. It can, but it doesn't have to be, and that's exactly where our Schedule builder steps in. It provides you with a simple drag-and-drop interface, where you can arrange your accepted sessions on a timeline, swap them between different rooms, adjust their duration, add coffee and lunch breaks (called Service sessions), color them by various categories for easier navigation, and so on. The Schedule builder is equally capable of handling single-track events as well as complex, multi-room, multi-day affairs. It has a built-in schedule collision detection and preview, designed to give you the ease of mind and let you focus on other aspects of your event's schedule.
Keep your speakers informed
Your speakers should always be kept up to date with everything relevant to their participation in your event. Our Inform speakers page lets you quickly email your speakers about their sessions being accepted or declined. You can use our premade messages or edit them to your liking. We keep track of everyone you already emailed, so there's no risk of accidentally contacting the same speaker twice. Should you need to contact your speakers about anything other than their session status, the Mass mailing page will let you do exactly that. Here you can create and send a group email message. Your entire emailing history is saved on the Email history page. That way, a simple way to check who sent what, when, and to who is always at your disposal.
Manage your team
Most events have a team of people behind them. That's why we made it easy to add an unlimited number of team members to your event on Sessionize. Simply visit the Team page, enter the email address of the person you want to invite, assign an appropriate role to them, and send the invitation. Depending on the role you choose for them, the members of your team will have different levels of access to various parts of your event on Sessionize. As an event organizer, you always have full control of your team, and you can monitor their actions on the Changes history page of your profile.
Embedding that just works
Having the schedule readily available on your event's website is essential. Sessionize offers multiple embedding formats as well as a customizable color scheme for your website for seamless functional and visual integration. Any change you make in your schedule in Sessionize is updated on your website in real time. You can embed a fully interactive schedule grid, an informative session list, a beautiful speakers list, or a simple wall of your most valued speakers.
If you want to fully customize the design or integrate the Sessionize data into other tools you might be using, you can get the data in JSON and XML formats.
App is included
Once you have a completed schedule, Sessionize can create a mobile and web app for your event. Available on the App page, the app works on any mobile or desktop device, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktop computers. The app can serve as a great way for your audience to keep track of your event's schedule and speakers, build their personal schedule and access it on any of their devices, and favorite the sessions and speakers they don't want to miss. You can customize the in-app colors, logo, and icon, choose the session and speaker data you want to share, and even add an RSS news channel and links relevant to your event. The app is built using Progressive Web App technology and, as such, requires no Google Play Store/Apple App Store certification. Thanks to that, the app is available for download within seconds, and all of your changes are instantly live. Our app preview engine lets you simulate the look and behavior of the app while the event is happening. Did we mention that the app is included with the software and comes with no hidden fees of any kind?
Promote your event
Use the Social Banners tool to promote your sessions and speakers on social media. With only a couple of clicks on our Social Banners page, you'll have shareable banners for all of your accepted sessions for your social network posts and stories. You can customize them with your background, colors, and event logo, or you can use our templates to make the banner creation that much faster.
What Sessionize isn't
Now that you have a good idea of what Sessionize is, you should also know what it isn't.
- Attendee Management System & Ticket Selling Service. We're here to help you with everything related to your sessions and speakers. We don't handle anything that has to do with your event's audience. That includes, for example, selling tickets for your event.
- Live Streaming Platform & Video Hosting Service. You can assign live stream links to your sessions, embed your event's schedule to your website, and have the appropriate live streaming buttons show up in each session that's being streamed live. Sessionize isn't a live streaming platform, though, so your live streams have to be set up and linked from services that are. Your recorded sessions can be linked to Sessionize and made easily accessible through the embedded schedule, too. We don't host your video files, though.
- Event Webpage Builder. We'll create a mobile and web app for your event. When it comes to your event's webpage, you will have to build one separately. But you'll be able to embed the schedule from Sessionize onto that page.