Creating a Conference with the Setup Wizard

Every event you attend or exhibit at is a conference in Conference Hero. The setup wizard walks you through five steps and leaves you with a conference that has dates, a team, goals, a task plan, a budget, and target leads. You can skip any step and come back later; nothing in the wizard is locked in. Once you finish Step 1, the numbered steps at the top become clickable, so you can jump straight to any step or go back to fix something.

To start, go to Conferences in the sidebar and click New Conference.

Step 1: Details

Start with AI (optional)

Before you type anything, you can let AI fill in the details from material you already have. Pick one source:

• Upload planning material - drop the exhibitor guide, prospectus, or agenda the conference provider sent you (PDF, Word, Excel, or images). AI reads it and fills in the name, location, dates, and timezone.
• Paste the conference website - AI reads the page and pulls the same details. The link is also saved on the conference for quick reference.
• Describe it out loud - click Describe with voice, speak for up to five minutes about the event, and AI transcribes and extracts the details. You can type the description instead if you prefer.

Anything useful beyond the core fields (booth number, venue, registration deadlines, key contacts) lands in the Planning notes box, which you can edit. Every field the AI fills is a suggestion - review and adjust before you save. If you uploaded material, it carries over to Step 3 so you can generate a task plan from the same documents without uploading them again.

The details

The basics that everything else hangs on:

• Name - the official event name, e.g. "SaaStr Annual 2026".
• Location and dates - the conference shows as Upcoming, Live, or Completed based on these dates.
• Attendees - pick the team members working this event. Assigned people see the conference on their dashboard and can be given tasks and booth shifts.

You can also add Event Staff right here: booth crew or contractors who need to appear on schedules but have no login and use no paid seat. Enter a name, optionally a company and job title, and they become assignable everywhere. See workspace roles for how Event Staff differ from regular users.

Step 2: Goals

Pick what success looks like before the event starts, so the ROI report has something to measure against. Choose from goal templates or add a custom goal with your own metric, target value, and unit. Typical goals: leads captured, meetings booked, pipeline generated.

Goals are visible on the conference overview, so the whole team knows the number they are working toward.

Step 3: Tasks

Three ways to build your prep list, and you can combine them:

• AI Task Planner - upload your exhibitor manual, order forms, and logistics documents. Claude reads them and proposes a task plan with real deadlines and attachments. If you already dropped material in Step 1, it appears here ready to go - just click generate. This is the fastest way to a complete plan; see the full guide at AI Task Planner. Tasks generated here are applied when you finish the wizard.
• Templates - apply a built-in checklist like Full Conference Playbook, Pre-Show Preparation, or First-Time Exhibitor. Details in managing tasks.
• Manual - add individual tasks with a title, assignee, and due date.

Step 4: Budget

Set a total budget for the event. You can break it down by category (booth space, travel, sponsorship, swag, and so on), enter just the total and split it later, or skip it if you're not sure yet. Anything you don't assign to a category shows as "Unallocated". Actual spend is tracked later as budget items with an approval flow. See budget planning.

Step 5: Leads

Define who you want to meet. You can add target leads by hand, or upload a prospect list or notes and let the AI lead planner extract names, companies, titles, and priorities for you to review and edit before applying. These targets give your booth team a hit list and seed the lead pipeline before the event starts.

After the wizard

The conference overview shows the location, dates, and (if you added one) the event website link in the header, plus a Planning notes card you can edit any time. The conference page becomes your home base, with tabs for:

• Tasks - the board from step 3, plus anything you add later.
• Booth Planner - shifts, sessions, and day schedules. See Booth Planner.
• Budget - allocations and spend tracking.
• Event Landing Page - a public page where prospects submit their own details. See event landing pages.

During the event dates the conference shows as Live, and every capture method files leads against it. Afterwards, the Post-Event ROI report scores the event against the goals you set in step 2.