What is Sessionboard?
Sessionboard is a next-generation speaker and content management platform that helps event organizers run their entire speaker and session program — from call for papers through to a published agenda and post-event content.
Video transcript
Hi. This is a short tour of Sessionboard before you go into any of the training chapters. Sessionboard runs your speaker and session program end to end, the call for papers, the review, the agenda, the speakers’ portal, the emails, and the content that comes out the other side. This is where you land when you sign in, your organisation.
Two levels to keep in your head. The organisation is the container, your events live inside it, and so do the things you share between them, contacts, custom fields, email templates, your team. An event is one edition of one conference. Most of your day is inside an event, so let’s open one.
The event dashboard. The header at the top of the sidebar says which event you’re in, with its dates, and clicking it takes you back to the organisation or across to another event. The sidebar is the whole product, and it only shows what your plan includes and your role allows, so yours may be shorter than mine. Dashboard and Training are always the first two rows, then the modules, then the setup rows underneath. And the dashboard itself keeps a Training band near the top, with the chapters for the modules this event uses.
Program is the content, and it’s the module you’ll live in. Submissions is what came in, the abstracts, the sessions, the files that arrived with them. Collect and review is how it came in and what happens to it. Forms is the call for papers. Send is the emails that go with it. Evaluation is where your committee scores. Agenda is where accepted sessions get a room and a time, with conflict checks. The Call for papers, Sessions and agenda, and Review and evaluation chapters each take one of these.
Still inside Program, the Portals section is the speaker’s side of the product. Each portal is a branded page where a speaker, sponsor or exhibitor signs in, sees their tasks, bio, headshot, agreement, and completes them. You build the tasks here, they see the checklist there. That’s the Speaker portal and tasks chapter, and the Communications chapter for the emails around it.
CRM is the people. Contacts is everyone attached to the event, one row per role you use, speakers, chairpersons, moderators, submitters. Exhibitors and sponsors are groups, companies with their own people and their own portal. Contacts are shared across the organisation, so the same speaker is one record in every event. The Contacts and imports chapter goes deep on this.
If your organization has Pathways, it sits right under CRM. Pathways is your audience. Who registered and who came, across every platform you use, which topics fill the room, and the surveys that tell you what landed. The Pathways chapters walk through it.
Two more modules you may or may not have. Marketing is what you make from the program, advocacy for your speakers to share, transcripts, media and slides. CMS is where the event shows up in public, embeds for your website and the event site. Both light up as your plan adds them, and a row with a small lock, like Poster Gallery here, is one you can read about and ask for.
Then the rows under the modules. Automations and reports do what they say. History is every email ever sent, with its delivery status. Event team is who can sign in to this event and with which role, that’s the Users and permissions chapter. And settings, at the bottom, is the event itself, name, dates, branding, program vocabulary, integrations, and the library, where your custom fields live. Event setup and Integrations cover those.
Two habits worth picking up on day one. Hover any row and click the pin, and it moves into a Pinned zone at the top of the sidebar, your own list for this event, with a separate one for the organisation. And Find or ask, at the top, finds any page, contact, session or file by name, and shows you the module it lives under, so you never have to remember where something is. The first row hands the same words to Ask as a question.
And Training, right under dashboard, is where these videos live inside the product, with a checklist of what’s set up and what isn’t, so you can watch a chapter and do the step in the same window.
That’s the shape of it. Content in Program, people in CRM, and the setup rows underneath. If you’re starting from nothing, go in the onboarding order, event setup first, then team, then the form, and the rest follows. The Event setup chapter is the place to start.
Why use it
Section titled “Why use it”Sessionboard keeps the call for papers, the review, the agenda, the speaker portal, the emails and the post-event content on the same records, so each step picks up where the last one finished instead of starting from a spreadsheet exported out of another tool.
What you can do
Section titled “What you can do”Collect submissions
Run a call for papers with fully customizable submission forms.
Evaluate & grade
Score submissions with collaborative, round-based review plans.
Build your agenda
Schedule sessions with a drag-and-drop calendar and conflict alerts.
Manage speakers
Create, assign, and communicate with speakers across events.
Run portals
Give speakers, sponsors, and exhibitors a branded self-service portal.
Communicate
Send templated email and SMS to any group of participants.
Core capabilities
Section titled “Core capabilities”- Call for papers — consolidate speaker submissions for centralized review and management.
- Session review & scoring — smart voting to surface your best content.
- Drag-and-drop agenda — keep scheduling flexible as speaker availability changes.
- Conflict detection — catch overlapping sessions and double-booked participants automatically.
- Email & SMS — reach groups with custom templates and full send history.
- Content & media — centralize speaker bios, files, and event materials.
- Document requests — collect insurance certificates, contracts, and required documentation.