More than 200 speakers. Eight concurrent rooms. Five days of programming. Add speaker restrictions, industry lunches, and CME or accreditation requirements, and you have the potential to mis-schedule someone, double book a room or, worse, forget a session or speaker. Oh, and all of this is done manually, there’s no scheduling system or abstract platform to help you schedule.
While this situation is hypothetical, it’s like ones I’ve faced often in my 11+ years of managing events. The last time I was faced with this challenge I thought to myself “There has to be a better way to do this.” Enter AI and asking my trusty ChatGPT bot to help me solve this scheduling puzzle.
Preparing your data
I organize the information in spreadsheets with separate columns for speaker names, session titles, presentation lengths, and availability restrictions. I include room availability and clearly label industry-sponsored sessions.
I can also ask it to group related topics on the same day or keep a track in a consistent room. That helps me think beyond whether everything fits and focus on whether the program makes sense for attendees.
Your Prompt Matters
First and foremost, AI isn’t perfect and it won’t be right on the first try. You will spend time to get it right. If your input data is organized and your prompts are clear, you’ll have a better chance of success.
I’ve found that crafting the prompt to be specific and detailed leaves less room for the AI to “think”. I include scheduling rules such as sessions run between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., breaks happen at set times, and no speaker can present in two rooms at once. Industry lunches have their own time slot and room restrictions along with clear details of how I’d like the output formatted.
I repeat: The data you receive is only as good as the prompt you put in. Spend time crafting your prompt in the beginning. AI is not perfect and is NOT a substitute for human eyes and human brains. You WILL have to edit, and you WILL likely have to ask for revisions.
An example prompt for my hypothetical scenario
Use your already created information spreadsheets to instruct your AI tool to create a schedule.
Here are the guidelines:
- Sessions cannot start earlier than 8:00 AM or end later than 5:00 PM
- Schedule industry lunches from 12-1 in these rooms (list room)
- No speaker can overlap and speak twice at the same time
- Make sure that there are 2 30-minute sessions each hour
- Breaks are at 10:00–10:30 AM and 3:00–3:30 PM each day
- There can be up to 8 sessions running concurrently
- Schedule CME sessions in these rooms (list the rooms that can be used for sessions)
- Create a downloadable Excel file and put each day’s schedule on a separate tab, labeling the tab with the day and label the columns as follows: Date, Time start, time end, Room Name, presenter first name, presenter last name, presentation name, Length of presentation
Keeping my eyes on the program
The first version will need review. Never send out product from AI before you check it!
I double check the spreadsheet, request corrections, and ask AI to compare the revised schedule against my original requirements. I also will start a new chat and upload the produced work and ask things like “Double check this spreadsheet and point out any speaker scheduling conflicts, such as scheduled in two rooms at the same time.”
That back-and-forth is part of the process. AI can miss a restriction or introduce a new conflict when fixing another one, so my experience and judgment still matter.
For me, the biggest benefit is spending less time manually juggling sessions and more time solving the problems that need my attention. Using AI helps reduce the likelihood for manual errors or worse – forgetting someone! I’ve found that even the couple of hours or so I’d spend crafting my prompt, going back and forth and double-checking work is far less time than if I tried to do it all manually with an old-fashioned grid.
Caveats and Disclaimers
- Check your organization’s AI policy if there is one to make sure that you’re not violating any rules by using AI to help with this. Some organizations have proprietary or closed AI systems and have strict protocol around use.
- Remember – if you’re using an open system like Claude or ChatGPT – anything you put in there can be used. If you have sensitive data or privacy concerns blind your input spreadsheet. It’s a little more work, but you know you’re not compromising data.
- All information above is a hypothetical situation modeled off real-life scenarios.
- The opinions in this blog are mine and mine alone. I do not represent any organization or company on this website.