Event program model
ema's conference program is built in three layers: talks (the individual presentations), sessions (time-bounded containers that group talks), and the schedule (the full published view of all sessions across all days and rooms). Content flows from submitted proposals all the way to a published program through a structured review and acceptance workflow.
Talks
A talk is a single presentation, paper, or contributed piece of content. Talks are the atomic unit of the program. They have:
- A title, abstract, and optional description.
- One or more authors — the speaker or speakers presenting the talk.
- A track — the content stream the talk belongs to (e.g., "Machine Learning", "Clinical Practice").
- A talk format — the presentation format (e.g., oral, poster, workshop).
- A status — where the talk is in your workflow (e.g., submitted, under review, accepted, rejected, withdrawn).
Statuses are configurable. You define the stages that match your program committee's process.
Sessions
A session is a container on your program — a keynote, a paper stream, a workshop block. It has a title, an optional session format, one or more tracks, a capacity, and its own streaming settings (a per-session streaming mode override). A session gets its time slot and room when you place it on the schedule — see Allocations below.
A session can hold one talk (a solo keynote) or many (a paper presentation stream). Recording consent is tracked per talk, not per session — each talk carries its own recording release.
The schedule
The schedule is the assembled view of all sessions across your event days and locations. ema's schedule builder lets you place sessions visually, drag talks between sessions, and manage parallel streams across rooms.
Each placement on the schedule carries a configurable schedule status so you can track where it sits in the build process. Separately, a session has a published toggle — the published flag controls whether it appears on public-facing program views.
The submission and review workflow
When abstract or paper submissions are open, authors submit talks through the public submission form. Submitted talks enter your review workflow:
Submission configuration
The submission form, open and close dates, and whether late submissions are accepted are all configured under submission settings. You can require an abstract (with minimum and maximum word counts), require a presenter, cap the number of authors per submission, and choose the default form authors complete.
Review configuration
You assign reviewers to talks. Reviewers score talks against criteria you define — each criterion has its own scale and weight. The review config controls how many reviewers each talk needs (two to five by default), whether reviews are blind, single-blind, or open, and how much of the results authors can see. Once enough reviews are collected, the program committee can make acceptance decisions.
Acceptance workflow
Acceptance decisions move talks from one status to another, and ema can send author notifications when a decision is made. When an author confirms their place, they record their agreement to your privacy terms, publishing, and content-aggregation wording — the exact labels and text are configured per project.
Allocations
An allocation is a named block of time on the schedule — the mechanism that places something into a time slot. An allocation has a start and end time, an allocation type (for example a session slot or a break), a schedule status, and an optional link to the thing it is placing: a session, a talk, or another scheduled entity. Placing a session on the schedule means creating an allocation for it — and through the floor plan, that placement is also what puts the session in a room.
Entitlements and registration access
Registration types can be linked to entitlements that grant access to specific sessions or tracks. This is how you give "Full Conference" attendees access to everything while "Workshop only" tickets grant access only to the workshop track.
Manage submitted and invited talks.
Create and configure sessions.
Build the event schedule visually.
Configure the abstract submission form and dates.
Set up the reviewer assignment and scoring process.
Manage acceptance decisions and author notifications.