European Weed Research Society Symposium is organised every 3 years in one of their member countries. Slovenia won the bid for the 18th EWRS Symposium, to be held from 17 – 21 June 2018 in Ljubljana. Slovenian Agricultural Insitute as a local organiser has chosen GR-Ljubljana Exhibition and Convention Centre as a venue and our agency as a PCO. The main challenge for the conferences with up to 250 participants is usually the budget and financial planning. The specific of scientific conferences is also to create a programme from the oral presentations on one side and poster presentations on the other. The process of abstracts submission is very important as well as communication with authors and other participants.

Every event shall start the communication with its audience through its own website. It doesn’t have to be a rocket science page, but it needs its own domain, a system for sending newsletters and well-structured menus with the most important information for participants. We have created one for the EWRS symposium as well and take over the up-dates till the end of the symposium.

The application we are using for the on-line registration (Eventure) includes also a module for the abstracts handling with the on-line review process. The final goal is to prepare the Programme and the Book of abstracts with the index of authors and other details.

As mentioned above, the main challenge with small-size conferences is financial planning to secure a positive result. Usually, the financial responsibility is on the local organising committee, while as a PCO we have to support the scientific organiser with financial estimations and updates throughout the process of planning, organisation and execution of the project. The EWRS 2018 ended with a positive balance!