AcademicBusinessConferences.com is a fully functioning, site secure, organization with the vision of facilitating international networking and professional enhancement for you in the business academic community, but it didn't start that way ...
AcademicBusinessConferences.com began its life as a teaching tool and the basis of a series of student projects over a number of years on such topics as competitor analysis, international marketing, internet research, and computing ethics. Increasingly, the research indicated that there was in fact a need for such a site.
What we came to realize is that the process on both the part of academics sourcing conferences and conference organizers attracting delegates, is somewhat disparate and is heavily dependent on established networks.
For conference organizers we realise that you desire a means whereby your conference profile can be raised internationally, you can effectively link to academics who have a specific interest in your conference themes and importantly you can capture an additional number of international delegates who would not otherwise be aware of your conference.
For the business academic we are aware that there are a lot of choices, but often limited budgets, when decided what conferences to attend. We are also only human and know that in addition to meeting interesting people you want to go to great places so you need a portal where a large number of conferences can be accessed, the ability to search by a variety of disciplines, locations and dates, and to also be notified of forthcoming conferences.
Armed with a business plan (many drafts later), financial backing, very talented programming and a small team, we haven't looked back. Our vision, as stated above, is to facilitate international networking and professional enhancement of the business academic community. We want a pure site developed by business academics for business academics that reflects the professionalism of those who use it. We want it to meet the needs of just business academics and not the wider academic community.
We encourage the involvement of the many academic academies and professional associations that reflect the wide range of interests in the field of business. We don't want advertising popping up all over the site and have foregone any advertising revenue in favour of an alternative model where the academics are free to browse, but there is a listing fee for the conference organizer - a fee which can be quickly recouped with additional conference attendees who have been attracted to the conference through our site.
We are operating this international site from New Zealand. Apart from this geographic location being a beautiful and safe environment, it has provided us with a very real awareness of the importance of international conference attendance to build networks, enhance research and strengthen academic careers.
If you have enjoyed viewing the contents of the site and feel that this can be of value to your colleagues, then please feel free to email the site details to them. If you have any recommendations on how we can continually improve the site we would love to hear from you (a lot of the features have been gained from feedback during the development process).
 Dr Gael McDonald
Thank you for wading through this. If you would like more we can be contacted by email at support@academicbusinessconferences.com.
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