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A smarter way to build your conference program

Publish a detailed program that attendees will love, no more messy spreadsheets or last-minute chaos.

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Trusted by top organizations

Ditch the spreadsheets and build your conference program with ease.

Build from submitted content

Avoid copy-paste errors: drag and drop submitted presentations directly and order them into your sessions with ease.

Last-minute changes? No worries

Updates sync everywhere in real time, on your website, program, and conference app.

Attendees will love it

Speaker bios, materials, clear sessions, and personal agendas help attendees plan their itineraries with ease.

Build sessions effortlessly

Build an eye-catching conference program in minutes, complete with sessions, nested presentations, tracks, rooms, livestream links, and more.

See it in action
Drag and drop conference schedule builder in Fourwaves

Solve conflicts & contact presenters

Detect scheduling conflicts and stay and send notifications to presenters, saving time and reducing errors.

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Presenter email tools in the Fourwaves schedule builder

Update and share instantly

Make last-minute changes and ensure participants always have the most up-to-date version at hand.

See it in action
Conference program displayed on desktop and mobile in Fourwaves

Delightful experience for everyone involved

Effortless conference program management

Turn accepted abstracts into a complete program, update it anytime, and share it instantly.

  • Drag and drop presentations within sessions
  • Auto-detect conflicts with built-in filters
  • Publish on your event website and mobile app
  • Export a professional, ready-to-print program booklet
conference-program-organizer

My presentation, all in one place

Submit once and keep everything updated for a stress-free experience.

  • Update your bio and presentation details anytime
  • Upload slides, posters, videos, and supporting material
  • Receive alerts when your session changes or conflicts arise
conference-program-speaker

Plan and personalize my experience

Find the sessions that matter most and access all the materials in one place.

  • Search by topic, track, or speaker name
  • Bookmark sessions to build your personal agenda
  • View speaker bios and presentation files
  • Download the full program for offline access
conference-program-participant

From abstracts to attendees: all-in-one program management

Unlike generic scheduling tools, Fourwaves was built for research conferences with the organizer and attendee experience in mind.

Drag & drop editor

Quickly create and modify sessions without spreadsheets.

Multi-day & parallel sessions

From multi-day to parallel sessions, your program remains clearly presented.

Conflict checker

Filter for double-booked speakers or overlapping sessions.

Communication tools

Contact presenters of specific sessions effortlessly to keep them up to date.

Conference booklet

Export a professional conference booklet in seconds.

Personalized agenda

Attendees can create their personal schedule for an optimal event experience.

Color-coded tracks

Assign color-coded tracks to help attendees browse the program.

Search and filters

Attendees can easily search and filter through a multi-day program.

Livestream integration

Connect your preferred livestreaming platform for increased reach.

Session recordings

Upload video recordings, so that participants can watch them directly through your program anytime.

Your program, the hub of your conference

The conference schedule connects every part of your event: submissions, speakers, and attendees. Fourwaves brings it all together to facilitate event planning.

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Conference program overview in Fourwaves

Flexible for any event

From focused workshops to large, multi-track conferences, Fourwaves adapts to your format and scale.

Integrated with the entire platform

Linked with submissions, reviews, ticketing, and your website to save time and cut workload.

Confidence from start to finish

Know your program is reliable, accurate, and ready, so you can focus on the big picture.

Why choose Fourwaves ?

Without Fourwaves

  • Manual copy-pasting of data from external sources
  • Confusion with Excel file versions
  • Double-booking errors that cause headaches
  • Tedious to communicate with presenters
  • Incomplete session information
  • Last minute updates aren't synced in real time
  • A program that's difficult to navigate

With Fourwaves

  • User-friendly session builder using submitted data
  • One source of truth for your team
  • Conflict checker prevents scheduling issues
  • Easy to send emails to presenters
  • Interactive session data with nested presentations and precise timeline
  • Real time access to the latest program version
  • A detailed or compact grid view that's easy to browse

Adopted by leading organizations

The world’s top institutions trust Fourwaves to deliver exceptional events.

The Fourwaves platform has centralized everything into one convenient location, both for organizers and attendees. Our team is able to efficiently review posters submitted by investigators and make them public to view on the day of the event.
Todd Barnash - Office of Research, University of Florida College of Medicine
Todd Barnash

Office of Research, University of Florida College of Medicine

The platform is easy to use, reasonably priced and the support team is very helpful. We faced no technical challenges at all. Fourwaves is a pleasure to work with!
Randy Gollub, MD, PhD - Harvard Medical School
Randy Gollub, MD, PhD

Harvard Medical School

The conference concluded with great success, leaving sponsors, collaborators, and attendees highly satisfied. Based on my experience, Fourwaves is an excellent platform. Your work is exceptional!
Shoupeng Liu

Outreach and Strategic Partnerships in Asia, AAAS

The team at Fourwaves has been incredibly responsive to all of our technical support needs. They always approached every situation with a solutions-oriented mindset, which made a big difference. It’s been a real pleasure working with them.
Jillian L. Delos Reyes - Tulane University
Jillian L. Delos Reyes

Tulane University

The virtual event with the poster sessions went very well. Really well done, the platform is very useful and very well organized. The customer service is excellent.
Intissar Abbaoui

McGill

Fourwaves is a great interactive easy to use platform for small or large conferences. The team is prompt, friendly and very helpful.
Lani Hearn

University of Queensland

Our undergraduate student research conference was tremendously successful. Fourwaves played a key role in our success. A terrific product.
Donna Thompson

Mount Saint Vincent University

Fourwaves was the perfect platform for our event. It was exactly what we needed and within budget as well. Participants felt registration and submission of their abstracts was very easy without any complicated steps.
Julie Amato

University of Toronto

Our experience has been fantastic. Everyone reported a smooth experience from registrations, to submissions, and the event itself. We especially appreciated asynchronous engagements (upvoting, comments, etc). We are looking forward to next year’s event!
Lorien Lake-Corral - University of Maine
Lorien Lake-Corral

University of Maine

See all testimonials

Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

The Fourwaves program builder has a conflict checker that flags any presenter scheduled in two parallel sessions at the same time, so you move one presentation before the program is published. It works across tracks and rooms, and a separate filter shows presenters who have not registered yet.

Attendees build their own schedule in Fourwaves. In the conference program, attendees search and filter sessions by topic, track, or speaker, bookmark the ones they want, and get a personal agenda on their phone through the conference app, with speaker bios and presentation files attached to each entry.

Fourwaves exports a formatted program booklet in Word or PDF: the program only, the abstracts only, or both together, ordered by session and presentation type, with an author index. The Word version can be edited before printing or publishing it as conference proceedings.

In Fourwaves you mark the presentation as withdrawn and it is tagged that way in the online program, the conference app, and the next booklet export within seconds. If time allows, drag another accepted presentation into the freed slot and email the presenters of that session about the change.

Fourwaves compares to Cvent and Whova as the platform built for academic conferences: abstract submissions, peer review, virtual poster sessions and the conference app are included on every plan, where general-purpose event platforms treat them as add-ons. Read the detailed comparisons: Fourwaves vs Cvent and Fourwaves vs Whova.

Jonathan Langlois Gabrielle Laforest Matthieu Chartier, PhD.
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More about conference program builders

What is a conference program builder?

A conference program builder is the tool an organizing committee uses to turn accepted abstracts into a schedule: creating sessions with a date, time, and room, placing presentations inside those sessions, ordering them, and publishing the result as an online program, a mobile agenda, and a printable program booklet.

Read more

A conference program builder is also called a conference schedule builder, conference scheduling software, a scientific program builder, or a session management tool. Spreadsheets remain the most common alternative, which is why double-booked speakers and outdated PDF programs are the most common conference-day failures.

The Fourwaves conference program builder is connected to the abstract submission and peer review data on the same platform, so presentation titles, authors, and files are never copy-pasted. It handles a one-day research day with a single room and a multi-day, multi-track annual meeting with parallel sessions; the EPIP 2025 organizer built the sessions for more than 200 submissions alone.

How to build a conference program in Fourwaves

Building a conference program in Fourwaves takes six steps: create the sessions, drag accepted presentations into them, check for conflicts, notify the presenters, publish everywhere at once, then update in real time. The program builder reads the accepted abstracts directly, so no title or author is retyped.

Read more
  1. Create sessions. Add sessions for each day, with start and end times, room, track, and a livestream link for hybrid events. Color-code sessions by track so attendees can scan the program.
  2. Drag accepted presentations into sessions. Filter accepted abstracts by presentation type, track, or score, then drag them into a session and order them. Each presentation carries its title, authors, abstract, and uploaded files (slides, poster, video) from the submission.
  3. Check for conflicts. The conflict checker flags presenters who are double-booked across parallel sessions, and a registration filter shows presenters who have not registered yet, so you fix both before the program is public.
  4. Notify presenters. Email the presenters of a specific session with their time, room, and instructions, and email them again if the session moves.
  5. Publish everywhere at once. The program appears on the event website, in the Fourwaves conference app on attendees’ phones, and as a downloadable program booklet in Word or PDF, with or without the abstracts. Attendees search by topic, track, or speaker, bookmark sessions to build a personal agenda, and open speaker bios and presentation files from each entry.
  6. Update in real time. A withdrawn presenter is marked as withdrawn in seconds, a replacement is dropped into the slot, and every view of the program refreshes with no re-export.

Does Fourwaves include a conference app?

Fourwaves includes a conference app with every event. Every Fourwaves event website is designed for phones, and the program, personal agenda, presentation files, and posters are available in the Fourwaves conference app (free on iOS and Android, included with every event), so attendees follow the schedule on their device the day of the event.

Read more

When the organizer changes a session, the app shows the new version within 5 minutes. Because the app reads from the same data as the website and the booklet, there is no separate app content to maintain. For attendee-facing alternatives, see Fourwaves vs Whova and the Sched alternatives roundup.