Small steps for better TCS conferences? Often, when we take part in TCS conferences, we notice some little details that we wish the conference organisers would have taken care of. And when we are organising conferences, we have already forgotten it.

Hence the question: Which small steps we could easily take to improve TCS conferences?

Hopefully, this question could become a resource that we could double-check whenever we are organising conferences, to make sure that we do not repeat the same mistakes again and again...



I am here interested in relatively small and inexpensive details – something that conference organisers could have easily done if only they had thought about it in time. For example, it might be a useful piece of information that could be put on the conference web page well in advance; a five-dollar gadget that may save the day; something to consider when choosing the restaurant for the banquet; the best timing of the coffee breaks; or your ideal design of the conference badges.

We can cover here all aspects of conference arrangements (including paper submissions, program committees, reviews, local arrangements, etc.).



This is a community wiki question. Please post one idea per answer, and please vote other answers up or down depending on how important they are in your opinion.
Keep prices down: you can get lovely hors d'oeuvres at a $750-per-seat hotel-hosted conference, it is true, but it tends to detract from the intellectual atmosphere you can get with a $100-per-seat university-hosted conference.  Also, you don't just get the people attending who deliver talks.  Allow students at the university to attend for free;
Space parallel sessions, so that people can really move between them;
But also encourage interaction between speakers and attendees at parallel sessions beforehand, so that parallel sessions are also autonomous communities.  This encourages interaction, and the sense that parallel sessions are moving the discussion in their subfield forward.  Some conferences (e.g., the German linguistics conference, DGfS) have taken this to the conclusion of having all parallel sessions be independent workshops.