In Conference

You get a conference team that takes the venue contract, registration, abstracts, exhibition sales and on-site desk off your committee’s hands, so your society’s volunteers can concentrate on the scientific or academic programme. In Conference says it holds delegate and sponsor income in a separate bank account set up for each conference, with spending limits set by your organising committee and every withdrawal approved in advance. It is an independent, Scottish-owned professional conference organiser (PCO) with teams in Edinburgh and Glasgow. It works mainly for academic, scientific and medical associations and for government and public sector bodies.

Services

You can hand over one stage or the whole congress cycle, from the bid to the post-conference tours. The agency groups its published work like this.

• Bid preparation. The budget, venue and supplier rate negotiation, a bid logo and the bid document.
• Project and financial management. Regular updates to your organising committee, the budget and income reporting, and advice on event insurance, including cover for terrorism.
• Marketing and websites. Calls for papers, programmes, newsletters, social media and a stand-alone conference website.
• Delegate registration and abstracts. Online registration and delegate correspondence, a password-protected abstract submission and review system, and optional smart-card badges that record which sessions and exhibition areas delegates visit.
• Exhibition and sponsorship. The prospectus, stand sales and contracts, the floor plan and poster layout, and an exhibitors’ help desk on build and breakdown days.
• Venue, AV and on-site. Venue negotiation and contract checks, AV through suppliers it works with in the UK, Europe and the US, and registration desks run by its own multilingual staff.
• Accommodation, travel and social. Group hotel rates, a room-share option for delegates on a budget, airport shuttles, receptions, dinners and tours.
• Association management. Membership enquiries and database, subscription collection, monthly finance reports, VAT returns, committee support and a membership website.

Sectors and clients

If your event is a medical or scientific society meeting that rotates between cities, the agency’s client list shows it has run that kind of series for years. It says it has organised hundreds of events of between 100 and 5,000 delegates in the UK, Europe, North America and Asia. Clients it names include the British Society for Colposcopy and Cervical Pathology (BSCCP), the British and Irish Hypertension Society, the European Peritoneal Dialysis Meeting (EuroPD), the Association of Stoma Care Nurses (ASCN UK), the UK Council for International Student Affairs (UKCISA), the International Clinical Trials Methodology Conference and the European Association for Secure Transactions (EAST). Its future events page was last updated for meetings in 2018 and 2019, so ask which of these contracts are still running.

Recent work

The agency publishes four case studies as PDFs. In each it ran project management, finance, marketing, exhibition and sponsorship, registration, accommodation and the programme.

• 19th IEA World Congress of Epidemiology, Edinburgh International Conference Centre, August 2011. The agency reports 1,555 delegates from 86 countries, over 2,200 abstracts, 20 exhibitors and more than 80 bursaries, against 10 to 20 at earlier congresses. The social programme included a congress dinner with a ceilidh.
• 7th European Zebrafish Meeting, also at the EICC, July 2011. It reports 865 delegates, 37 exhibitors, exhibition space sold out five months before the meeting, the fundraising target beaten by over £35,000, and 20 bursaries for young scientists. Guests had a private reception at Edinburgh Castle.
• EuroPD. The agency has been core PCO since the 1998 Edinburgh meeting and says delegate numbers rose 80% in its first year. The case study puts attendance at over 2,000 delegates from more than 65 countries, and describes eight keynote video interviews it ran before the 2011 meeting.
• BSCCP annual meeting. First appointed for Edinburgh in 2005, it has run every meeting since, in cities from London and Dublin to Cardiff. The 2012 meeting in Gateshead had 581 delegates and 18 exhibitors.

Its site also lists the Clinical Trials Methodology Conference at the EICC in 2013 and at the Scottish Event Campus (then the SECC) in Glasgow.

Company

You deal with a firm that has organised association conferences since 1989, the start year its homepage gives. Companies House lists In Conference Limited (SC128198) as active, incorporated on 1 November 1990, with its registered office at 3 Quality Street, Edinburgh. Margaret Sherry is named as founder and managing director. The offices are at Q Court, 3 Quality Street, Edinburgh EH4 5BP and 38 Queen Street, Glasgow G1 3DX. Its memberships page shows ICCA, Edinburgh Convention Bureau and People Make Glasgow. Its environmental policy says all delegate bags are biodegradable and it can give you a list of hotels with green initiatives.

What to ask before you appoint them

• Will the conference account be in your society’s name or the agency’s, and who signs off withdrawals against the committee’s limits?
• Who signs the venue and hotel room-block contracts, and who carries attrition if bookings fall short?
• Is the fee fixed, per delegate, or linked to the sponsorship and exhibition income it sells?
• Which registration and abstract platforms does it use now, and do you keep the delegate and member data if you change PCO?
• Which of the clients on its future events page does it still work for, and can you speak to one?
• Will the Edinburgh or the Glasgow team run your event, and who is your day-to-day project manager?

Related on Events Review

• Meetings and delegate management agencies
• Conference venues in Edinburgh
• Conference venues in Glasgow
• Panoptic Events, Glasgow
• C2events
• Successful Events
• John McIntyre Conference Centre
• Association congresses are won by host teams, not venues alone
• The questions that make agency proposals comparable

Sources: In Conference homepage, company profile, main services, financial management, future events, case studies, memberships, Companies House, checked 5 November 2026.