Setting up your first event on ema

You've signed up for ema. You're looking at a dashboard. Now what? This is what your first 30 minutes look like — not a help doc, but a real sense of the workflow and what you'll have set up by the time you finish your coffee.

Create your event

This is the quick part. Hit "New Event", give it a name, set your dates, add your venue. You'll fill in more details later — the description, branding, registration settings — but the core of it takes about 30 seconds. You now have an event workspace where everything else lives.

If you're running a multi-day event, set the date range now. ema uses those dates to structure your schedule, so getting them right from the start saves you reorganising later.

Build your schedule

The schedule builder is where most organisers spend their first chunk of time, and it's probably the most satisfying part of the setup. It's a drag-and-drop interface: you create sessions, assign them to rooms, and slot them into time blocks.

Add your tracks first if you have them — "Main Stage", "Workshop Room A", "Breakout Track" — then start dropping sessions in. Each session gets a title, description, speakers (you can add those later), and a time slot.

The useful bit: conflict detection runs automatically. If you accidentally double-book a speaker or put two sessions in the same room at the same time, ema flags it immediately. You don't find out the week before the event when someone spots the overlap in a spreadsheet.

Rooms in the schedule are linked to rooms on your floor plan, so once you set up both, they stay connected. Move a session to a different room in the schedule and it updates everywhere.

Invite your team

Go to your team settings and start adding people. Coordinators, production staff, volunteers, venue contacts — anyone who needs to see or update something in the event workspace.

There are no per-seat charges, so don't hold back. The intern who's handling speaker logistics? Add them. The venue's AV coordinator who needs to see the schedule? Add them. The client who wants to check progress? Add them with scoped access through the client portal.

You control permissions, so not everyone sees everything. But the point is: you don't have to ration access because each seat costs $15/month. Everyone who needs to be in the loop gets to be in the loop.

Set up your floor plan

If your event has a physical venue, this is worth doing early. You can upload an existing venue layout as a background image and build on top of it, or start from scratch using the canvas-based designer.

Place rooms, booths, registration desks, and common areas. Assign booths to exhibitors (once you've added them). Link rooms to your schedule sessions so that everything — floor plan, schedule, exhibitor profiles — stays connected.

Attendees can explore the published floor plan later, search for specific exhibitors, and find where sessions are happening. But that all works because you set up the connections now.

Configure exhibitor management

If you're running an exhibition or trade show, this is where things get specific. Set up the compliance requirements your exhibitors need to complete: public liability insurance, company logos, electrical plans, risk assessments — whatever your event requires.

Create exhibitor tiers if your pricing or booth sizes vary (Gold, Silver, Standard — or whatever naming makes sense for your event). Then invite exhibitors to their portal. They get a self-service workspace where they can upload documents, complete checklists, update their profile, and manage their own information without emailing you about it.

The compliance dashboard shows you, at a glance, who's submitted what and who's overdue. You'll use this a lot in the weeks before the event.

Open speaker submissions

If you're running a call for papers or accepting talk proposals, configure your submission form. Set the fields you want — abstract, bio, topic tags, session format preference — and define your review criteria so your programme committee knows what they're evaluating against.

Publish the CFP and share the link. Submissions come into ema, reviews happen inside ema, and when you accept a talk, it flows straight into the schedule builder. No copying between systems.

Ask the AI agent

Once you've added some data — a schedule with a few sessions, some exhibitors, a couple of team members — the AI agent starts being genuinely useful. It has access to your event data and specialised tools, so you can ask it real questions.

"How many sessions are on day two?" "Which exhibitors haven't submitted their insurance?" "Give me a summary of the budget so far." "Draft an email to speakers who haven't confirmed."

It's not a search bar. It can query your data, draft content, create tasks, and trigger actions. The more data you add to your event, the more capable it becomes.

You don't have to do everything today

That's the 30-minute version, but here's the honest bit: you don't need to set up all of this before your event. If you're running a conference and don't have exhibitors, skip that section. If your event is three months away and you don't have speakers yet, set up the CFP later.

Start with the pieces you need for your next event. Create the event, build the schedule, invite your team. Expand from there as things take shape. ema is designed so that each part works on its own and connects to everything else when you're ready.

The platform grows with your event. That's the whole idea.