Put together a typical timeline of a conference (e.g. committee meeting, call for papers, ...). Start some month before and end some month after the conference (e.g. conference date minus 4 and plus 2 month). When did you learn most? What are typical barriers for learning?

Resources:

• Academic Conference in Wikipedia - read some background about academic conferences
• KMWorld 2012 and ICICKM 2012 - visit two websites of knowledge management conferences (or any other field you are interested in) to collect information about conference organization