This document lays out some standard procedures for organization of the annual SCE conference, gleaned from the collective wisdom of prior conference organizers. These procedures are not mandatory, but an organizer planning to diverge from them is urged to discuss the issues on the SCE-AC list prior to taking a decision that would deviate from these guidelines. If particular deviations are agreed to be appropriate, this document should be revised to include the alternate course of action.

1. The annual conference is expected to be held between mid-June and mid-July, and should include three days of sessions and activities. The dates should be chosen, given local arrangements constraints, to take advantage of standard policies regarding discount airfares. In the US, this includes a Saturday stay-over.
2. The organizer of the conference is in charge of local arrangements, and co-chairs the program committee. There should be two or three co-chairs of the program committee, who may or may not be involved with local arrangements. The conference should be planned to be financially self-supporting, while keeping registration fees (particularly those for graduate students and younger members of the Society) as low as possible.
3. The officers and AC of the Society should seek to identify the conference organizer two years in advance of the conference, ideally allowing the announcement of the conference_(t+2) location to be made at conference_(t).
4. The program committee should include individuals representing the several SIGs within the Society, as well as a broad set of members with geographical and topical diversity. Program committee members should be made aware of the need to follow a strict timetable in the six months prior to the conference, and should only be called upon to serve if they are available during that interval.
5. The call for papers should circulate at least eight months prior to the conference date. The deadline for submission of an abstract should be at least five months prior to the conference date. Use of electronic submission (via means such as ConferenceMaker) is strongly encouraged. Participants should be strongly encouraged to provide a downloadable full text (or the URL by which it may be accessed) prior to the conference--preferably on acceptance of their submission.
6. Decisions regarding submissions should be conveyed to the submitters no later than three months prior to the conference date -- and as early as possible in any event. Formal notification of participation is required by many submitters in order to arrange travel funding, and for many institutions these dates approach their end of financial year.
7. A preliminary program for the conference should be available electronically no later than six weeks prior to the conference date, with the stated caveat that session assignments are subject to change. Participants should be encouraged to be available for the full three days of the conference to facilitate rescheduling.
8. Clear arrangements should be worked out, prior to the conference, with the editors of journals with which the Society has an affiliation. If one or more journal special issues are to be produced from the conference, the conference organizer and AC should discuss the mechanism by which submissions are to be coordinated with the journal special issue editors.
9. The details of the conference program, including paper titles, authors, authors' emails and affiliations, abstracts, and download links should be conveyed to RePEc (http://repec.org) so that a RePEc series in the Society's archive may be constructed shortly after the conference. Presenters should be encouraged to provide an up-to-date copy of their paper and/or presentation materials for the archive.