Conferences & Digital Platforms

Production-grade infrastructure for events, projects, and funded work

Conferences, project sites, and interactive tools live or die on their digital backbone. We build and run that backbone — session scheduling systems, event websites, and deployed web applications — with the same engineering rigor we bring to research. No off-the-shelf SaaS bloat. No abandonware after launch.

The founders have shipped and maintained academic conference platforms, lab websites, grant-deliverable applications, and classroom-facing tools across more than a decade of funded work. This service line packages that experience for clients who need it without staffing it internally.

What we deliver

• Conference session scheduling — Submission portals, peer review workflows, program assembly, room and track scheduling, and participant-facing program sites for symposia, workshops, and conferences (typically 50–500 attendees).
• Event and project websites — Custom-built, fast, accessible websites for conferences, grant-funded projects, research initiatives, and PD cohorts. Markdown- and content-collection-driven so non-developers can edit text without breaking layout.
• Web-based app deployment — Production deployment of interactive tools, dashboards, classroom apps, data-collection instruments, and participant-facing utilities. Continuous deployment from a Git repository with preview environments for review.
• Hosting and maintenance — Domain configuration, TLS, CDN, monitoring, dependency upgrades, and security patching. We can host on infrastructure we manage or hand the deployment off to your IT team with documentation.
• Accessibility and performance audits — WCAG AA compliance baked in by default, plus Lighthouse-based performance budgets so the site or app stays fast as content grows.

Why this matters

Conference organizers and PIs lose weeks every year wrestling with scheduling spreadsheets, half-functional vendor portals, and project websites that nobody on the team can update. The cost shows up in two places: directly in vendor and overhead time, and indirectly in the credibility of the work — a broken submission portal or a 404-strewn project site signals neglect to reviewers, attendees, and program officers.

Our deliverables are designed to outlast the engagement. Sites are static-first where possible, hostable on commodity infrastructure, and editable through plain markdown so a graduate student or program coordinator can keep them current without involving a developer.

How it works

1. Scoping conversation — We learn the audience, the timeline, and the integration points (existing registration systems, IRB requirements, institutional SSO, payment processors).
2. Architecture and design — Written technical plan covering hosting, data flow, accessibility, and a maintenance handoff path. You see this before any code is written.
3. Build and review — Iterative builds with preview environments. Stakeholders review on real URLs, not screenshots.
4. Launch — Domain cutover, TLS, monitoring, and an as-built document for your team.
5. Maintenance — Ongoing hosting and patching on a flat-fee basis, or a clean handoff to your internal team with a transition runbook.

All work ships from a Git repository the client owns at the end of the engagement — no lock-in, no proprietary CMS, no recurring license required to keep the lights on.

Example engagements

These exemplars are starting points, not fixed packages. Engagements are scoped against the size of the audience, the integration burden, and how much long-term maintenance you want from us versus your internal team. The three sketches below illustrate the range we typically work across.

Tier 1 — Project or workshop website

A focused single-purpose site for a grant project, lab, workshop series, or small symposium.

• Reach: 1 site, 5–20 pages, low-to-moderate update cadence
• Investment: ~$2K–$6K to build, plus ~$50–$150/month hosting and maintenance (or hand-off)
• Duration: 3–5 weeks from kickoff to launch

Build phase (~25 hours of Freyja Labs team time)

• Freyja Labs: information architecture, custom design within the project’s brand, content collection scaffolding, accessibility pass, deployment pipeline, custom domain
• Client lead: ~6 hours — content drafting, review cycles, brand inputs
• Optional contributors: editorial input on individual pages

Launch and handoff

• Freyja Labs: domain cutover, TLS, sitemap, analytics, written editing guide
• Client lead: ~2 hours — review and sign-off
• Internal editors: ~1-hour walkthrough of the markdown editing workflow

Deliverables

• Production website on the client’s domain
• Git repository with full source
• Editing guide for non-developers
• 30-day post-launch fix window
• Optional ongoing hosting and maintenance retainer

Tier 2 — Conference platform with session scheduling

A full conference or symposium digital platform: submission, review, scheduling, and a participant-facing program site.

• Reach: 1 conference cycle, 50–500 attendees, 30–200 sessions
• Investment: ~$10K–$20K per cycle, with 30–40% reductions on repeat cycles
• Duration: 8–14 weeks pre-event, plus event support and a post-event archive

Planning and build (~80 hours of Freyja Labs team time)

• Freyja Labs: requirements interviews, submission and review workflow design, scheduling logic for tracks and rooms, program-site design, accessibility pass
• Conference chair or program committee lead: ~12 hours — workflow review, review-policy decisions, branding inputs
• Program committee: ~3 hours each — review-portal walkthrough and pilot testing

Pre-event operations (~20 hours of Freyja Labs team time)

• Freyja Labs: submission cycle support, review-phase monitoring, schedule assembly, program-site publishing
• Program committee chair: review-cycle decisions, schedule sign-off
• Volunteers or graduate assistants: typical 10–20 hours/week during the submission and review windows

Event week and archive

• Freyja Labs: live program-site updates, on-call support, post-event archive snapshot
• Client lead: ~4 hours — event-day coordination and sign-off

Deliverables

• Submission and review portal
• Scheduling tool with track, room, and time-slot management
• Public program site with schedule, abstracts, and speaker pages
• Post-event archive site
• Git repository and as-built documentation
• 60-day post-event support window
• Discounted re-run pricing for the next cycle

Tier 3 — Multi-year project infrastructure

A long-horizon engagement combining a project website, deployed interactive tools, and ongoing hosting for a multi-year funded project or research-practice partnership.

• Reach: Project site plus 1–4 deployed web apps (dashboards, classroom tools, data-collection instruments)
• Investment: ~$25K–$60K+ over the project lifecycle, plus ~$200–$500/month hosting and maintenance
• Duration: 3–5 years, scoped against the funded period

Year 1 — Foundation (~120 hours of Freyja Labs team time)

• Freyja Labs: technical architecture, project website launch, first interactive tool design and deployment, monitoring and CI/CD setup, accessibility and security review
• PI: ~10 hours — architecture review, content sign-off
• Project director or technical liaison: ~4 hours/month — deployment cadence, content updates, integration with project workflow

Years 2 through N–1 — Ongoing development (~60 hours/year of Freyja Labs team time)

• Freyja Labs: dependency upgrades, additional features, new tool deployments as the project scope evolves, annual security and accessibility audits
• Project team: ongoing content updates through the markdown editing workflow
• IT or institutional partners: optional periodic reviews when SSO or institutional integration is in scope

Final year — Sustainability and handoff

• Freyja Labs: long-term archive plan, repository handoff, documentation refresh, optional transition to an internal team
• PI and project director: sustainability decision (continue retainer, hand off, or archive)

Deliverables

• Project website with content collections for publications, news, team, and outputs
• 1–4 deployed interactive web apps with documentation
• CI/CD pipeline and staging environments
• Annual security and accessibility audit reports
• Hosting on infrastructure we manage, or a runbook handoff to internal IT
• End-of-project archive snapshot for long-term preservation