If you haven’t done a lot of conferences (or even if you have but are branching out) there are some good posts on conferences.
The Whole Process
Guide for the Conferentially Perplexed can be found by clicking on the link and then clicking on the link with that title at the top of the page. I’m sorry there isn’t a direct link, because it is an excellent source.
It covers:
Getting Your Paper Accepted
Writing Your Paper
Presenting Your Paper
Comments or Questions?
Chairing a Session
What to Expect at the Conference
After the Conference
Types of Papers
Conference Paper Types
Getting Accepted
The Conference Abstract. This is not exactly what I do, but it’s got good stuff in it.
Attending Conferences
How to Productively Attend a Conference, but with a way cooler, but less understandable, title.
How to Attend a Conference by Notes in the Margin blog. It covers conference as party, classroom, social gathering, and vacation. It’s something I think about every time I am at a conference, though not quite in the way described.
Instead, I divide my choices into
Teaching
Fun
Research
If I go to a conference for teaching, then I want to come home with lots of good applications. The session I attend may not intend to be for teaching, it may be about research, and yet I can still use it in my classroom. I had a lot of those at Kalamazoo.
Fun sessions keep me from burning out with information overload. Sometimes they aren’t as good as they appear in the program, but usually they are a relief.
Research. If there is something that is very close to my topics of study, I attend. Even if I don’t want to, I go. You can never tell if that one thought you’ve been searching for will come while someone else talks around the topic. Also you might find collaborators. Certainly you may find new directions in which to go.
Presenting at the Conference
A Guide for Humanities Conferences
The most useful, and often disregarded advice, is to write for an oral medium. Really. It’s important.
Keeping Up With Conferences
How to Keep Track of Academic Conferences Without Losing Your Mind