Special Event and Conference Planning
Initiating and organizing major conferences and public events can be a daunting task. So why start from ground zero and leave much of the event planning to chance?
We can take the worry out of planning, organizing, and running events in a polished, professional, and cost-effective fashion. We make it much easier to establish a theme, identify speakers, and develop a winning, engaging conference, symposium, or public education program.
We bring much experience to the formidable challenge of initiating, planning and coordinating national, regional, or local public events. Our Director is widely known for his role in initiating and organizing major professional development conferences, lively public issues forums, dynamic youth conferences, and news-breaking media conferences.
Our Lead Consultant is a seasoned planner of education forums, conferences and webinars. Over the past five years, he has planned and managed national conferences in his capacity as National Coordinator of researchED Canada. Paul established and chaired a national committee responsible for organizing the first Canadian researchED Conference on November 10-11, 2017 at Trinity College, University of Toronto.
For a decade, Dr. Bennett took the lead in planning the regular national conferences of researchED. As National Coordinator of researchED in Canada, Paul initiated and guided the planning of eight conferences, including researchED Halifax (November 12, 2022), Cross-Canada researchED, Halifax and Vancouver, November 4, 2024), researchED Toronto (UTS, May 30-4, 2024), researchED Toronto (TEMC, June 6-7, 2025), and researchED Atlantic Canada (October 24-25, 2025). The keynote speakers included outstanding education researchers such as Dan T. Willingham, Jamie Metsala, Dylan Wiliam, and Amanda VanDerHeyden.
Public policy forums are Paul’s forte and he has initiated many, and presented at most of them, over the years. One of the more recent was the lively Public Forum on “Re-engineering Education,” cosponsored with AIMS, at Halifax Central Library in March of 2018. Working with the Canadian International Council, Dr. Bennett organized the October 2020 MacEachen Institute for Public Policy Panel Discussion on the “U.S. Presidential Election: What’s at Stake for Canada?” and a virtual panel program with ACIC Atlantic Canada on “The Pandemic and the World’s Children” held February 9, 2021.
More recently, Paul took the lead in organizing “The Great Debate” on “The United Nations and its Future,” September 11, 2024, featuring the Hon. Bob Rae, Canada’s UN Ambassador, and a team of Nova Scotia’s top university and high school debaters. He also hosted Dr. Kim Richard Nossal on September 25, 2025 for a Public Talk on “Canada Alone in a Changing World.” Those two events were co-sponsored by the Canadian International Council, Halifax Branch, at Paul O’Regan Hall, in collaboration with Halifax Public Libraries.
You can count upon Schoolhouse Consulting to make your special public event happen – in real time or on the web!
