# Conference and sponsorship board that replaces the spreadsheet

> Track every event you might speak at or sponsor in one board, with CFP deadlines inside 30 days pinned to the top and committed spend synced to finance.

- Workflow type: app
- Services: Exa, Google Sheets
- Categories: Marketing, Operations
- Published: 2026-08-21

## What it does

- One board of every event you might speak at or sponsor, with date, location, CFP deadline, cost and audience fit on each card, and a status of Considering, Applied, Speaking, Sponsoring or Passed.
- Describe the kind of event you want in plain language and get back a checked list of real conferences, with event dates, CFP deadlines and expected attendance already filled in.
- CFP deadlines landing in the next 30 days get pinned to the top of the board, and events you marked Passed never show up in a later search again.
- Everything you keep is written to a Google Sheets tab so finance can see committed spend without asking you for an update.

## What you'll need

- An Exa account for finding events and running the research
- A Google account and a spreadsheet the app can write a tab into
- A rough sense of the events you care about, such as topic, region and audience size

## Prompt

Build me a field marketing app that replaces our conference spreadsheet: one board of every event we might speak at or sponsor. Each event is a card showing event name, date, location, CFP deadline, cost, audience fit, and a status of Considering, Applied, Speaking, Sponsoring or Passed. A Google Sheets tab is the system of record behind the board, so finance can open the sheet at any time and see what we have committed to.

The board is the home view. Lay the cards out in columns by status, in the order Considering, Applied, Speaking, Sponsoring, Passed, and let me move a card between columns to change its status. When the app opens, load every event with Google Sheets Get Values against the events tab and render the board from those rows. Show a committed spend total at the top, summing cost across everything in Speaking and Sponsoring, since that number is what finance actually cares about.

Above the board, pin a rail of events whose CFP deadline falls within the next 30 days, soonest first, with a days remaining countdown and a visible warning treatment once a deadline is inside a week. Pin these regardless of which status column the event sits in, because the one that gets missed is always an event still sitting in Considering. Events with no CFP deadline, or a deadline already past, stay out of the rail.

Give me a Find events view where I describe the kind of event I want in plain language, for example mid-size developer infrastructure conferences in North America in the first half of next year with a call for papers still open. Before building anything, call Exa Preview Webset with my description and show me how the query will be read: the detected entity type, the criteria each event will be verified against, and the enrichment columns it suggests. Let me reword the query and preview again, so I can see I am going to get conferences rather than vendor blog posts before I spend anything.

When I confirm, call Exa Create Webset with that query and criteria. Webset creation is asynchronous and returns immediately, so put the view into a building state with progress and a note that it keeps running if I navigate away, then poll Exa Get Webset until the search finishes. On the same Webset, add enrichment columns with Exa Create Webset Enrichment for event date, CFP deadline and expected attendance, plus location and sponsorship or ticket cost where it can be found. Those enrichment columns are what populate the card fields, so do not render final results until they have run.

Read the results back with Exa List Webset Items, following the cursor through every page until there are no more, and show each candidate as a result row with its verified criteria, the enriched date, deadline and attendance figures, and a link to the event site. Before rendering, reconcile results against the sheet: an event already on the board is labelled as already tracked instead of appearing as a new find, and any event I previously marked Passed is dropped entirely and never resurfaces in this or any later search. Match on the event website domain plus a normalized event name, so next year's edition of a conference I passed on is still recognized as the same event.

Let me select the results worth keeping and add them to the board in one action, which writes them to the sheet with Google Sheets Append Values, one row per event, carrying a stable event id, name, website, date, location, CFP deadline, cost, audience fit, status defaulting to Considering, research notes and a last updated timestamp. Anything I edit afterwards, whether that is dragging a card to a new status, setting the cost once a sponsorship quote comes in, or writing my own audience fit note, is saved with Google Sheets Update Values against that event's row, located by looking the event id up in the values I already read. Status and cost in particular have to round-trip to the sheet right away, because that is the committed spend finance is reading.

Every card gets a Research this event button that kicks off a background research agent with Exa Create Agent Run. Ask it for past speakers and the talks they gave, sponsor tiers and what each tier costs, who actually attends in terms of roles, seniority and company type, and a straight read on whether this audience fits what we sell. Put the card into a researching state, poll Exa Get Agent Run until the run completes, then render the writeup on the card itself and save it into the research notes column with Google Sheets Update Values so it is still there on the next load. Show a clear failure state on the card if a run does not come back, with the option to run it again.

A few details to get right. Within each status column, sort by CFP deadline first and event date second, so the time-sensitive work rises. Let me filter the board by date range and by audience fit, and let me add an event by hand for the ones I already know about without going through search at all. On first open, when the sheet is empty, point me straight at the Find events view rather than showing a blank board. The main user is a field marketing lead deciding where to spend the events budget, so the board should answer what is coming up, what have we committed to, and what still needs a decision without any clicking around.

## How to customize

- Change the 30 day deadline window to whatever lead time your submissions need
- Rename the statuses or add your own, such as Waitlisted or Booth Confirmed
- Add columns to the board and the sheet, like budget owner, booth size or travel cost
- Tell the research agent what to dig into, such as competitor sponsors or past attendee roles

## FAQ

### Do I have to give up my existing conference spreadsheet?

No. The app keeps a Google Sheets tab as the system of record, so anything you track in the board shows up in the spreadsheet. Finance and anyone else who lives in the sheet can keep opening it as usual, while you work out of the board.

### Will events I already turned down keep coming back in searches?

No. Anything you mark as Passed is remembered and filtered out of every future search, so you never re-review the same event twice. Events already on your board are flagged as tracked rather than shown as new finds.

### Where do the event dates and CFP deadlines come from?

They are pulled from the open web as part of the search and filled in as columns on each result. Treat them as a strong starting point and confirm the deadline on the official event site before you submit, since organizers do move dates.

### How long does a search take to come back?

Building a verified event list runs in the background rather than instantly, so the board shows a building state with progress while it works and fills in results as they are confirmed. You can keep using the rest of the board while it finishes.

### What does the Research this event button actually give me?

It sends a research agent off to look up past speakers and their talk topics, sponsor tiers and what they cost, and who really attends. The writeup lands on the event card itself, so the context is there next time you open it.

Use this prompt in General Input: https://www.generalinput.com/prompts/conference-and-sponsorship-board-that-replaces-the-spreadsheet