What are the benefits of organizing a science conference for a company?

Question

I'd like to propose the organization of a conference about mostly research related topics in the IT area (and probably a handful of business related topics as well). As an example, I like the assortment of topics presented during CppCon - I am thinking of a different scale, but something in that vein is my basic idea. I know that there are a lot of different conferences, but to be honest, I couldn't find one that covers the topics I'd like to propose.

I have to convince my upper management that organizing such a conference would be a good idea. As part of my pitch, I'm thinking of discussing pros (and possibly cons) of organizing a conference. Now here is my question - What should I mention as potential benefits a company might have from organizing such a conference?

Answer 1

There are a couple of reasons that companies sponsor major conferences (rather than directly organizing them). First is that they get name recognition among the attendees and also, to a lesser extend, among the public. More important, however, is that they also have an opportunity to meet and interact with leaders in research in which they have an interest.

A company doesn't have to organize the conference to do this, and organizing a new conference may not be the best way as it takes some time for it to be well known enough that those researchers want to attend (or submit papers).

Some companies just do this as fulfillment of what they see as an obligation to the research community on which they depend for both ideas and employees.

Companies, of course, have other ways to reach these researchers, but providing an environment in which some collaboration can be initiated is valuable to some of them.