The demands on the members of the ICASSP Conference Committee have grown as ICASSP has grown. Some ICASSPs have successfully used professional management assistance for registration, exhibits, paper submission handling, etc. Since good professional assistance is important to the success of ICASSP, the Conference Board would like to build up a long-term relationship with one or two conference management companies. The benefits are obvious: less time wasted training the management company, and less likelihood of neglected or poorly executed tasks. The management company should be part of the ICASSP planning from the beginning. They can identify and evaluate sites, negotiate hotel and convention center contracts, and help develop the initial budget.
Do not use a hotel booking agent to help with the hotel contract: this ``service'' seems free, but the hotel pays a 10% commission to the booking agent. If the conference management company handles the arrangement with the hotel, the commission goes to the conference managers and they can reduce their price by this amount. An additional benefit is that the hotel negotiates from the beginning with the people who will actually be running the meeting. Obviously it is in the best interest of the conference managers to make sure that the ICASSP will be successful, but the booking agent only cares how many hotel rooms are paid for.
Before putting together your initial proposal, contact the Conference Board Chair to obtain names of management companies that have experience managing Signal Processing Society meetings. The Conference Board takes a long-term view of the experiences of previous ICASSPs and the needs of future ICASSPs.