ICHEP 2024

Navigating the World’s Largest Particle-Physics Meeting

ICHEP is the flagship biennial conference of the high-energy physics community. The 2024 edition took place at the Prague Congress Centre and neighbouring venues, drawing roughly 1,200 physicists from every major LHC experiment and beyond. With eight parallel tracks, plenary sessions, and more than 600 posters, the sheer scale of the programme made orientation a challenge.

Why Room Maps Were Essential

Unlike smaller workshops, ICHEP spreads across multiple buildings and floors. The LOC chose HEPCon in part because of its interactive room-map feature: every session card in the app links to a venue floor plan that pinpoints the correct room. During the first morning alone the room-map overlay was tapped several thousand times, confirming the organisers’ bet that spatial navigation would be the key usability win.

Full-Text Search Across 900+ Contributions

ICHEP’s timetable contained over 900 talks and posters. HEPCon’s built-in full-text search let attendees type a keyword and instantly see every matching contribution across all tracks and days. The LOC reported that search was the second-most-used feature after the timetable itself.

Keeping 1,200 Attendees in Sync

With last-minute room swaps and schedule adjustments inevitable at an eight-day event, push notifications alerted users to changes within minutes of the Indico update. The LOC estimated that push alone eliminated several hundred individual email enquiries that would otherwise have hit the help desk.

Sponsor Integration

Six industry sponsors were featured via rotating banners in the app. HEPCon’s analytics dashboard provided each sponsor with verified impression and tap-through counts—a first for the ICHEP series and an easy value-add for the LOC’s sponsorship packages.