I helped organize my department’s grad conference, and I have traveled to speak at a handful of other grad conferences. Here are some personal opinions on these questions.

1. I think the purpose of a grad conference is largely to help grad students prepare to participate in ordinary academic conferences. It is an opportunity to familiarize ourselves with professional norms and expectations, and an opportunity to practice public speaking, chairing, commenting, etc.
2. It’s not entirely clear to me that these interests are in conflict and need to be balanced.
3. I think the conference should accept the best papers. While it may be nice if it turns out that an accepted paper is relevantly similar to the keynote address, I don’t think this should factor into the selection process.
4. If your conference has a theme, then it should only accept papers that are relevant to the theme. However, it’s not obvious to me that grad conferences should have a theme at all. I think these conferences work best when papers are prepared for a generalist audience and cover a diverse array of topics. This allows the grad students in the host department to see a range of research at other institutions, and ensures that as much of the audience as possible is able to participate.
5. I think it’s reasonable to take location into consideration, especially if you are unable to offer travel funding. I have been accepted to speak at distant conferences that could not offer me travel funding, and I was forced to respectfully decline. I think that this probably happens often, and should be expected. Students who are located nearby are much less likely to decline an acceptance.
6. I think it’s great to have someone deliver comments in response to the paper – I think this is most likely to benefit the speaker, helps spark conversation in the audience, and builds in a natural networking opportunity.
7. See 4 – in my experience the best grad conferences do not have a theme.
8. Tough question – it really depends on your department culture! However, structuring events around the conference like lunch, dinner, drinks can make it more exciting for students at the host university.

Back when I was a grad student, I helped organize a couple of graduate conferences.

Our primary objectives were to network with students from other programs and give our own students professional experience. To this end, all presenters were students from other places, whereas commentators and chairs were current students in my program.

We never had a specific theme – though we’d have a keynote lined up before putting out the CFP, and tended to get proportionately more submissions related to the keynote’s areas of research. To generate interest (i.e. make sure that grad students and faculty would turn up), we tried to put together a balanced program, with papers representing the various areas of strength in our department. We tended not to accept papers that fell outside of those areas – it made more sense to bring in speakers whose work we could really engage with (and who might benefit more from our comments and Q&A).

Submissions were processed through blind review, and we did not consider location when sending out acceptances. Although we could not provide travel funding, we had our graduate students volunteer to host visitors on their couches. We were usually able to get funding to take the speakers and commentators out to one fancy dinner with the keynote. Usually, one of the graduate students would host an off-campus gathering for conference attendees.

I think our conferences were very successful. We received positive feedback from presenters, and we got quite a bit of buy-in from other graduate students in the department. As a graduate student, it was great to gain the experience of reviewing submissions, providing comments, and chairing sessions; best of all, I’m still friends with a few of the graduate students who came to our conferences and are now active members of the profession.

I’ve attended/presented at a few- and helped organize one- grad conference, and I have two main suggestions which apply to conferences in general:

1. Pick a theme that allows for various fields, subfields, and interdisciplinary work to be showcased in a way that won’t gravitate too much around any one style/methodology (eg, “the nature of time”, “religious experience”, would be interesting)- difference/diversity within a big picture topic that *everyone* can care about is good. Insider work is no fun, and an open topic conference makes it questionable whether anyone with actual interest/background in the basic subject of one’s work will be there. (Keeping this point in mind for paper selection is good- avoid papers that rely too heavily on insider knowledge, hyperjargony stuff, etc- ie choose things a general audience can track without much- or any- background in specific literature or terminology, or prepare to let the cricketts lead Q&A if no one specifically was assigned to comment.)

2. Prioritize conference etiquette and designate volunteers to enforce rules and regulate the environment during presentations. I think I speak for everyone when I say I *hate* it when chairs/commenters/MCs are irresponsible or negligent in a way that undermines the goal of the talks, eg by failing to ensure fairness during Q&A (eg by letting a single person dominate and volley their question endlessly while others are waiting), by doing nothing when there is a serious distraction that could be handled (or even creating it themselves- like once when an organizer started noisily taking out garbages in back during the final talk), or basically just failing in general to consider participants’ interests and minimize disturbances and whatnot. I’ve been a victim and witness of such inconsiderateness and it sucks, and can take a lot away from the experience. (Be deliberate about designating a committee chair who is not afraid to take the reins and clearly communicate best practices, expectations, directions, etc., for volunteers, attendees, etc., so things run as smoothly and fairly as possible.)