Patent ID: 7167833

Claim:
A conference management assistance apparatus which assists progress of proceedings, comprising: an information accepting section which accepts necessary information needed for scheduling of a conference, the necessary information containing a scheduled time of the conference in entirety as well as minimum guaranteed time which needs to be secured at the minimum and desired, normally requested time for each subject to be addressed; a schedule planning section which plans a schedule for the conference based on the necessary information accepted by the information accepting section; and a schedule management section which measures the time from the start of discussion of the subjects addressed at the conference and gives a notice when a scheduled discussion end time of a subject under discussion comes according to the schedule planned by the schedule planning section and when the scheduled discussion end time of the subject under discussion comes, the information accepting section selects whether to terminate discussing the subject under discussion and if the discussion is to be continued, the information accepting section accepts modification of the necessary information which has already been accepted by the information accepting section, said schedule planning section replanning a subsequent schedule for the conference in progress based on the modification of the necessary information.