Speaking & Stage

Getting your people on stages, and making sure the talk survives contact with the organizer's production process.

When to use

• A call for papers is open
• A sponsorship includes a speaking slot and nobody has scoped it
• A speaker needs preparing
• A partner or customer might join your executive on stage

Inputs

• Reads: workspace/events/<event>/contract.md, workspace/program/charter.md
• Needs from user: the speaker, the topic area, the deadline, and what the slot actually is

Workflow

1. Confirm the production constraints before anyone writes a slide

The single most valuable step, and it is five questions to the producer:

1. Is the stated slot length inclusive of Q&A? Twenty minutes including Q&A is a fifteen-minute talk. This changes the entire structure
2. Are all sponsor decks merged into one master file? If yes: custom fonts, animation, embedded video, and live demo are all dead. Plan around it from the start
3. Can we supply font files, or must we use standard fonts? If your brand runs non-standard typefaces, decide early whether to ship fonts or rebuild in a safe stack. A merge will silently reformat an entire deck
4. Aspect ratio, and is there audio playback?
5. What is the slide deadline, and is there a hard freeze after it?

Also ask: microphone options (lectern, handheld, lapel), whether a clicker and a visible timer are provided, and whether the session is recorded and who owns the recording.

2. Write the abstract to be selected, then to be attended

Two different jobs.

To be selected, a programme committee wants: a specific, non-promotional topic, a clear takeaway, evidence the speaker has genuinely done the thing, and no vendor pitch. Committees reject vendor talks reflexively, and the fastest way to be rejected is a title with your category in it.

To be attended, the audience wants a title that promises something concrete. A number from real data, a specific outcome, or an honest admission of difficulty. "What it actually took" beats "the future of." A talk about what went wrong outdraws a talk about what went right, reliably.

Submit early. Committees fill the strong slots first, and abstract deadlines run four to eight months ahead.

3. Negotiate the slot itself

Where flexibility exists, in rough order of value: main stage over breakout, morning over late afternoon, a slot not opposite the strongest competing session, panel moderator over panellist, and Q&A included rather than cut.

Moderating a panel is under-rated. The moderator frames the conversation, decides what gets discussed, and is on stage for the whole session rather than a third of it. Ask for it.

4. When a customer or partner shares the stage

The highest-impact version and the hardest to land. Treat it as a project with its own gate.

What it really requires. The organizer publishes their executive's name, exact title, headshot, and bio on a public website weeks in advance, alongside your logo. That is a communications and legal approval on their side, not a favor. Budget six to eight weeks and a named owner on their side.

Run a two-track plan. Track A with the guest, Track B without, both built. Set a hard call date far enough ahead of the organizer's speaker deadline that you can still switch, and treat a maybe on that date as a no. Check in weekly, in writing, and log the answer including "no change".

Provenance discipline. Every metric, screenshot, and claim about the guest's company gets cleared by them before it reaches a stage. For the version without them, agree an anonymization rule in advance: a generic descriptor is usually fine, anything identifying by program name or a distinctive number is not.

5. Prepare the speaker on a schedule

Preparation is where good talks are made and it is always the thing that slips.

Build to fifteen minutes of content for a twenty-minute slot and rehearse to fourteen. Every speaker runs long on the day.

No deck changes after the final rehearsal. By then it is inside somebody else's master file anyway.

6. Pair the stage with something

A stage slot with nothing scheduled around it is a nice photo. Pair it every time: a dinner the night before, meetings either side, a suite for follow-on conversations, a piece of writing published the same week. The talk is the reason to reach out, and the reaching out is the pipeline.

7. Reuse the talk

A talk used once was underpriced. Afterward: a written version, clips if it was recorded, a set of social posts, and the argument reused in sales conversations. Ask the organizer for the recording and confirm you can use it.

Output

• Writes: workspace/events/<event>/stage.md with the constraints, abstract, prep schedule, two-track plan if a guest is involved, and the reuse plan
• Prints: the production constraints, the abstract, the prep calendar with dates, and the guest-speaker gate date

Rules & quality bar

• Production constraints confirmed before any slide is designed
• Build to three quarters of the stated slot length
• Abstracts are not pitches. Committees reject vendor talks on sight
• A guest on stage runs on a two-track plan with a hard call date. A maybe is a no
• Provenance cleared on every guest-company claim before it reaches a stage
• Two rehearsals against a timer. No changes after the second
• Never a stage slot on its own. Always paired
• All copy runs through writing-quality

Related skills

• Reads: sponsorship-negotiation, conference-activation
• Pairs with: executive-dinner (the pairing), event-content (the reuse)
• See also: docs/operations-runbook.md section 4