Speaker management

Speaker management is a deadline-chasing discipline dressed up as relationship management, and both halves matter. In practice, it runs on a pipeline: invitation and confirmation, contract or agreement, asset collection (bio, headshot, slide deck, AV needs), briefing calls, travel and accommodation where covered, rehearsal booking, and on-site care through to the stage door. Most teams manage this in a speaker portal or a well-run spreadsheet with dated chase points, because the pattern never changes — speakers are busy people who deliver assets late unless the process makes lateness harder than compliance. Commercially, the stakes compound: late slides break rehearsals, broken rehearsals produce weak sessions, weak sessions depress feedback scores, and feedback scores drive next year's ticket sales. Speaker experience also travels; well-treated speakers accept next year's invitation and tell their peers. The common mistake is pouring effort into acquisition and starving everything after the yes — a big name confirmed in January and ignored until show week arrives unbriefed and underprepared. One honest nuance: your most senior speakers will miss every deadline you set, whatever the process says. Plan for it deliberately with a separate VIP track — earlier fake deadlines, a named handler, direct-to-producer slide delivery — rather than pretending one process fits all.