Hiring an AV and production partner

Your production partner builds the part of the kickoff people remember: the stage, the screens, the sound, and the crew who make a 400-person general session look effortless. They also send one of your biggest invoices, and most of it is labor. Hire the team that will run your show, not the pitch deck, and read the quote like you’ll have to defend it to finance. You will.

In-house AV or an outside company

Most hotels and many conference centers have an in-house AV provider, sometimes exclusive for part or all of the work.

In-house

The in-house team already knows the room, the power, the rigging points, and the dock. Gear lives on property, so there’s no freight, and adding a breakout is a phone call. The trade-offs: you get whoever is scheduled that week, the creative ceiling can be lower, and prices are harder to negotiate without an alternative.

Outside production company

You choose the people, and they carry your show from year to year and city to city, usually with stage design, show calling, and graphics under one roof. The trade-offs: freight, crew travel, and the venue’s fees for letting them in.

What the venue may charge outside vendors

Venues may charge for tying into house sound (a patch fee), for rigging (sometimes with their own riggers required), for power tie-ins, and sometimes a flat outside-vendor fee or a required in-house supervisor. Whether any of this applies, and what it costs, is in your contract, so check it. The guide to choosing a kickoff venue covers the clause.

A common split, if your contract allows it: the outside company runs the general session and awards night, and in-house handles breakouts, where the gear is simple and already there.

What to put in the RFP

Send every bidder the same written request. If one gets a better brief over the phone, you’ll be comparing bids for different shows.

• Dates and access. Show days, plus when each room is yours for load-in and when you must be out.
• Room diagrams. The venue’s scaled floor plans for the general session, breakouts, and evening venue, with ceiling heights.
• Agenda. A draft is fine: session lengths, which rooms are live when, and any overnight flip to awards dinner.
• Headcount and seating. Per session, with the seating style.
• Screens and IMAG. How far the back row sits from the stage, and whether you want IMAG (image magnification: live camera shots of the speaker on the big screens). Describe the need; let them propose screen size and type.
• Breakouts. Rooms per day and a standard package per room: screen, projector, laptop audio, podium mic, a handheld for Q&A.
• Recording. Which sessions, how many cameras, what gets delivered, and how fast.
• Hybrid. Who presents or watches remotely, on what platform, and who produces the stream.
• Speaker support. Confidence monitors, clickers, a speaker ready room, and rehearsal blocks.
• Budget range. Without one, you get three dream shows.
• Quote format. Line items by system, labor by position and day, and a written list of exclusions.

Reading the quote line by line

A good quote reads like a plan. Work through it in this order:

• Equipment. Grouped by system (audio, video, lighting, staging, rigging), with quantities and day rates. Ask how multi-day rentals are priced, and whether backup playback and spare mics are included.
• Labor. Every position, every day, with hours. Usually the biggest line, and the one that grows.
• Rates, overtime, and minimum calls. The straight-time rate, when overtime or double time starts (after a set number of hours, overnight, weekends, holidays), and the minimum hours billed per call. Where union labor applies, a local agreement may set these; ask your producer and check your contract.
• Load-in and strike. Crew and hours to build and tear down. A strike that starts when awards night ends often bills at overtime rates.
• Rehearsal time. Is a full tech rehearsal on the schedule, with the whole crew? If it isn’t listed, it isn’t included.
• Power. Distribution gear, and whether the venue’s tie-in fee is in this quote or billed to you.
• Rigging. Points, motors, and riggers, plus any venue charge per point.
• Freight and travel. Trucking both ways, and crew hotel, air, and per diems.

Hypothetical labor math shows how hours stack up. Say a technician bills $80 an hour, overtime is 1.5 times that after 8 hours, and every call has a 5-hour minimum. A 12-hour rehearsal day is 8 × $80 plus 4 × $120: $640 plus $480, or $1,120. A one-hour fix the next morning on a fresh call bills the 5-hour minimum, $400. These are placeholders, not market rates; your vendor’s rate card is the truth. Production is a fixed cost, so it weighs more per head as headcount drops; see budgeting a kickoff per head.

The crew you’re paying for

Ask about any role on the labor line you don’t recognize.

• Technical director (TD). Owns the technical plan and keeps audio, video, and lighting working as one system.
• Show caller. Calls every cue from the run of show, on headset. The kickoff run of show explains how.
• A1. The lead audio engineer, mixing the show from the tech table.
• A2. The second audio tech: fits lavalier mics, swaps handhelds, and manages wireless backstage.
• V1. The lead video engineer, routing cameras, slides, and video to the screens and the recording.
• LD. The lighting designer or director, who builds the looks and runs the console.
• Graphics op. Runs slides, video playback, and lower thirds (on-screen name titles), ideally with a backup machine in sync.
• Stage manager. Runs backstage: presenters miked, in position, and sent on when the caller says go.

Add camera operators for IMAG, stagehands for load-in and strike, and a producer who owns your account. On smaller shows one person may cover two roles; ask which are combined and who covers if that person gets pulled away.

The site visit with your producer

Bring the producer to the venue before you sign with them, and ideally before you sign with the venue. They look for things you won’t:

• The path from dock to room, the freight elevator, and how long load-in takes.
• Rigging points over the stage and their weight ratings.
• Where the power is, how much, and what tying in costs.
• Clear height to the lowest obstruction, and whether the room blacks out.
• A hardline internet connection for streaming, separate from attendee Wi-Fi.
• What’s in the room the night before you, and when you can get in.

Field note: The tech table (front of house, or FOH) needs a clear sightline to the stage, which usually puts it mid-room, and it can take the floor space of several rounds. Draw it on the floor plan before you promise anyone a seat.

Timeline of deliverables

These checkpoints are a rule of thumb that lines up with planning a sales kickoff in 90 days. Agree on the real dates with your producer in writing.

Comparing bids apples to apples

Bids differ less in price than in what they include. Normalize them before comparing totals.

The cheapest bid is often missing a line. Have each bidder price their gaps, then compare again.

Red flags

• A lump-sum quote with no labor breakdown.
• “TBD” next to rigging, power, or venue fees.
• No rehearsal time on the schedule.
• The person who pitched won’t be on site, and nobody else is named.
• No backup playback or spare mics.
• A bid far below the rest, unexplained.
• Reluctance to list exclusions or provide a certificate of insurance, which your venue will likely require from outside vendors (check your contract for what it must cover).

Hire the crew you’d trust at 7:52 a.m. with the CEO’s mic dead, then hold their quote to the show you actually described.