The kickoff run of show

The agenda is what attendees see. The run of show is what the crew runs. If your kickoff has a stage, a screen, and more than one person speaking, you need both, and they are not the same document.

Agenda vs. run of show

An agenda says “9:00 a.m. Opening keynote, Grand Ballroom.” It’s written for attendees, in blocks of 30 or 60 minutes, and it’s allowed to be a little aspirational.

A run of show says what happens at 9:00, 9:02, and 9:05. Who is on stage, which mic they’re wearing, which song walks them on, which slide is up, what the lights are doing, and who is responsible for each of those things. It’s written for the production crew, the speaker wranglers, and the show caller. It’s precise to the minute, and it keeps changing until the last rehearsal.

Build the agenda first (the three-day kickoff agenda covers that), then expand every general session into a run of show.

The columns that matter

• Clock time. The planned start of each segment, to the minute.
• Duration. In minutes. Calculate clock time from duration rather than typing it by hand, so one change ripples down correctly.
• Segment. What it is, in plain words: “CRO keynote,” “Award 3,” “Video: product launch.”
• On stage. Everyone physically on stage, including the emcee.
• Walk-in and walk-out music. The track that plays someone on and off, cued to a specific point in the song.
• Slides and video cues. Which deck, which slide, which video file, and whether it plays with audio.
• Lights. House up, house down, stage wash, spotlight. Your lighting tech will translate these into their own cue numbers.
• Mics. Which mic each person wears or holds, labeled consistently: Lav 1, Handheld 2.
• Owner. The person who makes the segment happen: a speaker wrangler, the video operator, the emcee.

Add a notes column for anything that doesn’t fit, and a cuttable flag for segments you can drop if you’re running long. You will need it.

The run of show template has these columns set up and ready to copy.

The show caller

The show caller runs the show from the production table, on headset, with the run of show in front of them. They call every cue: lights, sound, video, slides, and the stage manager who sends people on.

It should be one person, ideally someone who has called shows before, and it should not be the events lead. On show day the events lead is handling everything else: the CEO’s chief of staff, the catering captain, a missing presentation clicker. Try to call cues at the same time and something gets dropped.

Standby and go

Cue calling has a simple grammar, and it exists so nobody fires early.

1. Standby. The caller warns the operator ahead of the cue: “Standby video 3.” The operator answers: “Video standing by.”
2. Go. The caller names the cue, then says “go”: “Video 3, go.” The operator acts on “go,” never before.

A few rules keep it clean:

• Only the show caller says “go.”
• The cue name always comes before the word “go,” so the operator knows what’s coming before the trigger word lands.
• Cues that fire together get called together: “Lights 12 and video 3, go.”
• Comms stay quiet except for cues and problems. Nobody discusses lunch on channel.

The pre-show checklist

Work backward from doors. Final decks should already be locked by now; getting them there is its own campaign, covered in wrangling presenters and deadlines. For a 9:00 a.m. start with doors at 8:45:

• 7:00 Crew call. Power up and check every headset on comms.
• 7:30 Playback check. Every video and deck opens, in order, on both the primary and backup machines.
• 7:45 Walk-in, walk-up, and walk-out music tested at show volume.
• 8:00 Speakers arrive. Mic checks at the podium and center stage. Confidence monitor shows notes and the countdown clock.
• 8:15 Stage manager walks every entrance and exit with the first three speakers.
• 8:30 Final run of show distributed. Everyone confirms the version number.
• 8:40 Lights to preset, holding slide up, walk-in playlist running.
• 8:45 Doors.

Field note: Put the version number and a timestamp in the header of every page. When the caller says “page 4, version 7,” the video operator still on version 6 finds out right then, not halfway through the CEO’s keynote.

Holding to time

Time slips one minute at a time. These hold it:

• A countdown clock on the confidence monitor, visible to the speaker and set to their segment.
• Signals agreed in rehearsal: a card or light at five minutes, two minutes, and zero.
• Buffers built in. A five-minute buffer before each break absorbs a lot of drift.
• Full-length rehearsals with margin. A speaker who rehearses at exactly 20 minutes for a 20-minute slot has no room for applause or a live room. Rehearse to 18.

When the CEO runs 12 minutes over

It happens. The CEO is the one speaker nobody wants to hold up the zero card for. So plan the recovery before you need it, and agree on it in advance with the CEO’s chief of staff.

The principle: recover time from buffers, breaks, and pre-marked cuttable segments. Never ask the next speaker to cut a talk they’ve rehearsed, live.

Using the excerpt below, the CEO is scheduled from 9:05 to 9:30 and finishes at 9:42.

1. Cut the cuttable. Drop the two-minute Fast Start video at 10:00. That’s 2 minutes.
2. Absorb the buffer. The five-minute buffer at 10:20 goes away. That’s 5 more.
3. Shorten the break. Twenty minutes becomes fifteen. Tell the catering captain, and leave food service alone. That’s another 5.

Total recovered: 12 minutes. The CRO still gets a full 30 minutes, from 9:42 to 10:12. The roadmap runs 10:12 to 10:30, the break runs 10:30 to 10:45, and the room comes back on time.

Two things not to do. Don’t push lunch if the kitchen has timed hot food to the published schedule. And don’t try to claw back time by rushing the awards. The caller should start the recovery plan the moment the CEO passes the zero card, not at 9:42.

Excerpt: a general session

Here’s the opening general session from a hypothetical day one. “VOG” is the voice-of-God announcer, speaking from offstage.

If the buffer isn’t needed, the emcee covers housekeeping for a minute or two and the break starts early. Nobody has ever complained about a long break.

Write it to the minute, rehearse it once at full length, and let one calm voice call it.