Conference Run of Show Template
For event producers, show callers, and AV leads
A single-track day for 150 to 500 people: about six and a half hours from registration opening to the room emptying. Breaks are real cues with real lengths, because a break is the item most likely to eat your afternoon.
If you run multiple tracks, build this once as your main room and duplicate it per room. The plenary items stay identical; only the sessions change.
The rundown
| # | From | Length | Cue | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | +0m | 45 min | Registration and coffee | Walk-in music, loop the sponsor reel |
| 2 | +45m | 10 min | Room open and housekeeping | Fire exits, wifi, hashtag, phones to silent |
| 3 | +55m | 40 min | Opening keynote | Confidence monitor on, comfort light up |
| 4 | +1h 35m | 10 min | Keynote Q&A | Two roving mics, host filters questions |
| 5 | +1h 45m | 20 min | Morning break | Hard stop; chase the room back in at 15 |
| 6 | +2h 5m | 35 min | Session 1 | Speaker change on the break, not on the clock |
| 7 | +2h 40m | 35 min | Session 2 | |
| 8 | +3h 15m | 60 min | Lunch | Sponsor stands open, stage reset for the panel |
| 9 | +4h 15m | 35 min | Afternoon session | |
| 10 | +4h 50m | 45 min | Panel discussion | 4 chairs, moderator holds the clock |
| 11 | +5h 35m | 15 min | Afternoon break | |
| 12 | +5h 50m | 20 min | Closing remarks and awards | Awards list to the lectern in advance |
| 13 | +6h 10m | 15 min | Room out | Play-out music, house lights to full |
The From column is an offset from your start, not a fixed time. Pick a start and the clock times follow.
Take it with you
Copy gives you tab-separated text, which pastes straight into Google Sheets or Excel as proper columns. The same clipboard pastes into PilotCue's importer, so you can start in a spreadsheet and move later without retyping anything.
Opening it in PilotCue creates the event with these cues already in it. Free to run, and the crew, backstage, and speaker screens are free on every plan.
Breaks are cues, and they overrun harder than talks
Speakers overrun by two or three minutes. Breaks overrun by ten, because nobody in the corridor can see a clock and nobody feels responsible for ending them.
Give every break a duration on the sheet and someone whose job is to chase the room back in with five minutes left. A 20 minute break that reliably ends at 20 is worth more to your day than trimming a keynote.
Q&A is not the end of the talk, it is its own item
When Q&A is folded into the speaker slot, it becomes the shock absorber for the talk running long, which means it either vanishes or the talk quietly steals from the break.
List it separately with its own length. Then when the keynote runs to 45, the decision in front of you is explicit: cut Q&A to five, or lose five from the break. Someone makes a call instead of the schedule drifting.
Everyone should be reading the same clock
The classic conference failure is three versions of the truth: the producer on a printout, the AV desk on a spreadsheet, and the speaker backstage guessing. When the day slips twenty minutes, nobody agrees what time it now is.
One rundown, one clock, on every screen that needs it: the booth, the backstage monitor, the speaker confidence screen. When you add five minutes to the panel, it moves everywhere at once and no one has to be told.
Tell your speakers the number in advance
Send each speaker their slot length and what will appear on their confidence screen, and say plainly what the wrap signal looks like. Speakers do not resent a countdown they were told about; they resent being surprised by one.
It also removes the most common backstage argument, which is a speaker who believed they had 40 minutes when the sheet always said 35.
Questions people actually ask
- What is the difference between a run of show and an agenda?
- An agenda tells attendees roughly what happens when. A run of show tells the crew exactly what happens, in what order, for how long, and who does what at each moment. The agenda is marketing; the run of show is operational.
- How much buffer should a conference day have?
- Around ten percent of the day, concentrated in breaks and the room-open block rather than sprinkled between talks. Padding hidden inside every session just teaches speakers that the times are negotiable.
- Who owns the clock on the day?
- One named person, usually the producer or show caller, and everyone should know who it is before doors. Shared responsibility for time means no responsibility for time.