How to prepare speakers for a live event without chasing documents
Speaker chasing is the single most reliable time sink in event production. It is also mostly a structural problem rather than a diligence problem. Here is how to reduce it, and what to do about the speakers who never reply.
The short answer
Ask for less, ask once, and make the asking automatic. Most chasing exists because speakers are asked for things they cannot easily provide, at a time that does not suit them, through a channel that loses replies. Reduce the ask to what you genuinely need, send it from the system that holds their session, and let the reminders be automatic rather than a job on someone's list.
What you actually need
Start by cutting the list. Most speaker forms ask for material that is never used, and every unnecessary field is a reason not to reply today.
- Confirmed availability
- The session time and date, acknowledged. Everything else is worthless without this.
- Name as it should appear
- For the lower-third, the agenda and the signage. Ask once, use everywhere.
- A biography, short
- Give a word count and an example. "A short bio" produces either two lines or two pages.
- A headshot
- With the minimum dimensions stated. Most re-requests are about resolution, and stating it up front removes the second round.
- Slides, if any
- With a genuine deadline and a stated reason for it. "By Friday so we can test it on the screen" gets a better response rate than "by Friday".
When to ask
The timing matters more than the wording. A request that arrives when a speaker cannot act on it becomes an email they intend to return to, which is the same as an email they did not read.
Ask for confirmation and the name at the point of invitation, when they are already thinking about you. Ask for the biography and headshot once the session is confirmed and public — the incentive is obvious then. Ask for slides last, with a deadline tied to a real technical step rather than an arbitrary date.
The speakers who never reply
A proportion will not respond regardless of how good your process is. Senior speakers, in particular, often have someone else handling their diary and no visibility of your emails at all.
Practically: have a default for every field. A house-style biography drafted from their public profile, ready to be corrected. A placeholder lower-third with just their name and organisation. A slot in the running order that works with no slides. Then a single, direct, personal message close to the event — not a fifth automated reminder, which they have already learned to ignore.
How EventBlok approaches this
EventBlok builds the speaker preparation pack against the session itself, so what a speaker is asked for is tied to the slot they are actually in, and what comes back lands on the record the agenda and showflow already read. A speaker sees their own time, room, who introduces them and when to arrive, rather than a generic brief.
The reasoning behind that approach is in a better way to prepare speakers for the room.
Plan the event. Publish the programme. Run the show.
One event spine, many views. Build the programme once, then give every person the right live view of it.