7 Reasons Every Event Needs a Run of Show

[00:00:00] Hey Tess, Hey Keith, You know what we're talking about today? No. Rundowns, cue sheets, run of shows. Oh my goodness.

[00:00:13] You're listening to The Event Tech Pull Up, the show that brings you the good, the bad and the ugly of event technology with your hosts Tess Vismale of iSocialX and Keith Johnston of i3 Events.

[00:00:27] So as a production guy, as a producer, I love a good run of show. Oh my gosh, I geek out over run of shows.

[00:00:39] And you see some are good, some are bad, some are whatever, and I don't care. I just want to see a run of show.

[00:00:46] Exactly. I want to see a run of show. For every single session.

[00:00:49] But you know what, Keith? I mean, I guess people who know me probably know this, they may or may not. I love a run of show, but I can't stand putting them together.

[00:01:00] Well, you know, we have done past episodes where we've talked about the tools, right?

[00:01:05] Yes, we have. Hopefully our audience will go back and look at them because I think there would be great references.

[00:01:09] I'll even put a link in the show notes.

[00:01:11] I think you should, in the show notes.

[00:01:13] Because we've looked at Joy.

[00:01:14] Yes.

[00:01:15] Joy has one of the best run of show tools, I think.

[00:01:18] I think so too.

[00:01:18] And then the runner up to that, for me anyway, is Rundown Studio.

[00:01:23] Rundown Studio.

[00:01:23] Get the Rundown.

[00:01:25] We need to get them a song.

[00:01:29] We should do a song about run of show.

[00:01:33] Yes.

[00:01:33] All right, we're going to do that at the end.

[00:01:35] No, we're not.

[00:01:36] Yeah, okay.

[00:01:37] I ain't singing.

[00:01:38] There's no karaoke bar.

[00:01:39] It's not a problem.

[00:01:40] You know what we're going to do after this episode is over?

[00:01:43] We're going to get a beer.

[00:01:44] Because he likes beer, right?

[00:01:45] And then we're going to go and use an AI tool to make a song.

[00:01:49] Will you soon know?

[00:01:50] Yes.

[00:01:50] See, I knew he got it.

[00:01:51] He got it.

[00:01:52] See, he gets my cues.

[00:01:53] Boom.

[00:01:54] There you go.

[00:01:54] But anyway, so a run of show, right?

[00:01:57] It is basically the minute by minute for your sessions, what's going on in the main room, whatever happens.

[00:02:04] Or second by second.

[00:02:04] Or second by second.

[00:02:05] And so these are seven reasons why every event, conference, whatever it happens to be, should have a run of show.

[00:02:16] And I mean every.

[00:02:18] And I think I'll let you introduce point number one, but I think point number one could actually just be the only thing on this list.

[00:02:27] Keep everything on track.

[00:02:29] It does.

[00:02:30] It keeps everything on track.

[00:02:31] Done.

[00:02:31] Can we go get the beer now?

[00:02:32] Oh, there you go.

[00:02:33] We're out of here.

[00:02:38] No, we got to beef this episode up a little bit.

[00:02:40] We need a little more than that.

[00:02:41] Okay.

[00:02:41] So keeping everything on track, right?

[00:02:44] You know, a run of show does keep everything on track, right?

[00:02:49] It tells the AV team when to cue a stinger, when to roll a preamble video, when to do whatever it is, which in turn lets speakers know that it's almost time for them to go on stage.

[00:03:03] It allows you to adjust on the fly.

[00:03:06] You can allow five minutes for speaker introductions if you want to, let's say 20 minutes for the keynote and then 10 minutes for the Q&A.

[00:03:14] And then what happens is you can kind of prepare for when you're running behind.

[00:03:19] So if something is running over and lunch is about to happen, right?

[00:03:24] And then there's this heavy lift that normally goes on with that transition.

[00:03:28] You can account for that time in there.

[00:03:31] You can really truly know, even if, let's just say, let's go low tech.

[00:03:37] Okay.

[00:03:38] Let's just say your run of show is only in Excel and you printed it out.

[00:03:45] You still could mentally start calculating what, which is the way we've always done it, what needs to change and how it needs to change.

[00:03:53] You don't even need to use tech to adjust this.

[00:03:55] It's just the fact that it needs to be in place and distributed to everyone who are the key players in making that moment happen.

[00:04:03] Well, and it does.

[00:04:05] It allows you to have better decision making, right?

[00:04:07] When you're looking at a whole day on a run of show and this session is running 10 minutes behind or they're going to go 10 minutes over, whichever way you want to call it.

[00:04:16] You know, by glancing at the entire run of show, you're not making drastic decisions like we're going to cut 10 minutes from the next session, right?

[00:04:25] You can say, oh, it's only 10 minutes.

[00:04:27] Let's take two minutes from everybody else, right?

[00:04:30] You can create a better experience for the attendee because you see the whole thing in one go.

[00:04:39] Yeah.

[00:04:39] So if we want to enhance the audience's experiences, how does a run of show help that, Keith?

[00:04:45] The biggest way is it makes everything more polished, right?

[00:04:50] You know, and a prime example of this is we had a client that had never done a run of show.

[00:04:55] We came in last minute.

[00:04:56] They didn't have a run of show for an event.

[00:04:58] And we were thrown into, I was thrown into the AV table and I was getting like videos as we went, right?

[00:05:07] And PowerPoints as we went.

[00:05:09] So what happens is you'll come up to that session where they're giving you that video or that PowerPoint a minute before it starts.

[00:05:15] Well, then it's clunky, right?

[00:05:16] You, you know, you're trying to load it and get it up on the screen and everyone knows the screen is blank for a minute.

[00:05:23] Whereas with a run of show, it allows AV to know what's coming and have everything queued up correctly.

[00:05:30] And then you could put like some 30 second music in there or like something on the screen in between to help you go.

[00:05:36] And because you'll know where those, what I call pregnant pauses are or technical pauses.

[00:05:42] Well, and, and what, what a lot of planners don't know is if you don't create a run of show, a lot of your AV guys are creating one anyway.

[00:05:51] I was going to say that.

[00:05:52] Absolutely.

[00:05:53] It don't really matter what you, you give them an agenda.

[00:05:55] They're, they're going to create it.

[00:05:57] Their T the TD is going to create it every single time.

[00:06:01] Yeah.

[00:06:01] And they may never, you may have never seen it in all those years of working with you because they didn't want to confuse you or anything like that.

[00:06:07] But if they don't have all the information, the one that they've created, which actually does make your show better, even though it's created with not all the information.

[00:06:15] Again, it's, it's lacking, right?

[00:06:18] You need to have input input.

[00:06:19] And that's why I especially love the products like joy and what rundown studio have done because a planner can start it.

[00:06:27] AV can come in and work on it and put in the AV things that they need.

[00:06:32] But you're in the loop the whole time.

[00:06:34] The whole time.

[00:06:34] So if you needed to move something around and, you know, now we're going to techify it.

[00:06:38] The example that we gave, you put in that 30 second window of let's say music interlude or something like that.

[00:06:47] It automatically adjusts.

[00:06:50] Yes.

[00:06:50] The times for you.

[00:06:51] So then everything that was done, we used to have to do math around it is already done for you.

[00:06:56] I know.

[00:06:57] And then you're doing math and military time and it's like, what?

[00:07:00] And that's crazy right there.

[00:07:02] So how do we streamline the tech and the AV coordination?

[00:07:05] How does the run a show help that?

[00:07:08] Well, you know, kind of just piggybacking on what we were just talking about.

[00:07:11] You know, once, once production knows exactly what's happening when they can work with the planner.

[00:07:18] And this is all done in the design before the event, right?

[00:07:20] Because you're worried you're not working on that run a show on the day of.

[00:07:22] You're working on it in the, in the weeks and months leading up to an event.

[00:07:26] Well, that's now you, you are actually creating a, going back to number two, a better audience experience because now you're coordinating the AV, right?

[00:07:37] When the lighting is going to go, when the music's going to turn on, you know, what camera should be pointed in what direction, right?

[00:07:44] If you're using iMag and you have three cameras in a room, well, where do you want them?

[00:07:48] Right in the run of show, it should say.

[00:07:50] Yes.

[00:07:50] I have all of those cues as separate cues.

[00:07:53] Camera, podium.

[00:07:54] And that's where my seconds come in.

[00:07:55] That's the beauty.

[00:07:56] That's where the magic occurs in the seconds.

[00:07:58] So you don't say 9 p.m.

[00:08:01] We're start, we need to dim the house lights.

[00:08:03] No, you need to say 9 p.m.

[00:08:05] We dim the lights.

[00:08:06] Yeah.

[00:08:07] 9.01, this is going to happen.

[00:08:10] 9.02, this is going to happen.

[00:08:13] We're going to go at 9.05.

[00:08:16] Yep.

[00:08:17] So it's all the things that happen that leads up to it.

[00:08:21] The cues and then everything that happens after it.

[00:08:24] Yeah.

[00:08:24] And I mean, and you should have every little piece in there, right?

[00:08:27] Like the voice of God.

[00:08:28] That's my favorite.

[00:08:29] You have 858, you know, cue music.

[00:08:32] 859, voice of God.

[00:08:34] Right?

[00:08:34] Then that AV guy isn't looking up and looking around the room, looking for the planner going,

[00:08:39] should we play the voice of God?

[00:08:41] Yes.

[00:08:41] Should we push the button?

[00:08:43] Right?

[00:08:43] Right?

[00:08:44] And, you know, you will get some planners who still say, look to me before you actually go.

[00:08:50] And I get it.

[00:08:51] That's totally fine.

[00:08:52] But once that go button is pushed, everything else should be by the runner's show.

[00:08:56] It should.

[00:08:57] It should.

[00:08:58] You know, and that's a big thing, right?

[00:08:59] Right?

[00:09:00] And that leads into the next one, which is empowering speakers and presenters.

[00:09:04] And a good run of show does do that, right?

[00:09:06] Because it gives them a clear roadmap of their time on stage.

[00:09:09] How long they have, when they should be at this point, when they should be behind stage

[00:09:13] and backstage.

[00:09:14] Um, it also hamstrings them.

[00:09:18] Because, well, they're not used to, a lot of speakers, I should say, aren't used to things

[00:09:29] timed down to the minute because they're used to the way 99% of other conferences run where

[00:09:34] it's all loosey-goosey, where they walk in with a flash drive two minutes before they

[00:09:37] go on stage and then they kind of wander up.

[00:09:40] And, you know, using a good run of show allows even a basic conference to have so much more

[00:09:48] production value.

[00:09:50] Yes.

[00:09:50] That it makes it look like a million dollar shop.

[00:09:53] It does.

[00:09:53] Even though you're on a budget.

[00:09:55] Yeah.

[00:09:56] It's so many things you can do that.

[00:09:57] And then it actually will help, I think, empower your speakers to be better.

[00:10:01] If they know what comes before them and then what comes after them, then they can kind

[00:10:06] of think through the transitions.

[00:10:08] Like when I was speaking, um, a couple of weeks ago, there was, um, a magician who was MC.

[00:10:16] He was most amazing guy.

[00:10:18] Most amazing.

[00:10:19] And he actually used cues from things I said in my session, even though he wasn't there

[00:10:24] because they did some summaries.

[00:10:26] Right.

[00:10:26] Um, and then he queued up, queued that up.

[00:10:29] And then when the next keynote speaker came up in her presentation at some point in time,

[00:10:35] she talked about, she had a couple of points she brought up that I had said.

[00:10:39] So it was like the person who crafted the entire program, not only wrote the content part of it into it, but there were cues.

[00:10:50] You could tell from a timing perspective that made things run really smoothly because they informed us better about what the show, what was going on with the show.

[00:11:00] And I bet that was somebody who came out of broadcast media.

[00:11:03] Probably.

[00:11:04] Right.

[00:11:04] Probably.

[00:11:05] Because broadcast media, that's their, their detail.

[00:11:07] That's the jam.

[00:11:08] Oh man.

[00:11:09] They're.

[00:11:09] That's the jam.

[00:11:11] That in theater.

[00:11:12] Well, and we'll even talk about how not having a run of show can actually screw you up.

[00:11:16] And it's actually me and you.

[00:11:18] Uh oh.

[00:11:19] One of a recent workshop we gave where the timing changed and our original timing was for three hours, not 60 minutes or whatever we had.

[00:11:30] And, and it was more on me than you, but, but we didn't take the time to adjust the timings on our presentation and we ran out of time.

[00:11:41] Yeah.

[00:11:42] And that was a, ran out of a lot of time, not even just like a five minute time.

[00:11:46] Yeah.

[00:11:46] We were, yeah, we were way off on that.

[00:11:48] Yeah, but we worked through it.

[00:11:49] No, we did.

[00:11:49] But that's the perfect example.

[00:11:51] Yeah.

[00:11:51] Of that.

[00:11:52] Because if you, if we were able to go back and sit down and time it out well, then we would have been able to not only do a cut.

[00:11:59] Yes.

[00:12:00] But we would have done a cut and a weave, meaning we could have woven certain content throughout that peppered certain things in.

[00:12:07] Yeah.

[00:12:07] Well, I mean, that goes right to the next point, which is the facilitating of last minute changes.

[00:12:13] Right.

[00:12:13] Last minute change.

[00:12:14] Our session is a little bit shorter.

[00:12:16] We could have accommodated for it, but because I didn't do a run of show for that one, we couldn't.

[00:12:22] And, you know, with the last minute changes, what you were saying earlier about, you know, especially with rundown studio or with joy, where you can drag and drop things on the schedule.

[00:12:31] Those last minute changes don't have to be panic anymore.

[00:12:37] No.

[00:12:37] You know, if, you know, let's say that a keynote missed a flight and he's not going to get, he was supposed to go on at 8 a.m.

[00:12:42] And now you're going to put them on at 3 p.m.

[00:12:44] Right.

[00:12:44] Because he's on the next flight and gets in it or she gets in at 12.

[00:12:48] Right.

[00:12:48] With a good run of show tool, you're just dragging that session down to that spot where you want him to be.

[00:12:54] And it adjusts everything else.

[00:12:55] Exactly.

[00:12:56] You're just like, okay.

[00:12:57] Yeah.

[00:12:57] And then the beauty of it is now we're getting, now all the guys, or I should say people, not guys, all the people at the production desk, it's automatically updating for all of them.

[00:13:08] Yep.

[00:13:09] Right.

[00:13:10] So they, when they look down, they're like, oh, all right, it's at three o'clock now.

[00:13:14] Yep.

[00:13:14] And it's rather than Excel.

[00:13:20] It's not built for that.

[00:13:21] No, please don't use Excel for a run of show.

[00:13:24] If that's all you have, please use Excel because it's better than nothing.

[00:13:27] But if you have a little bit of budget, just a few dollars, get a tool.

[00:13:33] Yeah.

[00:13:33] It's like your spine.

[00:13:35] A run of show is almost like a spine.

[00:13:36] Oh, yeah, it is.

[00:13:38] You like that one?

[00:13:38] That just came out of nowhere.

[00:13:40] Holds the whole damn thing together.

[00:13:41] Yep.

[00:13:42] Keeps it upright.

[00:13:43] Exactly.

[00:13:44] That's what we need to put in the show.

[00:13:46] In the show notes.

[00:13:48] To run a show.

[00:13:49] The spine of the show.

[00:13:51] Yes.

[00:13:52] Well, I mean, and it does improve the communication.

[00:13:56] The next point was it improves communication with the staff, but to that spine, it flows out to the central nervous system.

[00:14:03] I'll go on a whole tangent.

[00:14:04] Oh, get it.

[00:14:04] Get it.

[00:14:05] Go ahead.

[00:14:05] Let's do it.

[00:14:06] Because now, you know, that spine is sending signals everywhere else.

[00:14:09] And so with the staff, staff can look at it and they know exactly, you know, your person who's handling backstage, right?

[00:14:19] They know when they need to go get that MC to get them ready to go up on stage.

[00:14:23] They know when the keynote.

[00:14:24] They know when to walk over to where her green room is to make sure she's ready to go.

[00:14:28] Exactly.

[00:14:29] And then, so say for instance, you know, they're doing the walk, the talent walk, right?

[00:14:34] And you can't find them.

[00:14:35] They're milling through a reception or something like that because they're high level talent.

[00:14:40] That person, the handler, the runner, if you will, can have the ability, if you allow them, right, to do that move based on knowing how long it's going to take to walk them back.

[00:14:53] Yeah.

[00:14:53] Then everyone will know based on that move and shift.

[00:14:57] And then it's communicated well.

[00:14:59] Well, and then, you know, and like one of the last events I was on, the audio guy, right?

[00:15:03] He was, you know, he's sitting over there and he's getting panelists mic'd up, right?

[00:15:08] He's going, he's in that run of show and, you know, he knows, oh, I got all these a little bit early, but hey, I'm still missing two.

[00:15:16] Right?

[00:15:16] And so he sends out that call.

[00:15:18] It goes out via the central nervous, through the spine to the central nervous system to start looking for those two people that are missing.

[00:15:25] Yep.

[00:15:26] Bring them on.

[00:15:26] Yeah.

[00:15:27] And, and so I guess the last point we're going to do is.

[00:15:32] Lucky seven.

[00:15:34] Post event analysis.

[00:15:36] The data.

[00:15:37] The aftermath.

[00:15:37] Yeah.

[00:15:38] Yeah.

[00:15:38] And so, you know, I guess the run of show, I guess, is what some people would call the event Bible, right?

[00:15:48] It's the, it's the, because you have that now, you can go back and because notes were made on it as you're going, right?

[00:15:55] Pre and then there are notes actually made to AV guys will put notes on it as they're working.

[00:16:02] Oh yeah.

[00:16:02] Absolutely.

[00:16:03] You can go back and you can look at those notes and that actually now informs you for next year.

[00:16:07] It does.

[00:16:08] It does.

[00:16:11] So what are we saying here, Tess?

[00:16:13] What are we saying?

[00:16:15] I, I think we summed it up with the run of show is the spine of the show.

[00:16:20] And so I, well, and I, you know, I know we're trying to wrap up, but I'm going to say you should have a run of show for every single session.

[00:16:29] Even those crappy little breakouts that happened down in ballroom basement D level in the back where it's just a projector and a screen and maybe four seats for a panel.

[00:16:44] Like even a quick, even if it's just a quick detail, like this person does the introductions, this is panelist one that goes first, this is second, this is third and give that to them beforehand.

[00:16:53] That is a very simple run of show.

[00:16:55] It is.

[00:16:55] Right.

[00:16:56] And it helps them immensely.

[00:16:59] It does.

[00:17:00] So we should leave now.

[00:17:02] The spine of the show.

[00:17:04] Thanks for joining us this week on the event tech pull up.

[00:17:07] Make sure to visit our website, eventtechpullup.com and find us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

[00:17:14] You can subscribe to the show on iTunes, Spotify, and other podcast platforms.

[00:17:20] So you never miss an episode.

[00:17:22] While you're at it, if you found value in this show, we'd appreciate a rating or simply tell a friend about our brand of crazy.

[00:17:30] Interested in becoming a guest?

[00:17:32] Check out the application on our website.

[00:17:34] If you would like Tess, Keith, or both at your next event or in-house training, please email us at tech at eventtechpullup.com.