After 5 EventsDate and headcount lock the venue
Work backwards from the day. The date is often negotiable inside a window — a week of possible Thursdays, the second half of a quarter — and that window closes the moment someone fixes the date. Venue availability closes the window, not the other way around.
Headcount is the other half of the same problem. A hundred people and two hundred people do not occupy the same room with different table configurations; they occupy different buildings. Decide the likely range early, then confirm the floor inside it, because the venue contract is the first real commitment and the one everything else relies on.
The format follows the venue
Most conferences run a main programme in a plenary hall, then break into smaller sessions in side rooms or move into an evening format in the same space or nearby. The question is whether one venue can do both, or whether there is a move between them, and that decision is architectural.
A venue that does both well is rare and books early. A venue that does one part well and the other tolerably is common. Two separate venues — conference hall until six, restaurant or club for the evening — means moving people, moving some of the kit, or rigging twice. That costs and it creates a gap in the schedule that has to be managed. Decide early whether the evening is in the same building or not, because the technical plan splits from there.
The technical plan, session by session
Every speaker expects a working microphone, their slides visible from the back row, and a laptop connection that does not fail in front of their colleagues. The AV specification is not a luxury rider; it is the infrastructure the programme depends on.
Write the session list: how many speakers, how many parallel tracks, whether there is a panel that needs multiple microphones, whether any session is recorded or streamed, whether Q&A happens from the floor and needs radio mics in the audience. Each of those changes the rig.
The cost moves with the number of microphones, the projection surface, whether sound has to cover multiple zones, and whether someone needs to be on a mixing desk the entire day or can walk away after morning setup. Decide the technical scope early — it takes longer to source and costs more if rushed.
Catering is scheduled, not ordered
Coffee breaks are structural. They clear the room, they reset attention, and if they run late the afternoon programme compresses into the time the evening event needs for setup. Lunch is the same: if service drifts, the first afternoon session starts behind schedule and the delay compounds.
Decide the break times when the programme is drafted, not when the catering quote comes back. The caterer needs to know when food must appear, not what the organiser wishes would happen, because the kitchen and the service staff work to a fixed sequence that cannot bend around a session running over.
What the last week is for
The week before is not when decisions are made; it is when the instructions written earlier are executed. The run-sheet goes to every supplier — venue, AV, catering, the evening band or DJ if there is one — and every supplier confirms their part of it. The organisers walk the route the guests will, physically, and see where signage is needed, where registration will be, whether the distance between the conference hall and the evening space is walkable or requires shuttles.
Anything new that appears in the last week — a speaker added, a dietary requirement that changes table counts, a livestream decided late — doubles its cost in time or in money, because the crew that could have done it are already committed elsewhere.
The day itself, hour by hour
Arrival is controlled registration, not a queue outside a locked door. Somebody is there early, the desk is set, the name badges are alphabetical, and the first session starts on time because the room was ready before anyone arrived.
Between sessions, the changeover is rehearsed: who moves off stage, who moves on, whose laptop connects, how the microphone handoff happens if there is one. The crew has a run-sheet with session times and knows when each break begins. The organiser's job during the day is to see the plan executed, not to solve problems that should have been anticipated earlier.
The evening event — if there is one — begins while the day is ending, and the transition is where exhaustion shows. If the evening is in the same space, the room must be reset: chairs moved, tables brought in or cleared, the AV refocused for a different layout. If the evening is elsewhere, people need to know where they are going and when, and the crew needs time to pack the day and rig the night.
Two events or one continuous schedule
The conference and the evening are often treated as separate budgets and separate briefs, forwarded to different subcontractors who meet on-site for the first time. That produces a gap in responsibility exactly where the highest risk sits: the changeover, the move, the moment when the format switches and something that was assumed turns out not to be true.
The alternative is one crew that planned both parts, quoted both, and whose people run both — production staff who know the day's rig because they built it, and the evening's room because the same hands are setting it. That is not a pitch; it is a description of how the work is actually organised when the same company does all of it.
What to settle before calling anyone
You now face the decision to plan this internally or to bring in the people who will build it. If you bring them in, settle the date range, the likely headcount, and whether the evening is part of the same brief or a separate question before the first conversation. Those three points determine whether the venue exists, what it costs, and how the rest of the schedule must be written.
After 5 Events is the production team writing this guide — the crew that rigs the conference hall, runs the sound for the day, and builds the evening event if both are part of the same plan.