I was thumbing through the most recent issue of Associations Now and was incredulous at the article “What a speaker wants.” The publication interviewed some awesome association people, including Joan L. Eisenstodt, Leslie White and Jeffrey Cufaude.

I was blown away that many times, the speakers didn’t know exactly who the audience was going to be! Isn’t that the most important thing when planning a speech or session? Of course, your speaker’s area of expertise doesn’t change, but the people to whom they’re speaking do.

When you’re scheduling speakers for your next conference, meeting or event, here are some things to tell your speakers:

• Audience demographics and professional experience
• Audiovisual and room set-up information
• How flexible is the room set-up?
• Are there opportunities to speak to audience members before the even to learn about their expectations?
• Does the audience have experience with new and social technologies, if applicable?
• If any organizations have difficult names to pronounce, phonetic spellings can be helpful
• Is the audience used to holding Q&A’s at the end of the session, or during it?
• Will there be a Twitter feed for the conference?
• Will there be a Twitter backchannel used during the sessions?
• Give them information on the entire event. Background info is a must.

Some of this information is readily available, and there’s no reason speakers shouldn’t have access to it.

Check one of Jeff Hurt’s archived blog posts: How to help your conference speakers succeed. There are some great links as well as downloadable forms to guide both you and your speaker.

Image credit: Flickr