The preparation for an event moderation runs in five steps: a briefing with the organiser, research into topics and audience, preliminary calls with speakers, alignment of the run sheet and a rehearsal on the event day. Depending on the format, several days to several weeks of work lie between booking and stage, and the audience never sees them.
Step 1: the briefing
Everything starts with a conversation of about an hour. The host clarifies what the event is meant to achieve, who is in the room, which messages have to land and where the sensitive spots are: an ongoing restructuring, a critical mood, a topic that does not belong on stage. What a good briefing contains is listed in the briefing checklist.
Steps 2 and 3: research and speaker calls
Then the host works alone: she reads the agenda, last year's material and the speaker profiles, learns names and pronunciation, collects facts and figures about the company. From this material she builds introductions, transitions and questions. For content heavy formats, preliminary calls follow: 20 to 30 minutes with keynote speakers or panellists, so that introductions carry weight and follow up questions on stage hit the mark. Jasmin Wölke prepares multi day formats the same way; before the three stage days of the Bosch Global Sales Summit came weeks of working through sales topics from 40 countries.
Step 4: the run sheet
A week before the event at the latest, the run sheet is aligned: programme items to the minute, responsibilities, technology, buffers. The host checks it from a stage perspective: where is time missing for walking distances and set changes, which transition needs a bridge, where does the energy dip after lunch. How such a plan is structured is shown on the event run sheet page.
Step 5: the event day before the event
On the day itself, the host arrives well before the guests. Sound and light check, alignment with the production team and the event lead, working in last minute changes, a short voice check on stage. Only then does the visible part of the job begin. Late changes are the normal case, not the exception: a speaker drops out, a slot moves, a message is added. Well prepared moderation absorbs this without the room ever noticing.
What you as an organiser can do now
For an enquiry, the date, the location and the type of event are enough; everything else is clarified in the briefing. The earlier the host is confirmed, the more preparation fits into the calendar. How a booking works in detail is described on the book a moderator page.