Here's the short version: an event run of show is a minute-by-minute timeline of everything that happens on stage and behind it — who's speaking, what's on screen, which mic is live, which camera is up, and who cues each transition. It's the one document that lets a planner, a venue AV team, and a video crew all work the same event without talking over each other. If you're running a corporate event with a livestream, a hybrid audience, or more than two people on stage, you need one, and I'll give you a template you can copy at the bottom of this post.
I've produced hundreds of corporate events across Dallas-Fort Worth, and the ones that go smoothly almost always share one thing: someone built a real run of show and everyone actually read it. It's the backbone of every one of my hybrid event best practices, and it's the first document I ask a client for when we start planning. If they don't have one yet, we build it together, and this post is roughly how that conversation goes.
A run of show — sometimes called a rundown, a show flow, or a cue sheet — is a timed list of every segment in your event with the technical details attached to each one. It is written for the people executing the event, not the people attending it.
That last part is where most first-time planners go wrong. The agenda you print for attendees says "9:00 Welcome, 9:15 Keynote." The run of show says "9:00:00 Walk-in music fades, house lights to 50%. 9:00:30 Emcee enters stage left, handheld mic 1 live, Camera 2 wide. 9:01:00 Title slide, program feed to stream. 9:03:00 Emcee introduces keynote, handheld 1 off, lav 2 on, Camera 1 tight on podium." Same event, completely different document.
A run of show is also not a production schedule. The production schedule covers load-in, setup, rehearsal, and strike across the whole day or week. The run of show covers the show itself, from doors-open to the last person off stage. You need both, and they should be separate documents — my livestream event prep checklist covers the schedule side and what to hand your vendor ahead of time.
In a room-only event, a fumbled transition costs you thirty awkward seconds. With a livestream or a recording, that same fumble is permanent, and it's playing to everyone who isn't in the room. The run of show is what prevents it.
Every technical role at a produced event is making decisions in real time: the switcher operator picks which camera the audience sees, the audio engineer decides which mic is open, the graphics operator fires the next slide, the stream operator watches the encoder. None of them can read the emcee's mind. What they can read is a rundown that says what's supposed to happen next and when.
When I get asked to look at why a corporate livestream went badly — and I've written a whole post on why corporate livestreams fail — the answer is very often "nobody knew the panel was going to be five people instead of three" or "the CEO decided to walk into the audience and there was no camera for it." A run of show doesn't stop surprises, but it makes them rare and gives the crew a plan to fall back on.
A working run of show is a spreadsheet, and every segment gets one row. The columns are the same for a 20-minute town hall and a three-day conference; the number of rows is the only difference. These are the columns I build every time.
Time and duration. Real clock time for the start of the segment, plus how long it runs. Hard times (doors open, keynote start, lunch) should be marked as hard so the crew knows which ones can flex and which can't.
Segment name. Plain language: "Welcome," "CEO keynote," "Panel: Q3 results," "Transition to break." Match the names on the attendee agenda so nobody has to translate.
Who's on stage. Names and roles, including the emcee if they're introducing. This is what tells audio how many mics are live and tells video how many people to frame.
Audio. Which mics are active for the segment (lav 1, handheld 2, panel mics 3–6), plus any playback — walk-in music, video audio, a remote presenter feed.
Video and graphics. What's on the screens: title slide, presenter's deck, a video clip, a live camera feed for IMAG, a Q&A prompt. Note the file name for anything played from a laptop.
Camera and stream notes. Primary camera position for the segment, anything special (speaker walks, product demo at a table), and what the stream audience should be seeing if it differs from the room — for example, a slide-plus-speaker layout for remote viewers while the room sees full-screen slides.
Cue and owner. Who calls the transition and what the cue is. "Emcee says 'please welcome' → lights up, walk-on music, Camera 2 wide" is a cue. "Somewhere around 9:15" is not.
Notes. Everything else: the speaker prefers a handheld, the video has three seconds of black at the start, the panel moderator will take questions from Slido, the award winner needs a clear path from table 14.
You don't need special software. A shared spreadsheet, built in the right order, is faster than most dedicated tools and easier to hand to a venue. Here's the sequence that works.
Start from the attendee agenda and drop every item into its own row with a start time and duration. Then add the transitions between them — the walk-ons, the emcee handoffs, the "we'll be back in ten minutes" moments. Transitions are where events fall apart, so they get their own rows.
Next, go row by row and fill in who's on stage and what's on screen. This is where you'll find the gaps: the panel that never got a moderator, the award segment with no slide, the sponsor video nobody has a file for yet. Finding those on a Tuesday two weeks out is the whole point.
Then send it to your production vendor and let them add the technical columns — mics, cameras, stream layout, cues. If you've hired a company that knows what it's doing, they'll come back with questions, and every one of those questions is a problem you just avoided on event day. I've written about what to expect when you hire a livestream company, and "they ask for the run of show and improve it" is near the top of that list.
Finally, walk through it live in rehearsal. Not a read-through — an actual walk-through with the emcee on stage, the mics live, and the crew calling cues. Thirty minutes of that finds more problems than three days of email.
If part of your audience is remote, the run of show needs a few things a room-only event doesn't. This is the part most templates skip, and it's the part that determines whether your remote viewers feel like they're at the event or watching security-camera footage of it.
Stream start and end times. The stream usually goes live before the room program starts — with a holding slide or countdown — and stays up briefly after. Put both in the rundown so the operator isn't guessing.
Remote presenter segments. Anyone joining by video call gets a row with a tech-check time, a join link owner, and a plan for what the room sees while they're connecting. Remote presenters fail more often than anything else on a hybrid show, so we always have a backup segment ready.
What the stream shows during breaks. Sponsor loop, agenda slide, "back at 10:45" card — decide it now. Dead air on a stream reads as a broken stream.
Q&A routing. Where remote questions come from (chat, Slido, a moderator's inbox), who reads them, and when. If the answer is "the emcee will check their phone," that's a row that needs work.
Layout changes. When the room sees full-screen slides, remote viewers usually want speaker-plus-slides. Note where layouts change so the switcher operator has it in front of them. My post on keeping remote attendees engaged at a hybrid event goes deeper on why these details matter.
For multi-day programs, each day gets its own tab and the whole thing gets a cover sheet with the crew call times. The logistics of that are their own topic — see what changes when you livestream a multi-day conference.
Copy this into a spreadsheet and you have a working run of show. One row per segment; add rows for every transition. Columns, left to right: Start time · Duration · Segment · On stage · Audio · Screens / graphics · Camera / stream · Cue & owner · Notes.
Here's what the first few rows of a typical corporate general session look like filled in:
8:30 · 30 min · Doors open / walk-in — On stage: nobody. Audio: walk-in playlist at low level. Screens: welcome slide with Wi-Fi and agenda. Camera/stream: stream live at 8:45 on holding card, wide shot of room. Cue: stage manager at 8:59:30 calls "standby." Notes: house lights full.
9:00 · 3 min · Welcome (emcee) — On stage: emcee. Audio: handheld 1 live, music fades. Screens: event title slide. Camera/stream: Camera 2 medium on emcee, stream cuts from holding card to program. Cue: emcee walks on at music button, owner = stage manager. Notes: emcee will mention the app — have QR slide ready.
9:03 · 40 min · Keynote — CEO — On stage: CEO. Audio: lav 2 on, handheld 1 off. Screens: CEO deck (file: Keynote_v4.pptx), advanced by presenter. Camera/stream: Camera 1 tight on podium, Camera 3 for audience reactions; stream layout speaker-plus-slides. Cue: emcee says "please welcome" → walk-on music, lights to keynote look. Notes: CEO tends to step off the mark — Camera 1 op stays loose.
9:43 · 2 min · Transition to panel — On stage: emcee, then panelists. Audio: handheld 1 on, lav 2 off, panel mics 3–6 checked live during walk-on. Screens: panel title slide with names. Camera/stream: Camera 2 wide for walk-on. Cue: emcee introduces panel by name, owner = emcee. Notes: chairs and water preset at 8:15.
That's it. Keep going until the last row is "strike," and you'll have a document your whole crew can run from.
Most run-of-show problems come from one of a few habits, and they're all fixable in a few minutes once you know to look for them.
No transition rows. The rundown jumps from keynote to panel with nothing in between. The panel walk-on, the mic swap, and the slide change all happen in that gap, and nobody owns them.
Durations that don't add up. If the segments total 4 hours 20 minutes and the room is booked for 4 hours, the event is going to run late and the crew will be improvising by lunch. Total the column.
Missing file names. "Play sponsor video" means someone is searching a desktop live on stage. Every video, deck, and audio file gets a name and an owner who confirmed it plays.
No "what the stream sees" column. The room program and the remote program are different products. If the rundown only describes the room, the stream operator is guessing.
Version chaos. Five people editing five copies. Put it in one shared document, mark the version and date, and freeze it 24 hours before the show. Changes after that go verbally to the stage manager and get written in one place.
Never rehearsed. A run of show that's only been read is a hypothesis. Walk it once with the crew, even if it's the morning of.
Earlier than you'd think. The best time to hand a draft run of show to your video or livestream vendor is the moment it has segments and rough times — usually three to four weeks out for a single-day event, longer for a conference. That gives them time to plan camera positions, staff the show correctly, and flag things like a remote presenter who needs a tech check or a panel that needs two more mics than the venue has.
If you're still choosing a vendor, the run of show is a useful test. Send a draft and see what comes back. A crew that just says "looks good" is going to show up and react. A crew that sends back questions about cues, mic counts, and what the stream should show during breaks is going to show up prepared. I covered how to time that hiring decision in how far in advance to book a livestream company.
If you've got a draft and want a second set of eyes on it before your event, grab 20 minutes with me. I'll walk through it with you and point out where the gaps are, whether or not we end up producing the show.
A run of show is a minute-by-minute timeline of everything that happens during an event, with the technical details attached — who's on stage, which mics are live, what's on screen, which camera is up, and who calls each transition. It's written for the crew and planners executing the event, not for attendees.
The agenda is the attendee-facing summary: session names and start times. The run of show is the operational version with transitions, cues, audio and video details, and owners for each step. They should match on segment names and times, but the run of show has far more rows and columns.
Usually both. The planner drafts the segments, timing, and who's on stage; the production vendor adds the technical columns for audio, cameras, graphics, and stream. The earlier the vendor gets the draft, the more problems they can catch before event day.
A shared spreadsheet works for most corporate events and is the easiest thing to hand to a venue or crew. Dedicated rundown tools exist and are helpful for very large or multi-day shows, but the format matters more than the tool: one row per segment, consistent columns, one shared version.
Detailed enough that someone who wasn't in any planning meeting could run the show from it. That means every transition gets a row, every file gets a name, and every cue has an owner. If a segment's row is empty in the audio or screens column, that's a gap to fill, not a segment that doesn't need it.
Yes, even a 30-minute one. The stream needs a start time, a holding card, a plan for Q&A, and an end time, and the presenters need to know when they're live. A short run of show for a short event is still the difference between a clean broadcast and an awkward one.
Freeze it 24 hours before the event, after a rehearsal walk-through. Changes after the freeze go verbally to the stage manager and get recorded in one master copy so the crew isn't working from conflicting versions.
Beyond the standard columns, add stream start and end times, a plan for what remote viewers see during breaks, tech-check times for any remote presenters, a routing plan for remote Q&A, and notes on when the stream layout changes. Those are the rows that keep the remote audience from feeling like an afterthought.
