How well do you prep your speakers before your events?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.Image credit: Flickr