The production-level document your team actually needs on event day
Your event day play-by-play. Two professional samples, a fillable template, a step-by-step guide, and five bonuses to help you build the minute-by-minute production document your team reads in real time on event day.
Instant delivery. All files ready to download immediately
On event day, every person working your event needs to know exactly what’s happening, when it’s happening, where it’s happening, and who’s responsible for making it happen. Your host, your A/V team, your registration staff, your speaker hosts, your venue partners. All of them.
That’s what a run-of-show does. It’s the detailed, minute-by-minute production document that maps every session, every transition, every mic swap, every lighting cue, and every behind-the-scenes moment from the first staff meeting to the final teardown. When everyone has one, everyone can do their job.
Everything that’s included
How to build your run-of-show
The full instructional guide. A step-by-step build process, formatting tips, troubleshooting, and a side-by-side showing how a schedule, an agenda, and a run-of-show are different.
Sample: 1-day retreat
25 attendees. Every session documented with lighting cues, music cues, mic swap instructions, staff roster, and materials list.
Sample: 2.5-day industry conference
200 attendees. Keynotes, breakout tracks, evening events, closing ceremony with full production cues. Rehearsal windows, speaker arrivals, transition notes, and staff assignments
Blank run-of-show template
The structure is set up and ready to fill in. Copy it into Google Docs and start building yours.
Plus four bonuses
Venue walkthrough checklist
All items organized by area. Print it, bring it, walk every space before guests arrive, and confirm the setup matches the plan.
Day-of team briefing
The quick-reference sheet every team member carries on event day. Contacts, assignments, and a “if something goes wrong” section.
Post-event debrief
Questions to answer within 48 hours while everything is still fresh.
Quick-reference run-of-show glossary card
Every term defined in plain language on a single printable page. Keep it next to your laptop while you build.
4 documents. 4 bonuses. Everything you need to build the minute-by-minute production document your team reads in real time on event day.
Instant delivery. All files ready to download immediately
A note from Arielle
I’ve spent 15+ years backstage at events, from intimate retreats to conferences with over a thousand attendees. I’ve been the person with the binder and the printed run-of-show, making sure every transition, every mic swap, and every “what happens in between” moment went exactly as planned.
Everything in this toolkit is built from real experience running real events. This is what professional backstage documents look like, and now you can build your own.
FAQs
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Yes. The instructional guide walks you through every step, from gathering your materials to writing your first transition note. The two samples show you exactly what the finished product looks like. And the blank template gives you the structure so you're not starting from scratch.
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The 1-day retreat sample is built for 25 attendees. Even at a smaller scale, a run-of-show gives every person on your team the same information: what's happening, when, and what they're responsible for. That clarity matters whether you have 3 staff or 30.
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The conference sample covers 200 attendees with multiple breakout tracks, evening events, and a full host team. The structure scales up from there. Once you understand how a Run-of-show works at this level, adapting it for a larger event is a matter of adding blocks and staff, not rethinking the approach.
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The instructional guide and bonuses are designed PDFs. The samples, blank template, and briefing templates are delivered as Google Docs you can copy.
If you want everyone working your event to know exactly what’s happening and when, this is the document that makes that possible.
Instant delivery. All files ready to download immediately.