Speaker Management Software

A conference program is only as reliable as its speaker data. Organizers spend weeks collecting biographies and headshots, correcting job titles, confirming who presents which session, and then copying all of it into the website, the printed program and the event app. Every late change has to be made in several places, and one of them usually gets missed.

Speaker management software keeps one record per speaker and publishes it everywhere attendees look. The better tools also let speakers maintain their own details, so the program team reviews and publishes rather than retypes. A complete speaker record holds:

• Name, title, organization, email, photo and biography
• Website and social links
• The sessions each speaker presents
• Links to related exhibitors, such as a keynote sponsor
• Whether the speaker can edit their own profile and session details
• The invitations and emails the speaker has been sent

In Map D, speakers live under Speakers & Schedule in the show sidebar, available when your show includes Speakers & Schedules. There are three ways to bring them in.

1. 1

   Add Speakers One at a Time

   Select Add speaker and fill in the name, title, organization, email, photo, biography, website and social links, then select Create speaker.

2. 2

   Import a Speaker List

   Select Import CSV and upload a file in the template format, with columns such as first_name, last_name, prefix, suffix, title, organization, email, biography, avatar_url and social_links. Choose Append to existing speakers or Replace all existing speakers.

3. 3

   Bring In Accepted Authors

   If your show runs a Call for Papers, Add accepted to schedule turns presenting authors into speakers, or matches them to an existing speaker with the same email.

Turn on Keynote speaker to mark a keynote: their card and profile on your Homebase say Keynote instead of Speaker, and the speaker list shows a Keynote tag. After saving a speaker, the Related exhibitors tab links them to exhibitor companies, which is how a sponsored keynote shows its sponsor. If your program comes from submitted papers, see how abstract management software hands accepted authors over with their bios and headshots.

Chasing speakers for a new headshot or a corrected bio is one of the most repetitive parts of speaker management. Map D lets you give each speaker an account and decide exactly what they can change, from Account overview and global actions at the top of the speaker list.

Speakers accept the invitation, set a password and sign in to My Profiles. A sensible default is to let every speaker edit their profile while keeping session editing with the program team, so titles, times and rooms change only when you decide.

Speaker emails go out from the Email Center under Setup & Settings, personalized for each recipient. Speaker emails can use {{Session_Title}} and {{Session_Time}} alongside standard placeholders such as {{First_Name}} and {{Event_Title}}. Set the sender name and reply-to address once so replies reach your program team. The automatic invitation emails Map D sends to speakers are edited separately under Notifications Setup.

Subject: Your session at {{Event_Title}}

Hi {{First_Name}},

Thank you for speaking at {{Event_Title}}. Here are your session details:

Session: {{Session_Title}}
Time: {{Session_Time}}
Room: [ROOM NAME]

Please check in at the speaker ready room [NUMBER] minutes before your session. Slides are due by [DATE] in [FORMAT].

If your bio or headshot needs an update, sign in to your speaker profile before [DATE].

Thank you,
[ORGANIZER NAME]
[PHONE]

For the paperwork that comes before logistics, start from our speaker bio template and speaker agreement template.

• Your Homebase Speakers page, with keynotes labeled, and each speaker named on their sessions in the schedule
• Your mobile app, where attendees can share a speaker with a link that opens the app or the Homebase page
• Session check-in, feedback, live polls and Q&A in the app, set up under Mobile View
• The Analytics tab, which shows your most viewed speakers and the share of speakers that were viewed
• Speaker and schedule reports you can filter, sort and export as CSV

Before you open the event, Event Checkup lists speakers without a bio, photo or title and sessions with no speaker, so gaps are caught before attendees see them. See how sessions come together in the conference agenda builder and how profiles appear on your event website.

• Can you import speakers from a spreadsheet and choose between appending and replacing?
• Can speakers sign in to update their own profile?
• Can you control, per speaker, whether they edit their profile, their sessions, or both?
• Do accepted call for papers authors become speakers without retyping?
• Can you mark keynotes and link speakers to sponsors?
• Do profiles publish to your website and app from one record?
• Does the system flag missing bios, photos and sessions with no speaker?
• Can you email speakers with their own session title and time?