Conference and General Session Production
Multi-day conferences, annual meetings and general sessions produced end to end: screens, audio, lighting, show calling, breakouts and the rehearsal that makes the whole thing look easy.
The general session sets the tone for the whole event
Attendees decide what they think of your conference in the first ten minutes of the opening session. If the walk-in music is dead air, the first slide is a Windows desktop, and the CEO’s lav mic pops on a hard consonant, you have spent your entire production budget and started in a hole.
We produce the general session as a show with a running order, not as a room with equipment in it. Walk-in, open, welcome, keynote, video roll, panel, awards, close. Every one of those is a cue, someone calls it, and the room never has a moment where nothing is happening and nobody knows why.
That instinct comes from the DJ side of our business, which is where this company started. A DJ learns fast that silence kills a room. The same rule applies to a 600-person annual meeting.
What a full general session includes
Stage and set
Deck, stairs, skirting and a backdrop that reads as intentional. That can be soft goods, a set wall, an LED wall as the backdrop, or a combination. See staging, truss and rigging for how we build it.
Screens
Single center screen, dual flanking screens, or an LED video wall, sized to the room and the back row. Confidence monitors for presenters. Countdown clocks between sessions so breaks actually end on time.
Audio
Column or line array PA covering the whole room evenly, lectern mic, handhelds for Q and A, lavs for presenters who move, and an engineer riding it live. Full detail on the corporate audio page.
Lighting
Front light so faces read on camera and from the back of the room, stage wash, and color on the set or the walls to carry your brand. See drapery and design lighting.
Playback, switching and show control
A show machine running the deck and video rolls, a backup cued to the same point, a switcher with preview, and a technician on it for the entire session. Nothing gets to the screen that we have not seen first.
Show calling
Someone on headset calling the running order to the audio engineer, the lighting op, the video op and the stage manager. On a session with more than about four segments this is the difference between a show and a series of awkward pauses.
Breakouts, meals and the rest of the schedule
Conferences are not one room. They are a general session, six breakouts, a lunch that needs a mic, a reception with music, and an awards dinner that has to feel different from everything that came before it.
- Breakout rooms with a screen, a projector or display, a speaker and a wireless mic, set and tested before the first session
- A single point of contact who knows the whole schedule rather than one tech per room who knows only their own
- Room turns handled between sessions, including reset of the general session room for an evening event
- Meal-function audio that is loud enough to hear over cutlery and quiet enough to let people talk
- Reception and after-party sound and lighting, often with one of our DJs
- Recording or streaming feeds pulled clean off the board rather than a camcorder in the back
We price the whole schedule as one job, in simple line items, so you are not getting a separate invoice for each room and guessing what overlaps.
Rehearsal is not optional
The single biggest predictor of whether a general session goes well is whether there was a real rehearsal. Not a walkthrough, not a sound check, an actual run of the top of the show with the people who will be on stage.
We load in the day before whenever the venue allows it. That gives us focus time, a full tech check, and a window to walk every presenter through their entrance, their mic, their clicker and where to look. Presenters who have stood on the stage once behave completely differently when the room is full.
When the venue only gives you same-day access, we build early and protect the rehearsal window rather than letting it get eaten by setup. If a schedule genuinely has no room for a rehearsal, we will tell you what that risks before you sign anything.
What it costs
Straight answer, because the internet is full of AV companies that will not give you one.
- Around $4,000 gets you entry-level corporate production: one screen, projection or a display, PA, a couple of wireless mics, basic lighting and a technician for a single-day event.
- Up to roughly $50,000 covers a typical single-day event for 100 to 500 people with a proper general session, multiple screens or an LED wall, full audio, lighting design and crew.
- $80,000 to $100,000 is the range for our largest productions, multi-day conferences and events with heavy video, large LED, extensive lighting and multiple rooms running at once.
Those are honest ranges, not anchors. What moves the number most is the number of rooms, how much video is involved, and whether the schedule forces same-day setup. We quote in simple line items and we do not nickel and dime.
Where we work
Most of our conference work is in Greensboro, Winston-Salem, High Point, Burlington, Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill and Charlotte, and we travel the East Coast including Virginia and South Carolina. We are the in-house AV company at Legacy Stables & Events in Winston-Salem and The Merrimon-Wynne House in Raleigh.
Questions we get about conference and general session production
How far in advance should we book a conference?
Six to twelve months for anything multi-day or over 300 people, mostly because that is when the venue, the dates and your speaker lineup lock. We have turned around full general sessions in under a month when we had the gear available, but the planning is always better with time.
Do you handle breakout rooms too, or just the main room?
Both, and we would rather do both. When one company covers the general session and the breakouts, there is one schedule, one crew chief and one invoice, and nobody is arguing in the hallway about who was supposed to set the mic in Salon C.
Can you work with our venue’s in-house AV?
Yes, and sometimes that is the right call. Some venues require you to use their house system for certain elements or charge a fee to bring in outside gear. Tell us the venue early and we will find out exactly what the rules are and price around them honestly.
Who runs the show on the day?
Our crew chief runs the technical show and calls cues. You bring whoever owns the agenda on your side, and the two of them work off the same running order. For larger sessions we add a dedicated show caller so the crew chief can stay on the technical side.
Can you record or stream the general session?
Yes. We pull clean audio off the board and clean video off the switcher, so a recording sounds and looks like the show rather than like a phone in the back row. We can record for later use, stream to a platform you already use, or both.
What happens if a presenter changes their deck the morning of?
It happens at every conference. Send it to us as early as you can and we will load it, check the aspect ratio, and confirm the video embeds actually play. Our graphics team can also clean it up if it landed in a different template than everything else.
Do you provide a stage manager?
On larger shows, yes. Someone backstage getting presenters miked, lined up and onto the stage at the right moment. On smaller sessions the crew chief covers it. We will tell you which one your show needs rather than adding a position you will not use.
Is there a discount for multi-day events?
Effectively yes, because gear that stays in the room does not get charged as a fresh rental each day. A three-day conference is not three times the price of a one-day conference, and our quote will show you that in the line items.
Are you insured, and can you send a certificate?
Yes. We carry general liability, commercial auto and workers’ compensation insurance, and we issue certificates of insurance naming your venue or client as additional insured, usually the same day you ask. Most hotels, convention centres, hospitals and campus buildings require one before load-in. Send us the venue’s requirements and we will deal with their risk department directly.
Send us your run of show
Or just the dates, the venue and roughly how many people. We will come back with a real proposal in simple line items, not a placeholder number.