Speaker agreements are intended to help assure the quality of your event’s content, to protect your event’s reputation, and potentially its legal and financial wellbeing.
They do this by:
This encourages speakers to take those guidelines more seriously and — in the event of a speaker breaching those guidelines — gives you some collateral to manage any PR fallout: “well he did sign an agreement saying that he wouldn’t scream misogynistic vitriol at the female panelists”.
This really depends on the size and type of event you’re running.
For a small trade show where your speakers are promoting themselves, their products and services, and are sharing information that’s already in the public realm, your speaker agreement can probably be quite simple and informal.
However, some scientific, medical or technical conferences could involve speakers sharing new research findings or proprietary innovation, where there needs to be tighter control over how, where and when information is shared.
For example, if the conference is associated with a journal that has exclusive rights to publish the proceedings, you may want speakers to enter into a legally binding contract that prohibits them from presenting the same paper at another conference, or publishing it elsewhere.
Also, if money is changing hands (i.e. you pay your speakers, or reimburse their travel and accommodation costs), you may wish to draw up a legally binding contract. This will set out the terms of who gets what, when. And of course, what happens in the event of a no-show etc.
Depending on your conference, a speaker agreement could include sections on the following:
A quick Google search reveals that there are LOADS of speaker agreement templates out there to choose from. We’ve done some of the leg-work for you and found a selection. Some are free, others are paid-for.
None of the following should be seen as endorsements or recommendations. Ultimately it’s up to you to find one that most closely matches your needs, and if necessary, to decide if it’s worth paying for.
If a legally-binding contract is appropriate for your event, and you choose to download and adapt a template, you should choose one from the appropriate legal jurisdiction (we’ve put this in brackets after each one)…
Lineup Ninja offers speaker management software for exhibitions and conferences. We help event organisers save hours of tedious work by automating many of the repetitive, time-consuming tasks associated with coordinating event content. Sign up for a free trial to see how we can help you.