Everything you need to decide, book and brief Rahim Hirji

Rahim presents from his own laptop using his own slides.

• A display connection. HDMI is easiest; he travels with his own adapters.
• A microphone. Handheld or lapel, whichever is simpler for your AV team.
• A clicker, ideally, so he can move away from the lectern.
• A confidence monitor if available, or any arrangement that lets him see the slide without turning round. If neither is possible, say so in advance.

That is the whole list. No specific lectern, no minimum stage size, no request to be the only speaker in the session.

Lead time. Six to twelve weeks is usually enough for a UK date; three to six months for international in person. Shorter lead times are often possible for virtual, and sometimes for in person where the diary is free and the talk already exists in the form you need.

• Keynote, 45 to 60 minutes, or 30 for a main stage. Up to 90 with questions; longer than that rarely improves it.
• Keynote with Q&A, 60 to 90. The questions are usually the better half.
• Fireside or in conversation, 30 to 45.
• Panel. Happy to sit on one or to chair it.
• Workshop or leadership session, half or full day. A different commission from a talk, prepared and priced differently.

Book signings welcome where the event has bought copies; your bookseller or Kogan Page will arrange them, usually on sale or return.

• Delivered from a proper set-up: wired connection, decent camera and lighting, a second screen for the audience.
• Any platform you already use.
• A technical run-through beforehand, always, at no extra charge. Fifteen minutes on the actual platform prevents almost every problem that ruins an online session.
• Forty minutes online is closer in weight to sixty in a room. Plan accordingly.
• Hybrid needs a decision rather than a compromise: tell us which audience is the primary one.

One call, thirty minutes, three to six weeks out. That is all the tailoring requires. The questions:

• Who is in the room, by seniority and function, and how many.
• What they already believe about AI, and whether they agree with each other.
• What your organisation is currently arguing about internally on this subject.
• What has already been said to this audience that this must not repeat.
• What you want them doing differently in a month, as a behaviour rather than a feeling.
• Who in the room would most like the session not to happen, and why.

The last one is not mischief. Knowing where the resistance sits is what stops a talk being pitched at the wrong altitude. An anonymised pre-event survey can also be run: five questions, no personal data captured, results shared with you.

• He presents from his own laptop. Slides through the venue machine go wrong often enough to be firm about.
• A PDF holding slide is available in advance if you need something for the master deck. The live deck is not.
• Afterwards, a PDF for internal use. Circulate it inside your organisation as widely as you like. It may not go outside, be posted publicly, or be passed to a third party.
• No editable files. PDF only.
• Recording: yes, at no extra cost. Internal use unrestricted and perpetual.
• External or public use needs one email first. The answer is usually yes with a condition about context.
• Q&A can be excluded from the recording, and often should be.
• Tell the audience they are being filmed in the joining instructions, and give them a way to opt out of appearing.

• Arrival at least an hour before, and a technical check as soon as the room is free.
• Happy to sit through the session before his; it is usually the difference between a talk that fits the day and one written somewhere else.
• Meet and greets, receptions and dinners all fine. Say so in advance so travel is planned around them.
• What he needs from you: the run of show, who is on before and after, and any internal context the room will be carrying that day.

Not a condition of anything, but hard for a speaker to obtain and easy for a host to provide.

• A copy of the recording, in whatever quality you have. Footage of a real room is the hardest asset for a speaker to get hold of.
• Two or three photographs, ideally one wide enough to show the audience.
• Permission to name you as a client. If that needs comms sign-off, say so and nothing is published until it is given. If the answer is no, nothing appears anywhere.
• Two lines about whether it worked, attributable.

Most conference keynotes come in around £10,000. Four things move it: the time I commit, travel, how much competition there is for the diary that month, and how far the talk is built for your room. A bespoke session costs more because it does more for the people in it. Shorter slots, repeat bookings, charities and virtual sessions sit under the median; international travel and new research for your sector sit above it. Tell me the room and the date and you have a number within 24 hours.

Advisory starts from £5,000. Assignments are scoped one at a time and most are five-figure; a retainer is monthly, from £5,000 a month, and I take on no more than a handful at once. Schools, universities and charities are quoted differently.

One rule: outside London, you book the travel and you pay for it. Your rates are better than his, your finance team is not chasing a reimbursement three months later, and nobody is out of pocket for a long-haul fare while waiting to be paid.

• London. Nothing at all. No travel, no accommodation, no expenses.
• Elsewhere in the UK. You book and pay the transport, plus a room the night before where the timing means an early start.
• Overseas. You book and pay the flights. Arrival the night before, always. Coach under five hours, economy plus from five, business from eight. Fares are quoted from London Heathrow unless something else is agreed in writing.
• Accommodation. Standard room, bed and breakfast, at or near the venue. Normally two nights overseas.
• If your process cannot book on his behalf, he will book it and invoice at cost before travel rather than after the event, with the itinerary sent for approval first.
• Only incidentals are reimbursed: airport transfers, visas, the things nobody can book in advance. At cost, with receipts, invoiced with the fee. No per diem, no markup.

If your organisation has a standard travel policy, send it. In almost every case it is accepted as written.

• Fifty per cent on booking, which secures the date, and fifty on the day. Inside two weeks, the full fee on booking.
• Card payments accepted, in whatever split you need. Several clients use this to route around their own purchase-order process.
• If your procurement cannot do that, say so early. Purchase-order processes usually cannot, and a sensible variation is almost always agreed.
• Purchase orders are quoted on the invoice. Please raise it before the event; it is the most common cause of late payment.
• Tell us the exact legal entity to bill. Accounts payable systems reject rather than query.

Company details, registration number, registered address, VAT status and bank details are sent on request, on letterhead, in one message, so your supplier portal takes ten minutes rather than three weeks. One thing worth knowing: if you ever receive an email saying his bank details have changed, it did not come from him. That is a common fraud against event suppliers and their clients. Telephone to check before paying anything.

The contract. Whichever is less work for you: your own services agreement, usually signed as written, or a one-page letter of engagement covering date, fee, format and cancellation. Electronic signature is fine.

Cancellation. Cancel more than two weeks out and the deposit is retained, with nothing further owed; inside two weeks the full fee stands. Postponement is not cancellation: move once within twelve months and the deposit moves with it. If he cancels, everything paid is returned and help finding a replacement comes with it. Committed travel costs are payable either way.

Intellectual property. The frameworks, research and material remain his; your organisation receives an unrestricted licence to use the recording and content internally, indefinitely. That clause is the only thing routinely added to a client contract and has not yet been refused.

• Tax forms. W-8BEN for United States payers and equivalent residency documentation elsewhere, completed on request. Ask at contracting rather than invoicing to avoid a delay of weeks.
• Non-disclosure agreements signed where a session touches confidential strategy, which is often.
• Passport, visa and security clearance details provided through a secure channel where travel or site access requires them. Never over ordinary email, and be wary of anyone who agrees to.
• Insurance, DBS and safeguarding requirements vary by organisation. Tell us what your policy needs at the contracting stage and it will be in place before the date.

Rarely about the sector, almost always about the brief.

• A conclusion decided before the session. If the answer the room must reach is already in the brief, the session is a performance of deliberation.
• Cover for a decision already taken, so a restructure or a purchase can be described afterwards as externally validated.
• A brief that requires arguing against the research. Disagreeing with the argument is welcome; abandoning it in the room is not.
• Approval rights over what may be said. Reviewing slides for accuracy, confidentiality or brand fit is normal and welcome.
• A room that has not been told why it is there.

None of this is a comment on any organisation that has asked. Every one came from a brief rather than a name, and in most cases a conversation resolved it.