A run of show is the one document your whole team runs the event from. A good template does not make you a better producer, it just hands you the column structure that has earned its place over hundreds of events, so you are not inventing it at 11pm the night before.
The columns that actually matter
Most templates fail in one of two directions: twenty columns nobody fills in, or four columns that leave out the thing that breaks. Here is the set that pulls its weight on almost every in-person event.
- Start time, in real clock time, not "after lunch, roughly"
- Duration in minutes, so the sheet can recalculate when a block moves
- Cue or segment title, written so a stranger could read it aloud
- Owner, the single name responsible for that block actually happening
- Cue type (stage, AV, catering, transition) so each department scans its own rows
- Notes, for the script line, the lighting state, or the thing that always slips
Make time math, not guesswork
The most common mistake is typing every start time by hand. When the 10:00 keynote runs six minutes long, you do not want to retype the rest of the day under pressure. Build the sheet so start times flow from durations. The run of show builder does this for you, but even a spreadsheet with a running-total formula beats hand-typed times that go stale the moment anything shifts.
One owner per row
"The team" is not an owner. Every row needs exactly one person who is accountable for it firing on time. If two names share a cue, decide now who calls it, because in the room there is no time to negotiate. Owners also turn the run of show into a rehearsal tool: you can walk each person through only their rows.
Start from a real example, then cut
Begin with a populated example for your event type rather than a blank grid. It is far faster to delete rows you do not need than to remember every transition from scratch. Event70 seeds a sensible run of show per event type, so you start with a working draft and shape it. When you are ready to build the real one, start free and your first event is on us.