Speakers

Speakers are the people who present at your event — keynote talks, panels, workshops, or any other format where someone takes the stage. Mercleo Events tracks them in two places: an event roster per event, and an org-wide speakers directory that persists across events.

The speakers feature requires a Pro plan. On lower plans the Speakers tab appears locked. Upgrade from your workspace billing settings to unlock it.

Adding a speaker to the event

Open your event, go to ?tab=speakers, and click Add speaker. The form asks for a name (required) and optional email, company, job title, status, and speaker type.

If the email you enter matches an existing contact in your workspace, Mercleo links the speaker to that contact automatically. When the existing contact has a weak auto-derived name, it overwrites the name with what you typed. If no matching contact exists, Mercleo creates a new contact via your contacts directory.

You can also add speakers from the org-wide speakers directory at /speakers. Anyone in that directory can be added to any event roster without re-entering their details.

Speaker fields

Each speaker on an event roster has base contact fields (pulled from the linked contact) plus per-event overrides you can set without touching the contact record.

• Bio override — an event-specific bio that replaces the contact's default bio on this event's microsite and schedule. Leave it blank to fall back to the contact bio.
• Headshot — an event-specific photo. When set, it overrides the contact's avatar everywhere on this event. Drag-and-drop or upload via the detail sheet.
• Topic interests — free-text notes on what this speaker covers. Operator-facing only; not shown on the microsite.
• Status — where this speaker is in your outreach flow. See Status meanings below.
• Speaker type — one of External, Internal, Community, or Sponsor rep. Used for internal categorization — not shown publicly.

Status meanings

Speaker status tracks where each person is in your outreach flow. There are five values:

• Prospect — on your radar but not yet contacted. Operator-only.
• Invited — outreach sent, awaiting response. Shows publicly on the microsite and in the attendee schedule when published.
• Confirmed — speaker has agreed to present. Shows publicly on the microsite and in the attendee schedule when published.
• Declined — speaker passed. Operator-only.
• Cancelled — was confirmed, then withdrew. Operator-only.

Publishing a speaker to the microsite

Publishing controls whether a speaker's profile card appears on the public-facing microsite speakers section. It is separate from status — you can have a Confirmed speaker who isn't published yet, or an Invited speaker you want to surface early.

Toggle Published on the speaker row in the roster table, or from the speaker detail sheet. The toggle updates the published_speaker_ids set in your event's microsite navigation settings.

Unpublishing a speaker removes them from the microsite immediately. Their event roster entry and session assignments are not affected.

Assigning speakers to sessions

Adding a speaker to the event roster does not automatically put them on any session. You assign speakers to sessions from the Speakers section inside the session detail sheet.

Each session-level speaker assignment has its own fields:

• Role — free-text, drawn from your workspace's speaker role options (e.g., Keynote, Moderator, Panelist). Shown to attendees in the session view.
• Session bio override — a bio specific to this session. When set, it takes priority over the event bio override and the contact bio.
• Status — session-level status: Prospect, Invited, or Confirmed. Independent of the event-level speaker status.
• Sort order — controls the display order of speakers within that session.

What attendees see

On the public microsite, published speakers with a status of Invited or Confirmed appear in the speakers section with their name, headshot, job title, company, and bio.

In the attendee-facing schedule, speakers appear on each session they're assigned to. The bio Mercleo displays follows a priority chain:

1. Session bio override (if set on the session assignment)
2. Event bio override (if set on the event roster entry)
3. Contact bio (the speaker's default bio from the contacts directory)

Headshot follows the same logic: the event-specific headshot takes priority over the contact's avatar. Name, job title, and company always come from the linked contact record.