You should treat your speakers courteously, of course. But one thing that organizers tend to forget or do not really give a thought for, is that speakers are also part of your audience/customers: They are NOT part of your staff.
On top of being nice to the speakers, you should always make their speaking experience worthwhile: DO make it easier for them to give their presentations, and do make them feel like their presentations were very much worth everybody's time.
For example, if you assign an MC to a room, make sure that the MC knows how to come in at the right moments. When the speaker finishes, and is about to go into a Q&A, the MC should step in, and ask for a round of applause, and THEN go into a Q&A session. This ensures that the speaker gets the proper recognition and respect for the talk they just presented, and the amount of preparation they have put into making it happen. Q&A's tend to linger and you lose that right momentum if you wait to get a round of applause from the audience until the very end.
The above is just an example, but in general, you should make sure to take every step possible to make the speaker feel comfortable. Make sure your staff communicates important defailts like, "when (exactly) does the talks start?", "how long the speaker has left?", and stepping in at the right moments to help the speaker.
Here are a list of things that you should make available to your speakers
Sessions in builderscon should proceed as follows:
- Announcement that the talk will begin
- Announcement of the speaker (name), and the title of the talk
- Welcome applause
- For 60 minute talks: a visual/audio reminder that there's 10 minutes left at 40 minutes into the talk.
- For 60 or 30 minute talks: a visual/audio reminder that there's 5 minutes left at 45 or 25 minutes into the talk.
- Start of Q&A.
- Announcement stating that the talk is finished.
This should be clear to the speaker BEFORE the talk begins.
"16:9", "4:3", etc. This probably depends on the assigned room, so you probably should inform this as soon as you have a schedule ready
By definition builderscon talks should include an extra 10 minutes for Q&A. You should explicitly state this fact to your speakers.
While it is always a good idea to tell your audience who you are, remember that your audience is there to listen to your talk, not about you. Keep your introduction brief, and save it for later when you meet them at the hallway or at the conference dinner.