Podium and rostrum rental in Singapore

A podium is the most photographed object at a corporate event and usually the least specified. Every speech happens at it, every press photo frames it, and it is generally booked as one line on a quote with no detail attached.

Worth a few minutes of thought, because four or five things sit on it and each one has a decision behind it.

Podium, rostrum or lectern

In Singapore all three words get used for the same object. Strictly a lectern is the stand you read from, and a podium or a rostrum is the raised platform you stand on, but almost nobody asks for it that way, so a request for a podium or a rostrum is nearly always the reading stand.

If the raised platform is what you actually want, that is staging and it is sized differently.

What actually sits on it

A gooseneck microphone, a reading light, and somewhere to put notes or a laptop. Then, depending on the event, a confidence monitor so the speaker can see the slide without turning around, and a timer for a programme running to the minute.

The confidence monitor is the one that gets left out. A speaker who turns to look at the main screen loses the camera and goes off axis on the microphone at the same moment, which is a lot to give up for a missing screen.

The front of it is branding

The front panel faces every camera in the room for the whole of the speech. A printed or lit front with the company mark on it is cheap next to what it appears in, and a bare acrylic front on a flagship event is a wasted surface.

Lead time matters here more than anywhere else on this page, because anything printed has to be produced before the day rather than pulled off a shelf.

Height, sightline, and the person using it

A lectern sized for an average speaker hides a short one. If the programme has a range of speakers, a riser behind it solves the problem and costs almost nothing, and it is far better than discovering it during the first speech.

Sightlines matter in the other direction as well. A lectern parked centre stage blocks the screen behind it, so it usually sits off to one side, which then decides which side the stage key light comes from. The stage rental guide covers checking that position from the back and the sides of the room.

One or two

Two lecterns either side of the stage look symmetrical and double the microphone count, the cabling and the lighting positions. Worth it for a bilingual programme or a panel that alternates. Not worth it for a single speaker, where the second one sits empty in every photograph.

What moves the price

Whether the front is branded, whether a confidence monitor goes with it, and whether it needs its own lighting position. On its own a lectern is a small line. What hangs off it is on the equipment list, and the microphone and the desk behind it come under corporate AV and sound.

What to send us

How many speakers, whether any of them need the slide in front of them, and whether the front panel is being branded. That covers it.