Void means "empty space" so filling the void is?to fill the space left by whatever you are referring to. It is an idiom: fill the void. His wife died and he filled the void with cats and whiskey. Millions of men were off to war, the factories filled the void by training women to do work.

One thing I have found helpful is to always have a few members of the origination as well as scheduled speakers ready to go in case of such emergencies. Flight delays are common now so is tight scheduling so you may have to readjust your schedule to move the speaker to a new slot. Do a peer to peer learning facilitated by senior members to help solve crucial problems people are seeing. The CEO can do a hot topics session where attendees put suggestions into the app on what should be discussed. This could be a panel discussion as well. Don’t be afraid to add in white space or quiet time to the schedule. Give more time to the exhibitors or to the Posters if you have them.

This just happened to one of our clients due to hurricane Helene and their keynote being unable to fly in. They were still able to get him on a short Zoom call to deliver a short message to their audience, and then they brought in a bloody Mary and mimosa bar to close out the program. They're working on getting that keynote back for next year as he was a big celebrity draw for the audience. Gotta roll with the punches in the events industry!

It happened to me many years ago. Two weeks before the conference, the opening keynote canceled. I had to find a quick solution, a high-level keynote. It was highly important for the audience and the partners. I kindly accepted the reasoning behind the cancellation and tried to work with her on the solution, as she felt responsible for the whole situation. She recommended a close fellow speaker who was ready to step in her place and help us both. He was great, and the audience and the partners loved him. The speaker who canceled came to the conference next year and was warmly welcomed!

Often the speaker booked can provide you a head start to resolving your dilemma by recommending two or three other speakers, explaining to you why each will serve as a suitable replacement for your exact audience. Just like in other professions, high-quality speakers know other high-quality speakers.