What Everyone Is Learning About Hybrid Events

In-person Looks Different This Year

Both small and large events made the realization in 2020/2021 that virtual events do have a place within the organization. After the shock of 2020 had filtered through workplaces, the sights were set on creating an impactful experience online in 2021. For most, this allowed seasoned meeting teams to focus all their attention on figuring out what virtual platforms worked the best for organizations, and brought with it an authentic and new experience to the organization, and for some a new stream of revenue. 

Now with restrictions lightening and herd immunity (for all intents and purposes) achieved, this year has allowed organizations to return to in-person events.

Wahoo!

For the most part, yes! And for those who have decided to commit completely to in-person, it feels like business as usual. However, we are finding that organizations are exploring a hybrid option, offering a virtual ticket price for cost savings, and retaining some of that new traction that 2021 brought with it and this is raising some challenges.

Hybrid Is More Than A Camera and Broadcasting 

Picture this for a moment

One of your meeting rooms is hosting an incredible session that is well attended in person. Because of the interest, it takes a few additional minutes to get the room loaded, and the session starts a few minutes late. Your virtual feed is running, and virtual attendees are able to easily see that the session hasn’t started yet. Because everyone is engaged, the speaker decides to take a few additional questions at the end of the session even though the room monitor’s arm is about to fall out of the socket from waving the wrap signal towards the stage. 

The session ends up running a total of 15 minutes over, and there was only a planned 10-minute break between sessions. 

The room monitor, now frantic with unloading and reloading the room, has also been assigned to monitor the chat for hybrid sessions. As 5 minutes turns to 10, all virtual attendees for the next session are unaware that the previous session has run long and when they click the link to join the session they are met with a “session not active” message. This, in turn, causes a barrage of emails to flood the virtual event support help desk.

Since this is a hybrid meeting, those emails go to your on-site registration team, who are also responsible for supporting onsite attendees. This chain reaction causes the registration team to divert all attention into answering emails coming through while sending out a team message to figure out what is going on with the next session. The poor room monitor, having just finished loading the room, is now met with a barrage of text messages. When she starts the session, the chat immediately starts to flood with messages about how poorly planned the event is, and how attendees will never be attending again.

It just happened in the one-room though, right? It’s an isolated incident?

Try again - 3 of your meeting rooms just experienced a similar situation to the one mentioned above. The issue has compounded enough that it has leaked over to the client, who is now furious and is calling the virtual event a “disaster”.

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The Elephant in The Hybrid Meeting Room

Sadly, hybrid is not turning out to be as easy as point & click. The variables of simulcasting live events in a way that mimics virtual require an even more robust team than a strictly virtual event. Compared to everyone joining and broadcasting from home, hybrid events require a dedicated production crew, per room, and a production manager whose sole responsibility is to monitor the run of the show. To be safe we would even go as far to say that each room should have a room moderator who is a face and personality that is equipped to fill dead space should something like the above scenario occur. 

On the planning side, there is an increase in logistics as well. Depending on the platform you are using, you may need to attach unique meeting IDs to each session. These meeting links may be attached to different software licenses, and if you’ve overlooked the step of having the same license operate in the same room, you are going to be left with a logistical nightmare of logging out and back into different licenses for every session.

Some Dos & Don’ts of Hybrid Events

Do: 

1. Have a dedicated team that is solely responsible for the hybrid event.

2. Ensure that your content team is in constant communication with your hybrid team when assigning sessions to room.

3. Work with a production company that has executed hybrid events.

4. Assign a virtual event monitor to each room who can start sessions and explain through any delays.

5. Set expectations at registration for virtual attendees explaining the difference between a virtual vs. hybrid event.

6. Consider “on-demand” registration vs. hybrid allowing access to pre-recorded sessions vs. live broadcasting.

Don’t: 

1. Assign virtual event responsibilities to your live event team.

2. Make last-minute changes to sessions happening in rooms unless it is absolutely necessary.

3. Forget to prepare for delays and streaming issues.

4. Skimp on the bandwidth needed to broadcast from your meeting location.

5. Overcomplicate things by incorporating virtual-only content

6. Forget to establish an easy-to-reference way of communicating with your virtual attendees.

7. Forget to test the audio in your virtual event, broadcasting your in-room audio into a computer requires an extra step that needs to be configured and tested before any meetings occur. 

We are not here to say hybrid shouldn’t be done.
Through proper planning and a dedicated team, the virtual attendee experience can be executed seamlessly, and hopefully, after reading this, you are able to plan for some of the potential pitfalls that may arise, before day 1 sessions start. 

Help Someone. Have Fun, Be You. Learn & Teach. Finish What You Start.