For Lilian Chen (on right, with Spencer Fertig and Julia Elsner), hybrid meetings allow the facilitator to meet the attendees where they are. “It allows for the people who aren’t in the main office city to have the same access to information and involvement,” Chen says. Courtesy of Lilian Chen

Corporate meeting planners continue to look for fresh strategies for putting on successful hybrid meetings, which have many pros: inclusivity, saving costs and reducing the carbon footprint for those not traveling. Some hybrid meetings are ideal, such as high-end, multinational events, while others, can be tricky, especially when it comes to technology.

“We advanced more in virtual and hybrid meetings in the past three years than in the past decade,” says Corbin Ball, CSP, CMP, DES, principal of Corbin Ball & Co. “There has been an explosion of innovation and best practices learned.”

Hybrid meetings can also fit today’s workforce. “Many companies have opted for a permanent, flexible work setup, meaning employees can either go into the office or work from home as they so choose,” says Lilian Chen, co-founder and COO of Bar None Games. “Also, as many employees moved during the pandemic, even if there’s an office in the city that they live in, they may no longer be going to the same office as their coworkers, meaning that teams are more distributed, also giving rise to an increase in hybrid meetings.”

Yet, as in-person events have evolved from completely virtual to hybrid formats over the past three years, corporate meeting planners have found both past successes and lessons learned in the world of virtual and hybrid event planning.

Pros & Cons of Hosting Hybrid Events

Across the board, event planners tout the many pros of hosting hybrid events. “The pros are easy,” says John Chen, CEO of Engaging Virtual Meetings. “More attendance, cheaper or free so you can extend into a new audience you did not have before, and you can extend the reach of your content or your education.”

He adds: “You can take advantage of the fact that the world trained your virtual audience for the last three years. You can spend a lot less time trying to tell people how to get on and how to interact if you use one of the top tools that people have been using. For the most part, they should know what to do.”

That wasn’t the case in the early days of the pandemic when, he says: “People used to try and get on, and if they were frustrated, they left. And now, there’s no excuse. If they left, it’s because they were disengaged, not because they had a technical problem.”

For Lilian Chen, hybrid meetings allow the meeting facilitator to meet the event participants where they are. “It allows for the people who aren’t in the main office city to have the same access to information and involvement,” she says. In other words, hybrid meetings promote inclusivity where all participants can feel part of the same team.

Yet another benefit, Ball points out: “Hybrid events can be very effective for some events, such as major product launches or multinational, internal corporate events with pods meeting in different locations. Also, streaming content with remote audience participation for major moments, such as keynote addresses, can be effective.”

Still, meeting planners with experience hosting hybrid meetings have also seen its downside. “As in-person events are returning, planners have come to a realization that hybrid is not ideal for every event,” Ball says. “They are great for high-end, multinational events. But, the increased costs and complexity of running two separate events simultaneously has reduced their adoption for a number of event sectors.

“There are two distinctly different audiences with different attention spans, sensory experiences and expectations, so planners are finding that a hybrid event can be twice as complex and twice as costly when meeting the high-quality production values matching television standards that remote viewers expect.”

John Chen says, “The bonus that you get in the hybrid is you get all the in-person connection and content.” But the format also comes with a caveat: everyone must feel involved.

“The cons are that the virtual is often seen as a second-class citizen. Most people are not treating these people on the same level as their in-person audiences, so quite often they get ignored. Some people haven’t allocated the proper resources to respond to them, and as soon as that happens, they feel they’re out here by ourselves.”

He cites examples of how hosts in hybrid situations have even forgotten to admit virtual participants into the program, in which case, Chen says, “You can actually do brand damage because a not-well-done virtual will come back to the organization that provided it and say that was not a good job.”

Another downside, Chen says, “Some things are very difficult in hybrid like networking,” He recommends that planners do an in-person and a completely separate virtual session to enhance outcomes.

Another disadvantage of hybrid events is that the producer is king.  “If the producer gives you bad camera angles and bad audio, that’s all you get,” he says.

Lilian Chen sums up the largest challenge with hosting a hybrid meeting as “figuring out the technology behind it and having it set up in a way where it truly can be inclusive for everyone, both those who are in-person and those who are dialing in from other locations. With a bad technology set up, a hybrid meeting can feel clunky and inefficient.”

Considerations When Designing Hybrid Meetings

For Lilian Chen, a site visit is the first consideration. “As soon as you know you’re going to do a hybrid, take your core team and the tech team from that venue and go on a site visit,” says Chen.

At one venue, Chen’s team discovered that that venue didn’t have any cameras. “The company had to hire another person that they had not allocated,” she says. “It almost crushed them.”

A second consideration is internet. She says, “You have to have a hard line and a cable to the fastest internet you can get. It will save a program.”

Third, there’s the camera angle. “You should offer virtual the best seat in the house, in the middle of the room,” Chen says.

A fourth consideration is audio. “Everything has to go through a mic,” she says. “You must have a mic runner or make people show up to a specific location.”

Additionally, Chen adds, “You’ve always got to be listening to your audio to hear what the audience does” and be prepared to make adjustments. Chen cites the interference caused by one host’s dangling earrings that came through the over-the-ear mics, which required a last-minute switch to a handheld mic for the speaker.

While acknowledging the potentially astronomical cost of hosting hybrid events when going  through the normal services of an AV vendor, John Chen doesn’t necessarily agree with most meeting planners about the excessive cost of hosting hybrid events. Instead, he recommends: “If they allow outside people, look for people who have been doing it for a long time and who are independent. It’s a fraction of what it used to cost because the equipment is off the shelf and the software is designed to use it. So, if you have a knowledgeable person, you can really slash the costs and still get a quality production.”

Chen advises before deciding on the cost range, first ask: “What do I want this to look like?” Second, identify: “How much budget do I have to work with?” Then, try to get those two figures to match.

Keep in mind that a ‘one-size-fits all’ strategy does not apply for hybrid events. There are great variations on the size and shape of hybrid events. One of the key things is to plan carefully on how you will integrate two audiences, Ball advises.

Lilian Chen reminds planners: “One of the hardest factors of a hybrid meeting is to ensure that the remote participants are being included in the same way as the in-person participants. The planner needs to ensure that there’s a sufficient AV system set up, so that the remote participants can be heard, and so that they can hear clearly too.”

She says, “Many situations where the remote participants in a hybrid meeting feel completely excluded, because the microphone isn’t clear and the camera is set up in a way where it’s hard to see the full dynamics of a room.”

New Hybrid Meetings Trends

In Lilian Chen’s experience, hybrid-meeting trends include: more creativity in event formats and using QR codes to convey information to the in-person participants, which means they don’t need to be on a laptop to receive any new information. In addition, Chen says, “We also leverage music in our hybrid events, so that for the remote participants who are dialing in at the start, they’re not just sitting there while they wait for any in-person logistics to get sorted.”

While noting that one of the best trends is further use of producers, and quite often a production team, John Chen highlights that his top trend is virtual MCs, or master of ceremonies, which host an event and keep things running smoothly.

In Chen’s surveys, he’s found that 20% of virtual conferences are not using a virtual MC.

“It’s one of the easiest ways to smooth out your conference, handle unknown challenges and bring energy,” Chen says. “If you get someone who’s a great MC, they will help build that into a community, and that’s valuable for the organization, because once you feel like you’re a member of a community, you’ll come back to that same conference again and again because it feels like coming home.”

Hybrid meeting trends that Corbin Ball has observed, as the format continues to evolve, include:

• The expansion of production studio software that has the capability of a TV news talk show. This includes advanced switching, chyrons and others, at a lower cost by the major event tech providers, including Cvent Studio, Bizzabo: Ultimate Video Production Studio, Socio (Webex Events) and Swapcard.
• Increased use of PTZ (pan-tilt-zoom) cameras by remote production teams, substantially reducing cost (including EventsAir).
• Increased use of AI-powered voice-translation software, such as Worldly.
• Increased refinement of hybrid event technology.
• Increased use of pre-recorded sessions for part of the programs.
• More events are being done asynchronously. The live event is recorded, edited and released as a virtual event at a later time. This reduces cost and the stress on the event team.

Checklist for Planning Hybrid Meetings

“A good microphone and camera should be on every planner’s hybrid meetings checklist,” says Lilian Chen. “I would recommend that hybrid meetings be held in a large conference room with a mounted camera. Don’t depend on a laptop webcam, as that will not capture the full view of the room. I would also recommend that the conference room have a dial-in setup, which allows for the remote participants to be heard clearly over any potential chatter that’s in-person.”

John Chen emphasizes the importance of rehearsals. “You’ve got to make sure every speaker, panelist and MC knows where to go, where to stand and how to interact with the virtual,” he says. “People try to shortcut rehearsals all the time and that’s a recipe for disaster.”

Chen also believes that lighting belongs on a successful planner’s checklist, citing one experience where the host had not put any additional lighting in the breakout rooms resulting in a less than optimal experience for attendees. Minimize transitions as well, Chen notes, “Every time you move something like a laptop from a main room to a breakout room, you can break something.”

Best Practices

Lilian Chen recommends meeting planners have extra time for the technology. “At the start of the meeting, ensure that everyone is able to dial in correctly and that everyone’s audio is working correctly,” she says. “If there are any slides or documents that will be discussed during the hybrid event, share it with everyone ahead of time so that everyone has access to the same information. If closed captioning is an option, turn it on, so that those who are remote can have another reference in case the audio is unclear.”

John Chen offers this bonus tip: “Ask for an applause mic,” explaining that there is a separate microphone, so when the room applauds, the people connected virtually can hear it.

Among best practices for Ball are using a timeline-management tool and project management software, a virtual MC for the remote audience, speaker training, test and rehearsal, plus having trusted partners for platform, venue, AV, and a streaming company.

“High broadcast production values are expected, such as cameras/lights/mics,” he says.

What Hybrid Meeting Success Looks Like

“Microsoft is a great example,” Ball says. “They have a core in-person employee-event for 6,000 in Seattle, but broadcast to dozens of pods around the world to include more than 100,000 attendees virtually. This hybrid model gets the information out, engages employees and vendors globally, while saving huge amounts in travel costs [and] reducing the carbon footprint substantially.”

Lilian Chen’s crew hosted a virtual teambuilding event for 100 attendees, where half the participants were at home and half were in-office, with many joining from offices around the world. “It went off without a hitch due to a few factors,” Chen explains:

“We used Zoom, which is a virtual meeting platform that all participants are familiar with. This was helpful, as that enabled participants to easily join and interact with each other in real-time without any technology-related questions.

At each office location, there was a contact person who was able to be “feet on the ground” to help troubleshoot any potential technology issues, such as connecting the in-person participants with the remote participants, [and] also ensure that the audio was working correctly.

We also double checked that there was high-quality audio and video equipment at each of the office locations, to ensure that remote attendees could see and hear everything clearly.”

John Chen mentions a hybrid event where the virtual audience asked to share their own creations after the in-person attendees had mostly dispersed, resulting in a spontaneous outpouring from others in the virtual audience, which ended up creating an exceptional experience by the organizer called “virtual envy.”

For ultimate success in planning hybrid events, John Chen says: “You have to create a team to do a hybrid. It’s almost impossible to do a great hybrid by yourself. … We’re in the hospitality business and we’re trying to make it better for people. Do that both for the in-person audience and the virtual audience, not just one.” C&IT