Intentionally Hybrid
In November 2011 a group of committed volunteers created EventCamp Vancouver, one in a series of such events that pushed boundaries on what events would look like, from the small “unconference” to non-traditional venues, and I thank Ruud Janssen for today reminding me of this. In Vancouver in 2011 we delivered a hybrid event that connected a virtual audience of singles and pods to a live audience in the city, and connected continents and brought in speakers from afar to share their ideas and knowledge. We also did this as a net-zero event. The link above takes you to the white paper that deep dives into every aspect – it is long, and it contains valuable insights as we learned a LOT, some of it the hard way.
Are you an expert? Currently, there are many claiming their expertise in the virtual landscape and many webinars on this topic and how to pivot. There are those who have taken the time to go through the DES – Digital Event Strategist – certification, and others who have been delivering virtual and hybrid events as a specialty for the past decade, and others who offer a specific service to support virtual or hybrid. What I know it takes effort and time to plan and deliver an engaging virtual event and while it will not replace face-to-face for right now, it is the way we will connect, educate and inform.
The Team. You need to rethink who is on your team and the skills they bring to the event. For example, you still need a Project Manager / Producer who defines the stakeholder strategy and outcomes – what will this event achieve and why you are doing it. Add in the basics such as a Technical Producer, Marketing and Registration, and a Program manager for the speakers and content, but you won’t need travel or housing. You may have a UX (user experience) designer who considers the participant experience – the storytelling, integration of technologies such as polls, entrance and exit experience as examples. You will need to have a content producer, speakers and a host or MC, technical director / broadcast producer and an av team that varies depending on the complexity of the production and if it is all “from living rooms” or from a professional stage or studio space, and a team to record, edit and archive the content for future viewing.
Social Media. Of course for live, virtual and hybrid events you will likely have social media streams which need to be both monitored for comments and include a planned stream of visual and word content and links to references mentioned with all the appropriate @callouts and #hashtags that are metered out during the broadcast. This may require several people depending on how active you are across channels. Find people who have established reach in your topic area and get their support if you don’t have a team already in place.
It seems like a lifetime ago we delivered ECV, one of the first of many for me and the one from which my favorite job title ever came, Dream Wrangler. Thank you Judy Kucharuk for both this title and for the wondrous mobile app game that showed how easy it was to be sustainable in event design which you created with Shawna McKinley for this long ago EventCamp. It seems right now virtual events, hybrid events and sustainability are hot topics – for many of us, this is how we already roll. Reach out – we are always happy to connect on these and many other topics.
Bonus tip: Check out Judy’s Book Naked Tuesday – a great fun read!
