7 Steps To Conduct A Successful Hybrid Event

In order to create an engaging hybrid event experience, you need to establish a clearly defined vision. Ask yourself with 4W1H questions to clarify the goals that you want to achieve.

• Who is going to participate in your event? Do estimate how many attendees will be present physically / remotely.

• Where will it happen? Is the venue has sufficient space to occupy everyone with covid safety measurement?

• When will this event happen? Make sure you allocate enough time frame to prepare for the event.

• What is the outcome / impact that you wish your participants to receive after the event ended?

• How do you want your participants to feel about your event?

For sure you want to get your audiences immersed in the hybrid event experience with attractive and engaging content. You have to determine what type of content stirs the interest of your target audience.

In hybrid events, organizers need to take care of both sides of the audience event experience, equally. Your plan should include the immersive experiences, speakers’ details, timings of the sessions, tech details, and much more.

Within the most relevant solutions for virtual & hybrid events, there are some requirements to which you must pay attention and allocate a good amount of your budget.

There are some costs to consider including:

• Extra AV staffing, MC, streaming bandwidth

• Virtual/hybrid event platform

• All the extra content for the virtual audience

• Cameras and production crew to capture sessions for streaming

Do you want established members of your association to attend? Or maybe you want to invite people who have attended past events you’ve hosted or work in a specific industry. Are you opening registration up so you can land new members? Whatever you want to do, decide it early.

Take your list and create personalized invitations asking them to join you at your event either in-person, online, or both. In your email invite, include all your event details, a link to the virtual event, and instructions on how to log on when it’s time.

Let’s start with all the equipment and manpower you need for conducting a hybrid event. You should engage a professional hybrid events production company to conduct the event. Why? Because the production of a hybrid event is much harder and more complicated as the organizer need to take care of both sides of the participants and it involves a lot of technical solutions.

Equipment / Production checklist that you might need to consider:

• Professional Cameras

• How many cameras you need for live streaming? It depends on your venue size and your event agenda requirement

• 2 cameras are sufficient to cover the medium scale of hybrid event. Different angles of views would be both immersive and satisfactory for your participants

• Sound & Light

• Whatever kind of event you want to put on, if it's indoors or outdoors, there are some essential things that every event planner needs. For example, good quality sound equipment and lighting will make a huge difference in how your event looks and feels.

• Live Streaming Software

• In a corporate event, never use your smartphone to do the live streaming. It is too limited and concern about the quality assurance of using only phone camera. Instead, experienced live stream production usually will use software such as Vmix to connect multiple cameras and stream it at the same time to make sure your big event becomes a success

• Virtual Platform

• Where are your online participants to participate in the event?

• Experience the best of our integrated hybrid event software - The Blue Lobby that seamlessly connects you with your online participants, through registration and ticketing, auditorium, exhibition booth and more.

• With just one platform on which your online participants have full access to experience all event features, it lets them get their session done in an easy and seamless manner

• Internet Solution

• Do a site visitation to check on the internet speed to make sure it sufficient to cover during live streaming

• Creative Visual Design

• Event key visual is everything to bring up your brand image and identity, it can attract potential clients and partners to attend your event

• Starting from event poster, invitation email, live streaming layout, and more

• Live streaming workstation

• Live streaming requires a high performance computer, specialize cabling, and additional equipment. You'll need to allocate a workstation for the team on the event day, as well as ensure adequate power supply and internet connectivity

You need these professionals to make your hybrid events success!

• Camera operators and director

• The visual capture of an event is often the most important part! Having experienced camera operators can help guarantee a shake-free motion, steady focus and high frequency. Hiring these top-quality professionals will help you get the best possible shot of your event

• Soundman

• The soundman's duty is tom keep the microphone volume and background music up to par. This allows participants from all sides of the room to clearly hear what is being said

• Floor manager

• The role of the event coordinator is to direct and control the flow of an event. They will make sure all parties are where they need to be at what times, keep tabs on staff, and ensure everything runs smoothly

• Live streaming operator

• The operator must be very familiar with live streaming software features and utilize them professionally to control all the visuals for online participants in accordance with the visual plan submitted by the planner.

• The operator must also be able to troubleshoot onsite issues as they arise to assist production personnel in maintaining broadcast quality

• Art director

• The art director is responsible for communicating with the client to refine / adjust all visuals, which later be executed by the design team

• The art director will define the theme direction, control and monitor quality as well as ensure on-time completion of all designs

To make sure you feel prepared for the big day, host a dry run of your hybrid event. Get together with your technical team and walk through all aspects of both the virtual and in-person events, like trying to register online and logging in as a virtual attendee or testing the equipment you'll need for the live portions of the event.

Doing a test run can help you and your team identify any issues and tackle them before the big day, you won't be scrambling to correct any problems on the day of.

Your post-event actions are as important as what you do during an event. Hosting an event means nothing if you don't gain any insights. Make sure to send out a post-event survey to get a sense of which content resonated with people, and how your attendees felt about their onsite versus virtual experiences.

Also, take a look at your attendees' data during the event. Make sure to follow up with those attendees who attended a lot of sessions, asked a lot of questions, or engaged with your sponsors.