How to organize a hybrid conference successfully?
First, let’s start with a little reminder. What is a hybrid conference? Hybrid allows all participants, whether they are online or in-person, to participate in the most interactive way possible.
Based on our experiences feedback in this field, we would like to highlight in this article 3 keys to success for your hybrid conferences:
- The first ingredient in our magic potion: interaction
We cannot say it often enough, hybrid conferencing must be based on genuine interaction of both audiences (online and in person). This is to ensure that all participants, regardless of their mode of participation and location, can interact with each other. Today we notice too many so-called “hybrid” conferences which are, in fact, only streaming (simple rebroadcasting on a platform). Interaction is the critical point, this is one of the main technical difficulties with hybrid conferences and it remains a point on which we continue to work at PremC. For example, to maintain the exchanges, the network, during the breaks, we thought of setting up tables with five or six tablets, making it possible to chat with the people following the conference online, like speed dating.
- Always test the hybrid solution before the D-Day
In order to anticipate possible problems, it is essential to test the technical solution before the day of the event. As with the dress rehearsal of a show, we try all the technical aspects under the conference conditions to adapt to the constraints of the venue. Indeed, each place has its own specificities and these can force you to change and adapt your usual system, if this is not anticipated then you risk spending time on the day of the conference looking for the best alternative instead of concentrating on launching the event in good conditions. Testing the solution completely can be tedious as it requires all hardware to be set up without any conference to run behind, but we consider this to be an essential step in validating the chosen system.
- Adapt your tools to the hybrid
It is important that all your materials are suitable for both online and in-person participants. The conference websites could be more set up in a way that it talks more to the in-person participants, for example, we often give the postal address of the conference venue but we send the connection link separately by email or on another platform while it is perfectly possible to find an alternative to bring together all the information in the same place for both audiences. Your conference media must be as federative as possible.
We would love to extend this discussion with you, there is so much to say about the success of a hybrid conference and the field of possibilities is very wide.