Читать книгу Transitioning to Virtual and Hybrid Events - Ben Chodor - Страница 11

A hybrid event is a physical event that has a portion or the entire content program available online; bottom line, there is always a physical element to a hybrid event.

The obvious and immediate appeal is the expanded reach you have to engage a larger audience that doesn't attend the physical event. We know for the foreseeable future, events will be virtual and even when we go back to physical events you will still see a virtual/hybrid portion of the program included; the world has changed forever. Think of the hybrid element of your event as your event insurance policy going forward. It is your continuity plan in this unpredictable world we now live in. When I first got into the world of streaming and virtual events, a lot of event organizers would be worried that if they offered their event and programming online, that they would have fewer people attend the physical event because attendees would decide to stay home and watch online and they would make less money from the event.

I used to tell clients, prospects, and anyone who could hear my voice, that virtual events do not cannibalize physical events. In fact a good virtual event will make the virtual attendee want to attend physically and it would give you the ability to grow your audience and keep your event going after the physical event ended, but a lot of event planners were still too scared about the risk of cannibalization of their event and could not see the value of bringing their events virtual. Well guess what: it's not that virtual events are cannibalizing your physical events, it's that the world has now cannibalized your physical event.

Many forward‐thinking companies have and will use hybrid events to increase their audience across geographical divides and further their education and communication. Despite fears of dropping in‐person attendance, data suggests that physical face‐to‐face participation increases with hybrid events. Hybrid events also extend the reach and life of your content, allowing companies to tap into new markets, acquire new attendees/users, and open the doors to more business opportunities and engagements. As we think about going back to some sort of physical event, I believe you should add a virtual or hybrid element to any meeting or conference you are planning now or in the future; the technology is finally here to enable you to easily do it.

As I look to the future, I believe we will start with smaller physical events, let's say audience sizes up to 100 or so people meeting simultaneously in various cities around the country or even around the world at the same time, and you will be streaming/broadcasting to and from each of the locations and to a virtual audience, all at the same time. I believe even when you plan meetings with thousands of attendees, you will have satellite/hybrid audiences at various physical locations and a virtual audience participating from home or their offices.