Hosting a hybrid event
In the first week of November, I hosted our business unit’s Financial Year 2022 Kick-Off at Mendix. The Community and Collaboration unit has around 65 people. The participants joined in-person as well as online. This was my first experience as an event host. Here I want to share a bit more on the format of the event in case others want to do something similar. This post is very action-oriented. I will write another blog post on what the event was about and how I designed it.
TLDR version
This is a short summary for those who don’t want to read the whole post.
🧑💻Take an online-first approach to design the event space, format and engagement
🛋Make sure to do test runs with the entire setup - hybrid audience, lighting, screen sharing, sound.
🥳Keep it fun by having some interactive activities that hybrid audiences can participate in. Account for screen fatigue and have a break after an hour.
Coordination
Have a dedicated host who also acts as the glue between all the parts of the event.
Have a shared document with a detailed agenda, tasks and clear overview of time per section.
Create a (Slack) channel to communicate rather than 1:1 meetings or chats. (Don’t forget to archive the channel after use).
Have a shared folder to have the slides in one place. Even better, use Miro to create slides.
Space
The key aspect when it comes to the space is that the online and in-person audiences can see each other.
We had a zoom link for the online attendees. Make sure to add another backup "host" in zoom's settings to handle technical glitches/admit people etc.
For the in-person attendees, we used a space which has a large side screen through which you can dial into the zoom call. On this screen, we could see the online audience as a grid. If you don’t have something like this, arrange a screen where the in-person audience can see the online audience.
We placed two laptops in the room so that the online audience could see the in-person audience via the zoom call.
We did some trial runs of the test setup to get the lighting and the sound right.
Speakers
All the presentation and content is on one laptop, preferably of the event host. The screen share worked great. We had a screen so that the in-person audience could see the slides. The online audience saw it in a regular way (Shared screen via video call).
One of the speakers presented from home and it worked well. We had hand mics for the speakers who were in person.
Oh yes, use a clicker while presenting. Always. Get away from the laptop and own the space.
Engagement
I started the event with a Kahoot quiz which everyone participated in using their own mobile phones. This was fun and helped create a relaxed vibe for the presenters as well!
Those online kept the zoom chat alive and used it to interact with each other.
We had one person in the in-person audience keep an eye on the zoom chat to communicate with the host - be it feedback on setup or questions for the speakers.
One of the online participants volunteered to host a fun game as the after-party.
Format
We experimented with a Q&A format for almost half of the session which meant the session was interactive, focused on listening rather than lots of slides.
Using illustrations to guide the entire session meant fewer slides and a strong storyline.
Time-box and have a timekeeper sit in the front row with a timer on a screen - iPad or a laptop for example.
What we could do better next time
Lighting setup for the speakers - the online audience felt that the speakers were not in a well-lit space due to the placement of lights. Whereas in-person, the speakers were under bright lights.
Speakers had to be in a specific spot so that the online audience could see them via the camera. This wasn't always the case and at times, they could only hear but not see the speaker.
Recording settings: In the recording, the "screen share" is the majority of the view. The speaker appears as a thumbnail. The online and in-person audience is not captured which is not the optimal experience for viewing post the event.
P.S: I will write another blog post sharing more about the event itself and the role of design.
