Whether association meeting professionals like it or not, hybrid meetings are here to stay. But there is some good news: the pain planners felt pivoting to hybrid in the early days of COVID has long gone away. Meeting pros have found effective ways to produce hybrid events that are within budget, don’t overwhelm staff and, most importantly, benefit their members.

However, no matter if you’re new or seasoned when it comes to hybrid events, probably one of the biggest hurdles to jump is deciding on your meeting’s format.

Stretched-Out Format

Amy Peters, vice president of events at ASIS International, started this journey in 2019 in conjunction with her in-person show, where the group only streamed limited content. Fast forward through COVID, and ASIS has adjusted their delivery based on feedback.

This meant giving attendees options, including offering a digital preview two weeks before the show, having two general sessions and two theaters live streamed each day during the in-person show, and holding two encore events after the in-person show that was open to all attendees.

“We hosted a hybrid event to meet our members where they are,” Peters said. “Many wanted to attend, but were unable to due to budget cuts, corporate mandates, travel bans, fear of disease, et cetera. A hybrid event gives us an opportunity to reach more of our international members as well.”

And the research is there to support this. According to ASAE’s Foresightworks hybrid meetings action brief, participants will demand a wider variety of modes of interaction, including pre-meeting discussion groups, asynchronous informational content, and virtual environments. The annual meeting will no longer be a once-a-year event, but rather a flow of activity throughout the year.

Simultaneous Format

The National Volunteer Fire Council took a different approach than ASIS and held their in-person event simultaneously with their virtual component in fall 2021.

NVFC had temporarily switched to all-virtual meetings in 2020 and early 2021, according to Engagement Manager Meg Goldberg. They incorporated some of the networking and interactive elements that were popular at in-person meetings into the new virtual format, such as offering social hours via Zoom to give participants and sponsors the chance to engage with one another.

As they adapted to the virtual format, pre-planning meetings with staff, speakers, and meeting facilitators were key. Each time they met, it brought on a new set of hurdles to address. To have the meeting run smoothly, staff served as session proctors to assist with tech issues, Q&A, and note taking. Social hour formats and content were also planned out ahead of time with roles and scripts to keep them engaging, while trying to not to appear too scripted. In fall 2021, NVFC planned to go back to an in-person format, but the group ended up transforming it to a hybrid model so more people could attend. They worked closely with the hotel AV technician and had a dedicated staff person to assist with the presentations and Zoom meeting components. It was very effective and allowed those attending virtually the ability to participate and engage. Will they continue with this plan?

“We had a successful hybrid event,” Goldberg said. “We refined the process with our spring 2022 meeting by getting a Meeting Owl (a 360-degree video conference camera). This further enables those that can’t be there in person to at least participate in committee meetings and certain other components of the event. However, our audience prefers to meet in-person, so we anticipate less virtual attendance moving forward.”

So, what does this mean for your organization?

Every strategy and hybrid program format will largely depend on your audience needs and the resources available to you. A solid outlined strategy will provide the framework to make critical decisions down the road on things like what platform to use, what staff resources will be needed, budgeting, determining ROI, and more.

And with each new hybrid event under your belt, the process gets easier, and you can think about what’s next.