What You Need To Know ABOUT HYBRID EVENTS

HYBRID EVENT Tips, Tricks, and Things To Know

What Do Meeting Planners need to know about producing a hybrid meeting?  Turns out it’s more than you think.

Tips from expert hybrid meeting speaker Brad Montgomery. 

Lately we’ve all been hearing about hybrid meetings.  As in:  The Association of Cob County Cornhole Players will be hosting a hybrid meeting this year, featuring motivational speaker Corny Cornwallis, presenting his Keynote Address:  Kernels of Wisdom:  Cornhole in the Age of Covid.  Attendees will participate both in person and virtually.  Sign up today!!

All joking aside (Corny Cornwallis—hahaha! Hilarious!), hybrid conferences and annual meetings are here to stay folks, and it’s important we know what to expect, how to prepare, and things meeting planners should think about before welcoming your attendees.  

First, just a basic—a hybrid meeting features attendees coming to the event in person to hear, say, a funny motivational speaker (like me), and other offerings arranged by the meeting planners in hotel meeting rooms just like in the Before Times.  However, hybrid meetings also have many, if not most, attendees participating via Zoom or other on-line platforms, such as Microsoft Teams or GoToMeeting.   There are TWO audiences and now the meeting planner suddenly has to plan for twice as many things potentially going wrong:  both in terms of in-person attendees as well as those attendees on a virtual platform.  

What’s an awesome meeting planner to do?  Well, first, meeting planners should hire me, Brad Montgomery, to deliver an awesome funny motivational keynote address that will wow both in-person and virtual attendees.  Ok, ok, I’ll back up a bit.  While it is important to have a motivational speaker who has experience with hybrid meetings (like me), other things that are important to think about when preparing for one are many-fold.