When was the last time you saw an online presentation and thought to yourself, “I wish I were there”? Unless the event in question was being held in your town or in its vicinity, that thought most probably hasn’t crossed your mind recently. Thanks to fast Internet connection and software tools, now you can attend online business events without moving from your armchair. What’s more, people now organize hybrid events – the ones in which some people attend them in person while others follow them online.
The goal of this article is to provide an answer to the following basic question: what is a hybrid event, and what does it take to organize one?
What Are Hybrid Events?
Hybrid events refer to a business conference, a meetup, a trade show, or any other form of gathering in which the audience is a mixture of people who are physically present at the venue and those who are attending it virtually. Thanks to the growth of communication technology, hybrid event management has been popular among business professionals for more than a decade. The development of Skype was one of the triggers that made room for the development of such events.
However, the pandemic of 2020 and 2021 is the main reason why hybrid events have become a universal means of business communication. During the movement restrictions, the business show had to go on, so most of the business meetings went online. After the end of the pandemic, many business stakeholders realized that they could keep using some benefits of virtual business events.
How to Plan Hybrid Events?
Planning hybrid events contains two separate, yet parallel lanes. The first one is the offline path, where the organizer or host needs to ensure a proper venue and the right in-person audience for the event in question. The second one is the virtual path, which consists of attendees who are going to observe this hybrid event online.
As for the tangible, physical part of the session, there needs to be one or more presenters and speakers. Their type and duty will depend on the character of the event itself. If it’s a company presentation, its directors, managers, and PR specialists will take the stage. On the other hand, if we’re talking about a business conference or a trade show, the organizational aspect will be different. The type of the event plays a vital role because the technical specifications and equipment are not the same. For instance, a panel discussion requires that the organizer provide several microphones and a different type of sound system than a presentation held by one person at a time.
What’s more, the virtual attendees need to be able to see and hear everything happening on the stage. This is where the visual part of the event becomes important.
And if the event is held in several different languages, both in-person and online attendees should be able to understand what’s happening. This is where interpreting comes on stage.
Interpreting at Hybrid Events
The assumption is that everybody understands English today. While this is partially true, it doesn’t mean that everybody must be able to follow a business event in English. For instance, if English is not a speaker’s native language, the organizer should offer to arrange interpreting services. Even if the person in question does speak English to a certain degree, they might not feel comfortable using it for professional, business purposes before a larger audience.
In a business context, it’s sometimes wiser to go for event interpreting even if you speak the language. Those professionals have already been here many times, and they know how to make people comfortable. From reading the body language to enabling the speaker to shape their ideas more concisely, event interpreting is a practical and effective method for improving a hybrid event.
It’s even more important when part of your audience is watching you via the Internet, or when one of the speakers is also in the virtual space. Using VRI, i.e., video remote interpreting, is another practical way of making the entire hybrid event function more seamlessly, letting all the participants make the most of it for their particular needs and goals.
Hybrid Events for Better Connections
Global business connections are stronger than ever before. Now you can host an online or hybrid event from your remote office in Bali and gather people from all corners of the world. The technology behind such events is becoming more sophisticated, especially with the rise of AI tools. In that light, hybrid events will become even more relevant in the time ahead, ensuring better networking than ever before.
Pavle has a decade and a half of linguistic experience, first as an ESL teacher, then as a translator and interpreter. In the last third of his career quest so far, he has turned to content marketing, as the most exciting branch of applied linguistics.
Having worked as a content specialist and editor while following the latest linguistic and tech trends, he has specialised in bringing the current affairs in the lingtech sector to the spotlight.
When he’s not crafting his briefs and drafts, and writing his stuff, he likes to pluck a chord or two on his old guitar, or just go to a pub quiz; a father of three, a husband of one.
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