CREATING HYBRID EVENT EXPERIENCES FOR ASSOCIATIONS

Hello, this is Les Goldberg, and welcome to The Road Ahead. The Road Ahead podcast is dedicated to the future of the live events business, bringing together industry experts. Hello, production world, this is Les Goldberg and The Road Ahead. Today I have three amazing guests. I have Ray Franklin, who's a presentation coach. I have Sara Haywood. She is the assistant vice president of conferences for the National Council for Behavioral Health. I have John Rubsamen, who is the senior director of meetings and events for the Americans for the Arts. Everyone, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks. Well, today we're going to have a discussion, a very constructive discussion about doing hybrid events from an association perspective. So we've got a large group of people. They might have a general session. They might have breakouts, they might have exhibits. And we have this big challenge as we kind of go back to live, we're going to have to try to invent, figure out how to make the best, coolest hybrid experiences. So the audience experience, whether you're going to be sitting in a behind a computer somewhere for that virtual experience, or you're going to have the live experience where you're going to have people in a real audience, whether they're mass or social distance. So I'm going to throw out my very first question. It'll go to Sara. Sara, what is an association hybrid event look like to you? Maybe you could kind of just describe what you think it looks like and how it should look. What are your thoughts? Well, I think hybrid is basically taking what we've already always done really well, face to face, and just enhancing it and building it into that virtual and the virtual. I think we really do have to think almost like TV producers, because you're competing with so many different screens and you want to keep people's eyes on, you know, their screen, which is the hybrid. So the production value of your general sessions and anything you streaming, you want to say high production value to keep, you know, like what's going to be next. What are they going to say? Oh, there's going to be some entertainment thrown in there. So really keeping that high energy, fun, engaging like TV quality broadcast going. So keep those stages up. So, so you feel like it's like a TV show. Yeah, in a way, yeah. I mean, on the on our stage, we've always put together a big stage show. I mean, your general sessions where you really want to keep the hype and keep everybody going. But now with the virtual event, you have to think, you know, not only how does this play to a live audience, but how does this play to a virtual audience? So how is it going to play on a screen? So you really have to have that kind of filter to ensure that not only are the people in the room getting a great show and really and retained by it, but the people at home are getting that same quality, and they're not going to be distracted by something else on a different screen or emails coming in or something that they are going to stay glued to the TV or screen, I should say computer screen. We're going to explore how to do that and all in this, this whole discussion. I'm going to throw the same question to Ray. Ray, maybe you could describe how this hybrid experience, the event works and your thoughts. Well, we've kind of transitioned, if you will, from the live event to the all Zoom event, Zoom type event. And people are pretty well conditioned now to be part of a Zoom event, to try to put the live event back in with the Zoom event, some of the axioms of the live event have gone away. One of them is the 40 minute welcome speech that doesn't play anymore in a in a Zoom meeting. And if it's not animated, like Sara said, if there's not some production value in it, there's so many things going on around me that I, you know, I can treat it like an old conference call, put it on speaker, on mute and just wander around. So I believe that it's probably an at least now it's probably going to be a 7030 arrangement where the production leans more heavily to the remote audience. Got it. Okay. And John, your thoughts on, you know, what the hybrid event looks like? Yeah, I think that that's all, you know, very correct. In looking at the hybrids, I think one of the key aspects that we need to look at, since people are going to switch from this all virtual into hybrid in the coming months, in a year is hybrid is an opportunity for us to kind of attract our membership and our attendees back. So how are we doing a multi dimensional, if you will, engagement where there's enough interaction from the virtual audience that says, gosh, I really want to be there so that you can slowly pull those audiences back to the in person. So how are you showcasing and engaging your in person with the virtual audience? So creating experiences like that where they can actually communicate with people that are there as well, I think is going to be a really unique and important opportunity for us in this realm. You know, I have I've had two comments from recent clients. One of them said that we want to make sure the virtual experience is good, but we don't want it to be incredible because we need to make sure that our attendees come back to the conference next year. So that was one of the comments. And then I had another comment this morning from one of our head technical persons who said, you know, we want to make sure they're great experiences, but we want to make sure something happens in the live experience. You can't get in the virtual one. So it kind of gives everybody the reason to get back together. We don't want to create those experiences that say, we just don't need to hold these big shows anymore. Let's just do them virtual. And and I think, as Ray said, well, Zuma Fei, the earth and we won't ever have to go and collective collectively. So so this question is to Sara. Sara, what are the greatest challenges to executing an amazing hybrid event? You've kind of described to us what you thought were the components of it, but what do you think of the challenges are I think when it goes back to the association, I mean, hybrid events, they really are two different events. And you've got you've got to think at it differently. So it takes twice the manpower and it takes more money. So it is more expensive. So you have to think about that from a budgetary standpoint. And I have to bring more people into it, because not only do I have my physical staff working at the normal, you know, working registration and seed finders and the normal things that we would be doing on site. But then I also have all my virtual crews. So I have, you know, chat monitors and people online helping out with customer service. So you almost have two groups of staff working it. So you really have to be thoughtful about staffing and budget. Those are my challenges right now, but I'm thinking through got it. Ray, would you like to add to that? What are the challenges of creating these this this hybrid world? My interest is largely technical. So if we're giving a good experience to both audiences, I think the next concern is are the audiences engaged equally? Do do I feel inferior as a live audience member who says, well, wait a minute, this used to be this kind of I expected this, but it's all focused toward the remote audience. So keeping that balance is going to be interesting. I was going to say if I was an attendee on either side, I think that there'd be some high level of sensitivity to make sure that my experience was very holistic, and I feel like I didn't lose out whether I was in the virtual world or in the live world. And you know that that is probably a really interesting challenge. So, John, your thoughts on this, the greatest challenges for hybrid events? Yeah, I think I think that that two way, you know, it's you hear the term omnidirectional, but it's really bidirectional communications and experience that we're going to be looking at once we get into the hybrid in earnest. So how do you create that. You know, that reminder like do you put a visual of of the audience that might be in virtual. And so that's reminding the audience that's in person or vice versa? You know, those engagements are going to be really critical. You know, budget is the other one. Sara's right. You know, we've we've been taking some hits here and it's going to be a much more expensive arena. So I, I would say, you know, planning now as to what that looks like. We're looking at a long term of how, how do we take the virtual that we're building now and, and use that in future years so that we're not rebuilding the wheel over and over again now that we have that knowledge as a baseline. John, you mentioned a really key thing. And it was, you know, the audience engagement and having the kind of the the two different shows and that, that trying to come up with an experience. So I'm going to follow up back with you on the same question. How do you measure or feel like you can have consistent audience engagement on these shows? Because that's going to be a big challenge, I think. Yeah, it's going to be a big challenge and it's something that I've been thinking about. I, you know, how do you do it just in virtual. And that's something that's always been, you know, you always hear people talking about how do we create networking experiences beyond just a Zoom room? And it's, you know, creating unique ways to interact with each other. And there's a lot of different interesting technologies depending on how fast, you know, fancy or expensive you want to get for that element. But one of the things that I've been thinking about is how do you create a pod where either a virtual attendee and or an in person can go into, almost like it's like a photo booth, if you will, and have one on one conversations with somebody that might be in the virtual land, or kind of have a soapbox of interviewing what their experiences are so that that communication is there, and then you can post it in the wall, something along those lines, just something that creates that more one on one or intimate reactionary experience between the virtual and the in-person is one of the ideas that I've been thinking of. I was going to say, we have a digital platform, hive, where you can literally go to a desk or a table, and you can literally sit with six other people and you could look at each other and open up those windows. But I think what you mentioned, which is even more insightful, was how do you take a live person and a virtual person and put them in a social environment where they get to interact? That is a super amazing concept. When we got to figure that out, that's going to be amazing. Yeah. Sara, what are your thoughts on this on audience engagement and the virtual and the and the live person? Yeah, I completely agree with John. I think, you know, this past year where we've been 100% virtual. It's how do we create those connections and that peer to peer learning and conversations, not only just via chat, but getting that face to face so people can engage in some way, shape or form. But the next step, exactly to his point is how do we then expand on that? So once we are in the hybrid that we have, not only, you know, that we don't have segmented audiences, that, you know, virtual only gets to talk to virtual and face to face and then get to talk to face to face that we do have this cross collaboration, and everybody gets to talk to everybody, and we still feel like we're all part of this community coming together to discuss, you know, whatever the meeting is about, that, you know, you're all there together learning and and networking that, you know, going back to something we all we also said we we want the virtual to be fabulous and you have a great time, but we still want to create that little bit of FOMO that you see, like what's happening in person so that eventually you'll come back to the in person. So and I think allowing for that bidirectional engagement is, is where we need to go. So Ray, you've had the title of audience advocate. So now I've got the live audience and I've got the virtual audience. And how do you connect the engagement level of these two audiences? What are your thoughts? Well, you've been we've been talking about the 1 to 1, which is one, which is one challenge. Recently I saw a participated in an event where the where the virtual audience was actually represented on stage in some boxes, some video boxes, but also had an audience advocate, if you will, a live presenter on stage with the with the other live performers so that it actually seemed like a seamless event because I was able to talk to both audiences and have an actual person to talk to on stage. So I kind of emulated that 1 to 1 relationship to the mass audience. We have done a few virtual events where we've had a I think we did one where we had 280 degree curved LED wall with like 30 Zoom boxes or Microsoft Teams boxes. And we had all these participants. And so not only did the participants have to dress up because they were going to be on the show, and not any one of them knew who was going to go on live at any time. So it added that interaction between the the live presentation and the virtual. But in that instance, we didn't have a really a live audience. So here we're talking about creating live audience experiences, and whether a person comes out of the audience and asks a question to a panel, or the question comes in from someone who's on a virtual connection, I think the ability to do that seamlessly is really going to take us leaps and bounds moving forward to create those kind of similar or equivalent experiences. Anyway. Okay, we're moving on. We're moving on. This question is throwing it to John, and John, the question is this: where does the two dimensional virtual experience and the three dimensional experience? Where do they overlap and where do they not overlap? So, you know, where do you see that happening? Almost like a trick question. So I think you know, where they don't where they don't yet overlap or that works. Trying to explore is in that really, you know, that off time networking that is probably almost one of the biggest values to the in-person meeting is that we're no longer in sessions, and now we're doing that real time one on one. You know, the topics have been discussed all day and like let's debrief, download and talk and use unique experiences that you're getting from each other that I think those those conversations are a lot easier to have in a face to face environment. And people really miss that. Oh yeah. No, I've done something like that in my area and things like that. So I think that's been the biggest challenge to create in a virtual. But with that, you know, we we've been you know, I was in a conversation with micro and macro and what what do you do. And I think the answer is both if you can create macro experiences like that in virtual. But I think it's limited. That's that's really where I think you can't fully replicate what happens in the in-person environment as opposed to the virtual. Okay, Sara, it's your turn to opine two dimensional experience. So like we're watching on a computer screen and a three dimensional. And I get to see in living color. What are your thoughts? Where do they intersect? I agree that's kind of it's a tough question. It and sorry to build off a John but I agree. I mean I think the challenge, the biggest challenge I have for for example, like our show is over 6000 people and we usually have these mass networking events, you know, we'll have an opening reception or a closing reception and create this whole environment. And I just haven't found a perfect way to recreate that online. We can still do, you know, networking events and smaller networking events, but it really is. It works better if it's smaller groups. You know, doing that for 6000 people just really isn't scalable to the virtual environment. So I think that's one of the challenges. We're still working through that. Yes, we can do it on the micro level. We can do it those small groups and communities, but doing it as the whole and seeing everybody and having this universal experience, like together, I haven't found a solution for that yet. It's very interesting and it makes sense. If you have a smaller group, you can create some of those intimate experiences as you get to these mass general session large audiences, it's much more challenging. So, Ray, on that note, well, let's get your thoughts on this intersecting the two dimensional and three dimensional show. And what are your thoughts? I think it gets back to the percentage of live versus virtual audience. If you're if you've got a predominantly virtual audience, you have to skew more toward meeting their needs than the than the live audience. I understand we all would like to have the live come back and we'd like to help drive that, but we've got time zones, we've got Zoom fatigue, we've got other things that we have to deal with. So trying to extend the experience after the general session, for example, is very, very difficult to do because it does look like you're sandwiching something in and that and the attraction to people who are distracted is very difficult. So from a virtual standpoint, having it come back at a different time zone, having, you know, some of these people who were part of the of the live event hold something separate tomorrow at the same time or multiple times. That's a way to extend that and bring it a little more into the into the personal. But to extend the the virtual experience for more than an hour or two is is I think is useless. We just finished a show that had 100 hours of programing. That was, that was and we were doing every time zone around the world, you know, and it was that kind of craziness, 24 hour cruise. And we were doing a show based on a time zone or a geographic area. And then you deal with multiple languages. So but very, very interesting. Okay. I'm going to throw this to Sara. Sara, where do you start when you're planning a hybrid event. What's your where do you start. What's the first thing you're thinking about. And I know we're probably working on a hybrid event with you. So my question is where where would where would the planning process start in your eyes? Well, my planning process always starts with who's my audience? I've got to go back to who am I planning this for and based off of who am I planning this for? Then we know what their once and their needs and everything else. And then off of that we'll build out the experience. So what's it going to be face to face and what their experience is going to be in that live environment. And then how do I extend that into the virtual environment, so that the virtual folks will feel a part of the whole? And if we've got them, what we're working on right now is an advocacy day. So how can they both both groups still participate in that, still feel like they're being a part of it, and that they can still make their voices heard through the advocacy that we're doing? So yeah, I always start with my audience, know my audience and plan to them. Ray, what is your thought? You gave us a thumbs up. What is your thought? Is Sarah right on the money? It isn't. She is indeed. It's all about the audience and the audience experience and meeting their expectations. A lot has to do with getting the audience by in well in advance, so that they make some sort of a commitment to the time and the engagement that's involved. That's an important advanced process that I think you have to go through. Got it. And John, your thoughts starting a hybrid event, where do you start? Yeah. And I agree wholeheartedly. I mean the audience experience because that's that's they're making or breaking your show. And so how do you create those those experiences if you wanted to go a little bit beyond that? I think that one of the big challenges is, you know, building almost and working on what we've learned in the virtual and starting with that since we may have already built that. But what's going to be challenging is anticipating or not guessing really in some aspects, what you can do safely and in general in person, where and and how how they're going to be there. Do you do smaller meetings across the country, which are simple. So I think some of that format build that addresses the audience need and the way they want to learn is going to be critical to to how that builds. And then, of course, budget. Of course, we can't forget budget. One of my previous podcasts, someone described the possibility of having more regionalized meetings where people aren't traveling in great distances and having more events, smaller sizes, and just doing frequency as a way to do it, or to do a few of those where they're doing them in a few different cities, and then connect them virtually so that the audience feels connected to the bigger whole. Whenever someone does that, I always say it's important to have a presenter present from every location so that you're not just a receiving audience. Somehow you're participating and you're sending content from your location. This way, people don't feel like they're kind of in the, we'll say in the in the unimportant location. I think every location needs to be important. Okay. The next question goes to Ray. Ray, what are the metrics of a successful event? Hybrid event. Give me a few metrics. You would look for the the interaction. If you're getting a good and constant feedback from both audiences, whether you're using we've used recently used a voting system called vote if if you're getting some sort of regular feedback, that's the metric that I use. Presenters. I always tell them when they get off stage, they said, how did I do it so well? You can generally judge how well you did based on the questions that you received after it. Either they were paying attention, they weren't, what have you. So that's the metrics that I would that's how I would measure the success. Got it. You know, the thing about these virtual events, people can just, you know, go and do all kinds of things wherever they are, and you won't know that they're not watching. You know, that thing when you see when you go into the moody movies, it says the audience is watching. Sara, what are your thoughts on metrics? You're doing a big show, virtual show and a live show. You got the hybrid. What are your thoughts on metrics? I would agree with Ray. It's engagement, but in addition to engagement, it's retention because you can start it off and you have like 500 people and all of a sudden you finish and it's like 200. You're like, well, something went wrong there. The people who stayed and were engaged were very engaged. But so I'll also look at that retention, making sure that again, my production value is is up and they're really engaged and they're locked in on the content. They're excited so that they stay and they stay through the entire session. You know, I hope people stay through the entire podcast for this one too. I hope we get retention. Retention. Okay, I'm throwing a different question to you. John. And it's how long do you do you think we'll see hybrid events for is this something that's a temporary phenomenon, or do you feel like it's here to stay? I think it's here to stay. You know, I also think that it's a tool. The silver lining is, you know, there was a lot of talk, and some of us were doing like we would live stream keynotes before the pandemic, but we were never really engaging with it or monetizing it or investing in it, really. It was just like plotting a stream onto YouTube. And now it's an essential. What we're finding is that you can grow your audience through hybrid. So it's it's a matter of accessibility that that is there for a lot of people that may not be able to travel for any reason or come to your meetings regionally. So we may get an attendee that only comes when we're either on the West Coast or the East Coast, or wherever is close by to them. They can still get that content if they can only travel, you know, every 2 or 3 years. So I do think that it is a tool we can use to grow audiences and create accessibility. For a lot of folks that may not be able to do the in-person travels, especially immediately, I think you'll see that it'll become a more in person audience. You know, that that that the flip from high virtual to it will balance out an increase in the in-person over time. But you'll always have an audience, I think, in the virtual, if you're marketing and creating the right content, it'll be there in some form. And it's a tool for for engagement and growth. You know, some of the some of our clients have told us that now it's we're presenting to the world. It was before this. If there's one quantum change is that the we have the worlds of our audience. It's not just a continent, it's the it's the entire world. And if people want to participate, and from Kuala Lemper or from Shanghai or from Sao Paulo, Brazil, all they need is an internet connection. And they're part of the show, so to speak. Right. This question goes to Sara, and this is my last round of questions for you all. When do you see events returning to some form of normal? Whatever the new normal is, this is your crystal ball. I bring out a crystal ball at the end of every podcast, and I expect every one of you to. Yeah, yeah, you have to predict the future. So when we always reflect a few weeks or months afterwards to see how brilliant you all are. So tell me, Sara, when do you see events returning to some version of the new normal? Yeah, I was going to say. I definitely would say it's new normal. I don't think we'll ever go back to exactly what we were. I think we've learned a lot over the last year, and the industry as a whole, I think, has grown and have a lot more tools in our toolkit that we can pool upon to, to use to engage new audiences, to expand our audiences, to like the international that you were talking about. So for me, I think the the big shows, everything. Like if you're looking like a big city wide, I think we'll have the smaller hybrid, maybe these hub and spoke kind of models through 2021. I really don't see anything larger. Maybe fourth quarter 21 if you can get a larger show. I think it really all is dependent upon the vaccine distribution and the different variants and how they are going to affect that. So unfortunately, we still have a lot of questions. I personally can't wait to get back to face to face. I miss it, I love it, but I still think it's probably going to be fourth quarter until we start seeing some of those face to face. Got it. Ray, what are your thoughts about us getting back to the new normal? There's a push pull here with there's a lot of developments to advance the virtual event. And as those they're all big, big technology companies are involved in in is is improving that process. And there might be a little bit more push pull coming here in the in the near future as new products are invented and people become more comfortable with this technology. So it it might be longer than that till we get to back to the full citywide as Sarah described. Okay, John, bring us home and tell us what we need to know so we can plan our future. What is your crystal ball say? Well, I, I think, you know, we're going to see a comeback. I think, you know, you may see an immediate surge because people are really anxious to travel, whether that will hit meetings or not. But it will be over time, a gradual return to to more attendees in person. You know, when you talk, when we talk about new normal, I always I always get cautionary because as Ray was saying, technology is moving so fast right now. Normal really is a constant state of change, which is really what meetings should be. Otherwise you're not going to engage. So I think our new normal is going to be consistent change just at a faster pace than we're even used to in order to compete for audiences. But we'll get there. And I think if we do it right and we're creative and engaging, you know, we'll see audiences in all forms moving forward. I want to thank all three of you, Sara, John and Ray. You all are super smart and amazing in your own ways, and I appreciate you joining my podcast today. So we can really kind of think through what the virtual hybrid live, what the future might look like. And this is Les Goldberg and The Road Ahead everybody good job. Thanks so much. Thanks. Thank you.