Planning a Successful Hybrid Event

YC&E had the pleasure of assisting with the Yale Cyber Leadership Forum, which took place in a hybrid format this year. The 2022 Forum consisted of three hybrid sessions that included in-person attendees from the Yale community (faculty, students, staff) gathered at the Greenberg Conference Center, and virtual attendees joining in through Cvent’s Attendee Hub online. 

 

Our team managed the in-person event logistics (registration, catering, printing, accommodations, transportation, staffing, etc.), an extensive marketing efforts (targeted emails, social media content, graphic design, website management, etc.) and the virtual components (virtual platform,  live stream, recording, screen sharing, etc.).

 

The Cyber Forum’s hybrid format was a great opportunity to put to work the cutting edge technology we have at the Greenberg Center. In partnership with Yale Broadcast Media, we successfully ran three hybrid sessions for the Forum that were live streamed to the general public, near and far, while also hosting in-person guests at the Greenberg Center.

 

Cvent is Yale’s preferred event registration platform and a powerful planning tool that can capture registration information, payments, and more. The Attendee Hub is an extension of the main Cvent platform and is used when a virtual component is involved. The Attendee Hub helps you create a customizeable and interactive experience for your audience and seamlessly streams live video or pre-recorded content that is accessible to registered attendees. Learn more about Cvent’s Attendee Hub >

 

It’s crucial that everyone involved is on the same page and a run of show is the perfect document to ensure everything goes smoothly. This document is a detailed, minute by minute plan of everything that needs to happen behind the scenes. The outline should begin with an early staff arrival (60 to 90 minutes before the start of an event) and include tasks and responsibilities for everyone involved, both on-site and virtually. Set a meeting with your team and supply them with the run of show a few days before the event to review and answer questions. With everyone clearly assigned specific tasks, there’s little room for event-day mishaps.

 

With a hybrid event, you’ll need two sets of staff – one to supervise the in-person experience (vendor management, speaker and attendee check-in, on-site technology, etc.) and one to manage the online experience (Attendee Hub support, screen sharing, chat management, live stream and recording, etc.). There are many moving parts to a hybrid event so it’s important to keep on-site and virtual tasks separate.

 

Be sure to test the technology closer to the event (at least one month prior) in order to remedy any issues that may take time to solve (e.i. replacing, updating, and/or moving equipment). For example, when we originally tested the technology at the Greenberg Center a couple of months before the Cyber Forum began, we learned that some equipment needed to be replaced. We also realized that there was a few seconds delay between what was happening in-person and what was seen online, which was incredibly helpful to know when planning the starting and ending times of the live stream on the Attendee Hub. Test the technology again an hour or two before the start of the event to catch any last minute hiccups. You can never test too much!

 

For more guidance on hybrid events, please send us a message at conferencesandevents@yale.edu!