How to Create, Sustain & Monetize Hybrid Event Engagement & Connection
Intersections of Connectivity
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Connect Audiences Whether Virtual, In-Person or Hybrid
Hybrid Intersections of Connectivity are those that bring an in-person participant together with a virtual participant. Let’s explore the challenges within these newfound intersections of connectivity and learn how to create more of these connections at events and year-round. In this quick guide you’ll learn:
- How to Identify & Create Intersections of Connectivity for Hybrid Events
- How to Sustain & Monetize Intersections of Connectivity for Hybrid Events
Intersections of Connectivity
Serving audiences with blended in-person and virtual experiences will be not just wise, but expected. Every aspect of society is undergoing a digital transformation.
For events, blending moments for physical and virtual audiences to cross can take many forms. Relationships seeded in the virtual can bloom in person. Those begun at a physical event can bear fruit months later in a related virtual environment.
An intersection of connectivity occurs whenever and wherever two entities come together. The intersections can be the moments in which event attendees meet serendipitously or in which they are specifically grouped together. The intersections can represent an in-person to in-person connection, a virtual to virtual connection, and even an in-person to virtual connection.
All supported by software that prioritizes human connection and community.
Connect to Networking
- Strategic Networking
Strategic networking is when two people make the effort to connect, at physical events that’s often pre-event meeting setting. Understand the power of these connections, and be sure to enable them virtually with the right tools.
Matchmaking engines can drive year-round strategic social networking with Al-driven tools that can suggest new relationships based on interests, geo-location, or even to incentivize meeting with key sponsors. Advanced meeting tools should allow users to easily schedule meetings, reschedule or cancel, add to their preferred calendar applications, schedule as individuals or as company representatives, and alert them when it’s almost time to meet.
- Buyers & Sellers
What’s next? What’s hot? What’s in it for me? From eating free candies to seeing new ideas come to life in product demos, trade show floors are still a great way to connect with others and new ideas to grow a business.
Bring together buyer and seller marketplaces for events and beyond with virtual engagement suites that enable connection with your sponsors and exhibitors and can even reward and incentivize users in real-time for making virtual connections and engaging with content.
Showcase products and thought leaders for your community in a boundary-less space with advanced B2B meeting tools (make sure to have 1:1 chat and video), real-time analytics, and gamification.
Connect to Education
- Learning and Connectivity:
For hybrid learning, specifically through the connectivity of an in-person and digital attendee, the in-person experience must be extended to those who are digital and there must be a place for both to connect.
Learning in a hybrid atmosphere is creating and providing one space for shared community learning, growth, and connection over the shared values of the organizational vision. Hybrid doesn’t exclude anyone, it includes everyone. Imagine a space where everyone can join together to learn and exchange information to help solve challenging world-wide problems no matter their location.
To drive conversations beyond tomorrow, your members will use tools like social feeds, 1:1 hybrid connection, video calls, instant messaging, and public and private group channels to expand upon what they learned with others and even seek out additional information to further their understanding.
- Main Stage or Keynote, plus Breakouts and Roundtables:
Regardless of session format, online and in-person attendees can “sit” next to each other in a hybrid experience with the right technology. Being able to ask: “What did you think of that speaker or new idea?” across space and time is the future of events. Those kind of interactions draw people into new connections and deeper conversations.
With advanced digital breakout tools, organizers can pair attendees together with pre-planned talking points to accelerate relationships and meaningful dialogue. User-generated content can be created easily in both virtual and physical spaces, and on the right platform it can live forever and continue to drive people to your content online to find new value.
Connect to Experiences
- The Lobby or Meetup Spot:
“Meet me in the lobby.” The lobby exists as a liminal meetup space that is easy to find and easy to connect in. We still need a lobby but it’s going to look different. For a virtual lobby feel, enable both individual rooms and cohort grouping in which pre-selected or Al-driven matchmaking allows people to instantly connect to chat or video call. For hybrid, this all occurs in desktop platform or mobile app form. A strong app allows in-person and virtual participants to intersect.
- Restaurants and Happy Hours:
How great was that day? Didn’t you love that session? Let’s debrief and unwind!
The debrief can and should be extended past the annual event. Imagine a world in which post-event debrief discussions and roundtables happen year-round based on user analytics and interests. That is the type of content people want year-round. The value in the community is the connections, and the organizer of the community is only as powerful as the connections enabled.
Year-Round Sustain & Monetize
For a true blend of digital and physical, it’s important to create connections among all the different audiences so intersections of connectivity can occur across space and time. The entire community can and should benefit from each others’ gifts and knowledge.
When more people are connecting in new ways that break down boundaries, that’s when change happens, for our businesses and for society.
The real trick to creating more virtual, in-person and hybrid bridges for attendees and members at a hybrid event is to provide real-time, boundary-less connection and find a trusted partner with the right tools to enable your vision.
The future of events is revealing itself to be increasingly reliant on digital expression. For those who gather people together, that means more opportunities to create intersections of connectivity where community members can connect, learn and grow.
Get the PDF
Connect Audiences Whether Virtual, In-Person or Hybrid
