Why Are We Excited About Hybrid Events?
From all events going virtual to events coming back full swing beginning June 22, Michigan has seen the pendulum swing dramatically over the past year. What we see in the future is “hybrid” events where a portion of the audience is in a room together, while another portion is virtual.
We recently photographed a hybrid event setup in Grand Rapids and found many reasons to be excited about what the future holds.
● Speakers Can Interact More. With chairs physically distanced, it creates space between attendees. What we witnessed was presenters who worked the crowd, wandered the room more and interacted with their audience in ways that we had not seen in the past.
● Attendees Are Not Distracting Others. When distanced from others in a room, it means attendees do not have a table in front of them. That means they are not chatting with the person sitting next to them and causing others to be distracted. In addition, fewer people are on their cell phones (because there are no tables to cover up checking a phone) and because of it, audience members are paying more attention to the person presenting.
● Virtual Speakers Can Engage with A Live Audience in Unique Ways. One of the sessions we recently photographed had a LIVE AUDIENCE and a VIRTUAL SPEAKER. The audience was engaged with screens in the front of the room, the speaker could see the audience through a camera of the audience. The speaker did things that were not traditional in a room of 250+ people at a conference. He broke the room up into smaller groups, asked for feedback from the audience and had the audience fully engaged.
Who knew that socially distanced setups in conference rooms would create better opportunities for both attendees and presenters to connect?!? We look forward to seeing other changes to the event world in 2021 and beyond.
Are you ready to have your own event captured by a business photographer in Grand Rapids, Michigan? If so, please contact us here at Tiberius images, as we would be pleased with the opportunity to present you with the best photos!