When designing hybrid events and activities, organizers and hosts need to ensure they find creative ways to ensure all attendees have the option to be seen, heard, and included. Hybrid gatherings, where participants join both in-person and remotely, pose different challenges when it comes to facilitating workshops, panels, and other activity types.
Some of the main concerns for hybrid event organizers are how to…
- Make sure everyone is included and can participate?
- Foster connection and understanding between attendees, presenters, etc.?
- Maintain cohesion in activities when people are joining from multiple different places?
The obvious starting place for a hybrid event is an ice-breaker or energizing activity designed to make people feel welcome and start bridging the perceived gap, so to speak. Whether it’s an introduction exercise or a game that gets people talking, the point is to bridge the in-person and online audiences. You will need to have and provide clear instructions to both audiences when relevant (e.g. different instructions).
Pro Tip: Choose simple activities with clear step-by-step instructions. When preparing, think about each activity from both the remote and in-person audience’s point of view. Your activity needs to address what’s different and what’s needed to bridge that difference.
Hybrid Team-Building Activities
- Hybrid Team Collage
A collaborative way to explore complex situations in a way that facilitates a collaborative team culture in a hybrid environment is a collage, canvas, or mood board. There are online tools that can be leveraged for this activity where all audience members can participate in what gets added to the virtual whiteboard. Depending on the size of your audience, you can also break people up into smaller groups to perform the activity and then come back to discuss afterward.
- Role Assignment
If there will be lots of people participating in a more structured hybrid meeting or event, having some assigned roles definitely helps! That said, you still need to foster collaboration. In hybrid settings, you’ll want to have assigned roles that are specific to the process and activity you’re trying to facilitate (e.g. someone who tends to the online audience, taking in questions, sharing takeaways from workshopping sessions, etc.) but you can also turn this into a group exercise where certain roles are left open for volunteering or nominated participants.
- Hybrid scavenger hunt
Depending on the size of your hybrid event audience, you might even be able to do something like a hybrid scavenger hunt. This activity takes some extra preparation but scavenger hunts for both real and digital items will have teams working together and having fun while they do it! Break up your online and in-person participants into the ideal number of groups and have them find things that touch on certain important ideas, relevant topics, or just some well-hidden gems!
Fostering Connections Between Participants
- The “Buddy System”
Different audience members have different situations. You can use the buddy system and create groups of two to five people (with a mix of both participant types) that have scheduled points where they come together to maybe share information they’d found, convene on next steps, or even networking opportunities (in more of a hybrid conference setting).
- Two-Minute Review
It’s a good idea to make time for quicker rapid-fire sessions where in-person and remote participants quickly review, share feelings, ensure understanding, and/or anything else that might just need some impromptu time. This approach will make people feel more involved and likely create more learning moments. The review period can obviously be longer if time is permitting!
- Hybrid Checkpoints
Similar to the previous suggestions, but maybe for a larger hybrid event, is the concept of a checkpoint. Often times in hybrid conferences or events with larger numbers, there are times when there might be mutually exclusive activities for the in-person versus hybrid participants. If that’s the case, make sure to have checkpoints where the different audience members come together to bridge gaps, share insights, and build connections.
These are just some examples of activities that can be adapted and included in your hybrid event for better engagement and collaboration. Contact Baldwin Audio/Visual Solutions today to learn more about our hybrid event solutions.