Finding the best platform for Hybrid events

When the current challenges we are all facing recedes, will we all recognise each other? Working from home with no barbers to keep the hair under control, the dress code for business related videoconferencing meetings has become a bit casual. Who is wearing shorts or pyjama bottoms out of site of the web cam has become familiar banter for many.

However, how many will recognise the companies we went into this lock-down with?

While for some the changes will be minimal, for others like ourselves, Think Different Events, there has to be a fundamental sea-change in how we operate.

How we are structured as a company and, more importantly, how we manage and deliver our event management services to our clients will be totally different to how we operated before Friday March 13 this year.

As a small company with prestige events that will evolve to take account of the new reality, we need to have at our disposal the best technologies to deliver the events in some form of hybrid model. We also need to have the confidence in their reliability and a measure of self reliance that we can build the team's skill sets around.

We have taken some initial steps via Zoom with online events for The Business Journey. However, the next step to manage and deliver much larger conferences and other business events is now pressing.

Over the past six weeks I have conducted research into the various platforms and models being adopted for similarly sized major events. When I dig a bit deeper to find out how systems operate at the 1000+ attendee level and above, how much it costs and what I need to do to adopt such a model, the information becomes less readily available. ‘Call the Sales Team’ seems to be the default position.

My request to the LinkedIn community is, I hope, a simple one.

• What online / hybrid systems have you used or seen used effectively?
• What were the Pros and Cons of the system?
• What were the ballpark costs involved per attendee?
• Would you use the system again?

Hope you can help as we move forward to the implementation stage of our strategy.

I will keep you informed of developments too, as I'm sure I am not alone in this community who is facing similar challenges across many sectors of the economy.