28 Jan 2021 – THE YEAR OF HYBRID CONFERENCES
We are thrilled to advise that last week our team travelled to the sunny Gold Coast and executed a 4-day residential conference at the newly branded JW Marriott Hotel.
This event had been planned for 5 months and on a number of occasions there were doubts in it taking place, however we had multiple plans in place should covid pop up again.
The event was a hybrid (a term that we’ve all heard over the last 9 months) and it’s the way conferences & events will continue throughout 2021 and 2022. Our Hybrid event consisted of 65% of the delegates attending physically with the remaining 35% logging in to a secure platform and participating online.
The venue was setup in classroom style and we positioned the chairs 1.5m away from one another, a digital QR code login was mandatory along with providing face masks.
To ensure all delegates were engaged, we put together an agenda that ran from 8am to 1pm each day and the feedback was excellent! Delegates advised how nice it was attending a real event and networking in a covid safe environment. We also received great feedback from our virtual delegates who loved the half day agendas, ensuring they were not on their laptops watching from 8am to 6pm.
Working with the JW Marriott team was very reassuring, we had covid clauses in the contract to ensure that should the event be postponed, that no charges would be applied.
From our perspective, this is how events will continue throughout the next couple of years. With the right structure in place, we recommend for all of us to get events going again.
If we can assist with your next Hybrid event, get in touch with us.
Ben Sciberras