You want to give those who can come along an in-person experience, and there are people who need to join online. BUT there isn't the budget to hire in an entire tech team and the venue's swanky AV equipment. How might you run a hybrid event anyway, and what is it like?
IAF England and Wales' Re-facilitation conference was designed with these constraints, and everyone who organised and took part contributed to some very rich learning about what you can do on a shoestring, and what works and what doesn't about a hybrid experience. All of the equipment was things the volunteer organising team provided themselves, because the cost of hiring in equipment and AV specialists from the venue was too high.
I wasn't part of the organising team, so this is what I gleaned as an in-person participant who also led a hybrid session and hosted a debriefing conversation as part of the open space session towards the end of the second day. There are some posts from people who were part of that team: Helene Jewell and Adrian Ashton.
NB I use 'Zoom' here because it's the platform we used - other video meeting options are available.
1. A three-strand approach
The organisers decided to have three strands: some sessions and activities were for the online participants only (hereinafter the Zoomies), some were for in-person only (the Roomies) and some were hybrid - that is, exactly the same session could be joined whether you were virtual or physical.
2. Big team
Hybrid sessions need a lot of team members! At the conference, there were:
A 'lead' facilitator playing the 'intervener' role.
Someone on Zoom to set up breakouts, respond to tech questions, mute people as needed, run any screen sharing, pin or spotlight contributors and so on. This person could be in the room on joining remotely.
A chat monitor - see below. This person could be in the room or remote.
An AV person - knowing how to set up and run the audio and camera system linking the room and zoom.
Someone to operate the 'participant cam' and hand-held microphones.
Interestingly, some of the hybrid sessions were 'led' by a facilitator on Zoom, and some were 'led' by a facilitator in the room, and some had a well-integrated hybrid team leading them.
3. Feedback is a gift - no, not that sort of feedback
The biggest conundrum was how to organise audio in the room for the hybrid strand. Zoomies needed to hear Roomies, so there needed to be mics of some kind in the room. Roomies needed to hear Zoomies, so there needed to be speakers in the room. But what about the ever-present threat of terrible echoing feedback? From time to time, this did happen, but for the most part, the problem was avoided by:
everyone in the room either not being on Zoom, or muting their Zoom mic and turning off their laptop speakers;
microphones in the room being routed through an audio mixing device utilising Zoom's built-in echo cancellation option;
microphones in the room NOT going through speakers into the room. This worked because the room itself was quite small and everyone could hear without needing amplification. I'm not sure what the solution would be if anyone needed a hearing loop.
4. The room cam and speaker cam
There was a smart phone on a stand which enabled Zoomies to see the facilitator/presenter. Tape on the floor reminded that person where to stand. There was also a fixed smart phone filming the room for the benefit of Zoomies, but the feedback was that this was 'messy' and 'too small to be useful' so it was ditched part-way through the event. These phones joined the Zoom meeting as additional participants, so that their visual feeds were available to Zoomies. Their mics and speakers were off.
5. The participant cam
Additionally, there was a smart phone (also a silent participant in the Zoom meeting) which was portable, and carried around by a team member who also had a hand-held mic. This meant that when a Roomie wanted to speak, they could be on camera and audio for the Zoomies to see. This made a big difference to Zoomies feeling a connection to Roomies. This tweet from team-member Adrian Ashton shows how.
6. The screens in the room
There was one big wall-mounted screen which projected the Zoom meeting in the room. This showed the meeting from the perspective of the host. On another wall, a second projector (provided by the team) showed the meeting from the perspective of a participant. This meant we could dedicate one to gallery view of participants, and the other could show screen sharing and the chat, which helped Roomies connect with the Zoomies. (Some Roomies also joined the Zoom meeting on their own devices, silent of course.)
As a facilitator/presenter, it was important to remember to look at the phone camera on a stand in front of you, rather than turning to look at the Zoom screen projected on the wall. Having the zoom meeting showing on the camera/phone helped me remember to do this.
7. Watch the chat
Have a team member watching the chat in Zoom, and responding to it. It's too much to expect the lead facilitator to do this, and the Zoomies will get pretty cross if their contributions and requests are ignored.
8. WhatsApp with that?
For this conference, there was a WhatsApp group for participants, whether they were Zoomies or Roomies. It was the one thing everyone experienced in exactly the same way, and was full of lively informal conversation. It bound us together.
9. Choices - options vs overwhelm
There were a lot of ways of communicating:
audio, video and chat in Zoom;
a virtual whiteboard for the conference as a whole;
other whiteboards, jamboards and similar for individual sessions, set up by session leaders;
emailed joining instructions;
a WhatsApp group for participants;
optional auto-transcript for Zoomies;
for Roomies, conversation plus some physical pinboards and flips;
Roomies could also join the Zoom-only sessions e.g. from their bedrooms if they were staying at the venue, or from an empty meeting room.
Choices and options should make it easier for people to find something to suit them. But they also add to that fear of missing something and can be completely overwhelming. A hard dilemma to resolve.
10. Hybrid breakouts
For some hybrid sessions, we kept the breakout groups segregated: Zoomies with Zoomies and Roomies with Roomies. However, in other sessions (including mine) we experimented with mixed breakouts. For my session, this was especially helpful because the breakouts each looked at different sub-topics and we wanted to let people choose which topic to discuss. We did this by asking Roomies to bring their devices and headphones with them to the session, so they could join a Zoom breakout from within the room. We asked them to physically spread out (there was plenty of room) and face into a wall if possible, to minimise sound bleeding between people's microphones. This worked well enough, and it was great to enable Roomies to join Zoom breakouts.
11. Bridging between Zoomies and Roomies - intros
We didn't do a round of intros in plenary, so it was left to individual session leaders to decide whether to do this or not. I did in my session, and we used a collage of abstract images as a hook - which of these pictures are you drawn to today and why. The introductions took a long time - I also asked people to say why they'd chosen this session, plus there was delay getting the participant cam and mic to people in the room, and the order of participants in Zoom kept moving around so there was a delay inviting people to unmute and come in. Each delay was only a few seconds, but any delay multiplies up. Next time I'd still do a round of introductions, but not ask for so much information and make a quick list of participants before starting it.
12. Need for clear instructions and practice
We had multiple-session leaders, all of whom needed support from the organising team. We had a plethora of devices, some mac, some pc, some android. Some people were familiar with miro, others not so much. An orientation session for participants covering things like how to change your Zoom view or pin particular participants would have helped. I'd recommend doing a practice miro session for participants and setting up frames which people can use to navigate. I'd also aspire to knowing further in advance how the set-up will work, and providing some very clear instructions to session leaders. The team did a brilliant job in the circumstances, and next time no doubt it will be smoother and we'll all be more experienced.
And finally... know your client and group
As one person said in the debriefing "It's a kind crowd - we're all friends here, so this hybrid may not be typical..."
Making the Path by Walking
This post was first published in my monthly-ish newsletter, May 2022. Scroll right down to subscribe.