Hybrid event with 40 people in the room and 150 viewers on Team.
In the last months I have been filming a lot livestream/hybrid events with very different setups. It requires some preparation but once the technical challenges are overcome, and hybrid event can bring the best of both digital and physical meetings: The energy of several people in a room and the convenience of not having to travel to Brussels.
One good indicator that an event is going well is when the comments on chats are about the content and not about some technical problems, the sound being the most common problem.
It is a team job
Hybrid event with keynote and panel. 3 participants are in the room, 2 are on Zoom displayed on a screen. 30 people in the room, 120 on Youtube during the event, over 450 views today.
My setup is relatively simple: I install 3 cameras in the room and mix the images in a smooth way alternating wide angle and close-ups on the speakers. I send this signal to a platform like Zoom or Teams ‘as if’ is was a webcam. So the room in Brussels is like a participant to a call. Other remote participants are also part of the conversation. The only difference is that the room is Brussels has several participants and they are filmed with a great camera, sometimes zoomed in, sometimes larger shoot.
Where it is a bit tricky, is that people on Zoom/Teams need to be managed: accepting new participants, muting microphones, sharing screen, reading the chat in case there is an important message, sending people to breakout rooms… All that requires an additional person that has a good understanding of theses platforms and can act quick when there is a problem (typically a participant forget to mute his microphone).
The best of both words?
Hybrid event for a small meeting. 4 participant in the room and 25 on a zoom call.
For any event organiser, it is really interesting to overcome the complications of having all the speakers present in the same room for an event. For the viewers it is a clear advantage to be able to watch the full event on Youtube either live or later. It is very common to see the number of views multiplied by 4 after an event.
One last thought about hybrid event:
All events are different, there is no one size fits all. A good hybrid event requires preparation and overcoming some technical issues that are never the same… For me as a video maker, that are the kind of challenges that makes these event exciting: Making hybrid events easy!
Giving the viewers another experience.