Nick Balestra Personal Blog

Thoughts after 1 year of hybrid events

To really get what an Hybrid Events is all about i think the best way is to experience it under each angle first. 

1) Remote Attendee

2) POD Attendee

3) F2F Main event attendee

Those are the audience of an hybrid event and those are the engagement and experience you need to learn in order to being able to address them. To do this i tried in the past year to take advantage of the eventcamp event. First by attending the BASEL POD during event camp twin cities 2010, then by remotely attend eventcamo twin cities 2011 and finally by attending f2f event camp europe this month. In this blog I will then try to outline what i think are pro & cons of each scenario and what i enjoyed in each of it.

1) Being a Remote attendee give extra value because of lower barrier of entrance (traveling,…). As a remote attendee i then found really valuable a professional and high quality live streaming of the event together with talk/slides and i have to say that SonicFoundry is a tremendous technology the just deliver it. Being able to engage is something good, for me this is especially good in the form of being able ti virtually rise my hand and make questions to the speakers. In my remote experience for #ECTC11 the twitter backchannel worked like a charm but that because on the other side of the line there was a dedicate person, aka the virtual emcee (gr8 job @EmilieBarta ), that was good enough to catch best questions and point them out at specific times to the speaker. Being a remote attendee means i don’t have the chance to know better the speaker face to face and therefore the interviews done for us between session were just what i needed. For the rest i found hard to engage in games, team work or other too collaborative session or task. I was also missing some kind of chat and list of all the remote attendee so i could engage and share with them as i felt being part of something together with them, a group. One important thing to keep in mind is not to overwhelm us remote attendees with too much tools, sites and systems to use as we already have to keep attention on the live stream and therefore we are already focused on something on our computer. 

2) A POD is an event itself, so if remote attending is more like watching an interactive DVD alone at homes, pods is more like going to the cinema with friends, of course we all see the same movie, but we share popcorn and chats during it. I therefore envision two ways of making use of PODS, one where a group of people gather together to remote attend the main event with the added value to locally network with other people f2f, get to know each other before the streaming event kick off and finding moments to discuss about it during and afterward, i would call this “Passive PODS”. The other way instead have to deals with the POD being active in making the event itself. This to be possible have to be well planned in the root of the event for example by having e talk or session done at each PODS. Active Pods create more value but are harder to plan and manage. Pods need to know eachother and feel part of that group, sharing among them. This is the toughest part of the job. So Pods shouldn’t be just little clones of the main events or passive gathering to remotely watch together an event happing elsewhere, but should have closed door talks, session and whatever unique may be able to provide. As otherwise i’ll just remote attend. If this objective is clear then pods are able to create tremendous added value to people that would normally just attend from remote.

3) F2F attending the main event is something we all know what is. So i won’t talk much about this except from the fact that the event you are attending is connected to pods and remote. So how can I engage with pods? or even with remote attendees? During my presence at #ECEU in london there was a google+station displaying each pods. But it was located on the stage where speaker were having their talk making it impossible to get there put some headset on, chose with with pod to engage with and get to know theem, or answer their question. I Think such an open pod-station will be of benefit by allowing f2f attendee to being able to go there and get to know the people, the program, and what is happing around the world in those Pods more then just watching at them like fishes on a bowl, staring back at us. Again this is not an easy job, as pods have their own things going on and we cannot just jump in it and interrupt whatever is going on.

In conclusion i can say that each of the experience have given me benefit that i the others was not being able to get. Hybrid events are an example where the sum is greater then the parts.

My suggestion is that events who wanna have “active pods” should just be made out of pods (no main event) in other world some kind of distributed event. Otherwise just don’t try to force PODS to be active but have them as gathering of remotes enjoying their own journey. 

Experience Events through a remote Event POD

There are events you can attend live, there are events you can attend remotely through the net, there are hybrid events you can attend both live or remotely and there are event PODs! Event PODs, are sub events dislocated around the globe and attached to the main event. Event PODs are a new experimental way to enable to live attend events through a remote location. If you still not clear about what an event POD actually is, read “What the heck is an Event POD” by Samuel J. Smith. I’ve recently took part on the eventcamp POD in Switzerland, Basel. This article is about my POD experience, the outcome, the potential and it’s possible applications.

The Usecase: 

Event Camp twin Cities is an event about inspiring you to try new communication and collaboration paradigms at your events. An international event made by event experts around the world, coming together to share and experiment in order to push the envelope in the meetings and events industry. This year, thanks to Ruud Jannssen, an eventcamp POD was organized in Basel, Switzerland. Eventcamp is born online, you can read more about the history of eventcamp here.

The Basel POD took place chez Café Tacuba, a really cool spot in the old Basel Town, which provided a confy room, plasmas, beamers, interconnectivity through free wifi and great food!

The setup provided a front channel stream (sync slides, and video) through sonic foundry service, that I have to say provided an amazing quality. On the back of the room there were some 27” imacs with skype to provide the back channel to the event, it was a little like watching the event in Minneapolis from behind the scene. Then On a third wall a projector was showing the tweet channel trough the use of a dedicated twubs, and also functioned as our stage, where Elling Hamso did his amazing Pecha Kucha presentation about event roi. The presentation was not only for us on the pod but also back streamed to the minneapolis mean event attendees!

A total of 11 pax was attending the basel event camp POD.

During the whole event there were interaction among the pods and the main event hub trough the use of different technologies like google moderator, twitter, audio and video (skype). Presentation in minneaplois also addressed remote and PODs attendees with group sessions, Q&A, and feedback gathering. 

The Experience

• The overflow of information trough the many channels coming in at an event POD, can be quite overhelming. Being able to pay attention to the slides and stream coming through the front channel, following twitter discussion and real time discussion happing among us at the POD was quite hard to manage for anybody. The need of a socialmedia DJ should be encouraged for such events. The idea is that the SM DJ can mix and match information coming from various channel, select and present them in a single stream, experimentation in this area is of course needed to adjust this issue.
• Non-stop connection to the main event was also something not that easy to manage as climax were different. The main program should fix and schedule those interaction and connected moment. and a small area where the non stop streaming of the real event should be provided so that POD attendee could just sit there, plug their earphone and follow sessions or presentation happening on the main event and vice versa, attendee at the main event could select to watch and follow parts and sessions happening at the PODs. Think of POD’s like rooms of the main venue, where sessions happens that goes altogether on the global program. People should be able to select which session they are interested and would like to attend both on the pods or on the main event venue.
• PODs should also have session and speaker attending, as they are not just a virtual conference, but are part of the event itself. So presence of speakers is highly suggested. Because of the remote dislocation of pods, more international speakers can be involved. 
• Number of Poeple attending a pod should be between 10 to 20 maximum as small group works better then big ones, in case more people are interested in remote pods, more of them could be organized, differentiating  the session offer, guiding attendee to the pods that more fulfill their interests.
• PODs could be very heterogeneous in how they are setup and in what they provide as program, so that more practical ones with hands one session could co-exist side by side with more classical presentation conference styled ones.

Conclusions: Potential and Possible applications

Event PODs, are a terrific way to bring people together on remote location that couldn’t travel or reach the main event location. They foster regional and local networking that can more easily be trasnlated into synergies, cooperation’s and collaborations.

I would love to see pods happening for international open-source events like international Joomla! day events. As i personally believe that community driven events are the best scenario for pods to happen spontaneously, and among people that somehow know each other around the world. This confidence among pods and events organizer is something that at this time is still needed as depending on the technologies used issues are likely to arise at some points.

In the end I would says that event PODs offer tremendous value to remote attendee as pods are what event are all about: bringing people together! The advantage of attending  an Event PODs is something that will enrich and empower the main event itself, because who said that only live attendee would have the more benefit otu of the event? PODs of course have lot them to offer to their pax. So..happy Event Podding to everybody !