The Hybrid Future of Events

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Coming together is an essential human drive, one that not even a global viral pandemic can fully put a damper on. Many of us have been meeting *more* than ever before as workshops and conferences have gone online all over the world. With vaccines starting to be released in some countries, the question on everyone’s lips is “when can we get back together?”</span> <a href= "https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare-systems-and-services/our-insights/when-will-the-covid-19-pandemic-end"> <span style="font-weight: 400;">There are lots of guesses</span></a> <span style="font-weight: 400;">but no one knows for sure. If you’re planning events for mid-year 2021, I hope you have a crystal ball *and* that you listen to the rest of this episode.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Meredith Kaganovskiy shares her wisdom and experience with us. She’s a certified meeting professional, a certified digital events strategist and the Senior Project Manager of the DIA Global Annual Meeting. We talk about her herculean efforts in taking a 7000 person-strong flagship event into a virtual one with weeks to spare and dive deep into Meredith's philosophy of experience-driven events planning, as well as her “two experiences, one meeting” motto for the hybrid future on the horizon.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">I feel lucky to have been able to work with Meredith and Robyn Weinick, the Global Program Officer on this project as their coach over a few very intense weeks and provide them a space and place to think and build a vision for the experience they were trying to create, working to think past the challenges and restrictions that technology placed on them.</span></p> <p><strong>The Hybrid Bridge</strong></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Meredith suggests that the old-school way of doing hybrid - a bridge to take questions and insights from the virtual space into the “real” space - is no longer enough. This once “wowed” audiences and helped in-person event planners