Due to the impact of Covid and the increasing number of people working from home, hybrid events are on the rise to accommodate everyone’s needs. With many businesses finding leads through networking, it’s important to find a way to meet people online, therefore causing an increase in hybrid networking events.
What is a hybrid event?
Hybrid events combine both in person attendance and virtual presence to ensure as many people can attend as possible. Due to this it’s important to choose the right streaming service for you.
is a great way to host a hybrid event, as it can provide easy access for guests. Some platforms will allow you to stream directly through them and others, such as Vimeo and YouTube, will need you to use third parties.
Connecting the in person audience and virtual audience
Due to many people attending events to network, it’s important to bridge the gap between in person and virtual attendees, to help give valuable experiences.
Different platforms will allow you to host polls, breakout rooms, direct messaging and digital business card exchanges, allowing both virtual and in person attendees to interact with each other.
Ensuring your in person audience brings devices such as laptops, tablets and mobile phones, will allow them to interact with others through digital chats. Furthermore, including Q&A’s and opportunities for attendees to get to know each other will allow people to stay engaged throughout your event.
Benefits of a hybrid event
Below are a few benefits hybrid events have for your company:
- Increased reach and attendance
- Increased engagement between your company and audience
- Improved return on investment
- More flexibility
- Hybrid events show that you care about your audience’s needs
Tips for planning a hybrid event
When considering hosting a hybrid event it’s important to plan the event properly to ensure it runs smoothly and engages your audiences.
Here are a few tips for planning your next hybrid event.
Give attendees control
During Covid, everyone lost control over their own lives, making it important to people that they can make their own choices now.
Hybrid events allow people to choose whether they want to attend in person or virtually, allowing them to feel as though they have made decisions that suit them best.
Providing chat boxes and breakout rooms can also give attendees the opportunity to decide whether they want to engage further with the event by asking hosts questions and engaging with others.
Ensure your event location provides everything you need
It’s important to find an event location that meets your needs and allows your event to run smoothly.
Below are a few questions you should ask yourself when searching for the right location:
- Has the venue got high speed wifi to help you avoid buffering?
- Does the location have projectors and speakers or do you need to provide them yourself?
- Do they provide catering options?
- Does the event provide easy access for guests and loading equipment?
- Do they provide camera and recording equipment or do you need to provide this yourself?
Make your in person attendees feel safe
When hosting an event it’s important to make your attendees feel safe. You can do this by communicating clearly before and during the event about how the day will run and any rules they may need to follow, such as whether you have any Covid safety or fire safety requirements.
Providing information on whether attendees will be recorded or photographed is also important as you need to give people the opportunity to opt out.
Don’t forget to record your event!
Recording your event allows attendees to re-watch the event or let those who couldn’t attend, watch it in their spare time.
Recording the event also allows people to share it with others, helping you gain more business leads and interact with a wider audience.
Choosing Millennium Point to host your hybrid event
Here at Millennium Point, we pride ourselves on our forward thinking approach. We’re always looking for new and exciting ways to improve our client’s events.
Contact us today to see how we can help you host your hybrid event. You can even use our own streaming platform and cameras to host and record your event for guests!
As we head into the festive holidays and approach the end of another year, Millennium Point has achieved some great things in 2021. Here is five key events that have happened at our award-winning venue this year.
Mass Vaccination Centre
Millennium Point made history as we were announced as a mass vaccination centre for Covid-19 in January 2021. It was one of eight centres to be opened across the UK, and the first mass vaccination site in the West Midlands region. Our venue opened it’s doors as a vaccination centre on 11th January 2021. This announcement was welcomed by the general public and top media organisations alike.
The first day saw Sky News, BBC, ITV, LBC and Birmingham Mail at Millennium Point to capture the first vaccinations, and mark the historic moment that the UK could start the road to recovery. Below shows a video capturing the excitement and relief that accompanied it.
Across the whole time we were a mass vaccination centre, approximately 180,000 vaccinations took place at Millennium Point during this time.
Asima Adnan wins a fully funded degree
In 2021 our Scholarship program crowned it’s 8th winner, with Asima Adnan from Dudley being named the winner of this year’s life-changing Millennium Point Charitable Trust Scholarship, earning a fully-funded degree at Birmingham City University (BCU).
Asima along with the other finalists, attended an assessment day at Millennium Point, where they each presented to a panel of five judges. Asima impressed the panel the most and was selected as the lucky winner.
The 37-year-old mum of five studied Social Science and Humanities at Dudley College, and began her Planning degree at Birmingham City University in September.
Applications open for the 2022 Scholarship on Monday 3rd January. For more information please click here.
Millennium Point hosts first ever hybrid event
As part of our Hybrid and Virtual event packaging, we hosted our first ever hybrid event in May, Talking Point: The Future of Events. The conference included many discussion points from across the events sector, as well as provide valuable insights and a platform to debate the road to recovery, current trends, sustainability, and the impact of Covid-19 on customers’ relationships to events and hospitality.
The event welcomed two panels of industry experts and was hosted by events industry veteran Neil Thompson, Founder of popular event professionals network The Delegate Wranglers. You can watch the replay of the event below:
This follows on from a transformation of our Auditorium with a £350,000 investment, installing a new 10m x 3m participant stage area beneath the 16 m x 10 m giant screen to provide greater space and flexibility for panel events, presentations, and live performances.
With the launch of our Hybrid and Virtual Events package, we also upgraded our AV equipment to support that which includes an M32R digital mixing desk, intelligent LED lighting system, mounted Panasonic PTC-280 cameras and a Kramer 8×8 Matrix switcher which allows switching of screen content seamlessly.
Fans get time of their lives at movie and drinks nights
The well received Millennium Point Presents movie and drinks nights have continued to be a big success throughout 2021. Our partnership with the movie geeks, The Wine Events Company has offered more blockbuster showings including Back to the Future, Top Gun, Dirty Dancing, Rocketman and Love Actually.
With more exciting events on the way in 2022, want to get a feeling of what to expect? Check out our screening of the eighties classic Dirty Dancing below. Guests had the time of their lives with a live band, themed cocktails and movie trivia.
Millennium Point Charitable Trust reaches a £30m landmark in STEM support
In 2021 our Charitable Trust announced that it had reached a landmark £30m in STEM support to organisations across the West Midlands over the last seven years – including £4.98m in the last financial year alone.
For those that are not aware, our commercial activity that takes place in the Millennium Point building feeds back into the Millennium Point Charitable Trust. This enables the charity to donate to, invest in, and facilitate STEM-related projects, events and initiatives in the West Midlands. This has included over £2.7m in STEM grants to schools, not-for-profits and charities in Greater Birmingham and the Wider West Midlands.
To coincide with our grant programme , the trust funds £16,650 in STEM degree scholarships annually, in partnership with Birmingham City University. To date, scholarships have totalled over £83,000.
An example of the type of STEM projects we fund is showcased below.
Find more interesting content from Millennium Point over at our news section, or follow us for daily updates on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn with @MillenniumPoint. Millennium Point is a landmark public building and multi-award-winning events venue in the Eastside of Birmingham City centre. Profits from our commercial activity are invested by the Millennium Point Charitable Trust into projects, events and initiatives which support the growth of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) and education in the West Midlands.
