Michael Doyle | Meetings Podcast

Michael Doyl e founder of the Virtual Edge Institute talks about the benefits of hybrid events. Michael tends to the myths that these types of events will cannibalize your attendance when it actually increases your reach and builds excitement about your event. He presents some case studies and proven methods of these types of technology that event planners and meeting organizers should understand.

The upcoming event Michael produces is a great place to learn about hybrid and virtual events.

Virtual Edge Summit Conference which will be held in Las Vegas on January 12 & 13 at the MGM Convention Center.

Michael also offered MeetingPodcast readers/listeners a discount and receive $120 off in person rate and $90 off virtual. Here is the discount link to the Virtual Edge Summit.
I will be there (mike) and I hope to see you there! A whole category of these types of digital elements are changing the way you plan, market, produce, measure and in some cases, monetize your of meetings and events. Michael has some great ideas and reasons people should think about using these elements!

What does Wikipedia say?

A hybrid event is a tradeshow, conference, unconference, seminar, workshop or other meeting that combines a “live” in-person event with a “virtual” online component.

With the growing popularity and cost-effectiveness of virtual events, hybrid events have become a popular way of increasing participation in traditional events at a relatively low cost. They also enable participation by people who might be unable to attend physically due to travel or time zone constraints or through a wish to reduce the carbon footprint of the event. The open, participatory nature of unconferences (e.g., Barcamp) and their focus on sharing content, makes them hybrid events too.

Transcripts coming soon!

Virtual Edge Summit Founder Michael Doyle Show 157 (grassshackroad.com)
37 Dynamite Ways to Keep The Conversation Going After Your Event (eventcoup.com)
New Report from George P. Johnson Confirms Hybrid Events Generate Strong ROI (eon.businesswire.com)
10 Reasons for Partnering with a Meeting Production Company for Meetings (grassshackroad.com)
What are the Benefits of Having a Hybrid Event? Michael Doyle – Show 158 (grassshackroad.com)
How Does TEDActive Hybrid Event Work? Going Digital 4 Sarah Shewey (grassshackroad.com)

Recorded message Welcome to the Meetings Podcast: The Meeting Planner’s podcast source for what’s new in the meetings and events industry! Meetings Podcast is a conversation with a variety of voices that looks at events, meetings, and media, and the changing world around them

Mike McAllen: Welcome back to the Meetings Podcast, This is Mike McAllen from Grass Shack Events and Media and today we have Michael Doyle, Executive Director of the Virtual Edge Institute and also the Founder of the Virtual Edge Summit. Hi Michael

Michael Hi, glad to be back

Mike McAllen Thank you so much for coming back Wanted to talk a little bit about hybrid events today, can you give us some benefits to have a hybrid event

Michael Doyle Sure, sure You know for just the sake of folks who might hear hybrid event and think its some big extravagant kind of production, when we look at hybrid events we kind of look at it from the standpoint of it can be something that is very simple and kind of just as simple as streaming out a session or a key note or something like that to a virtual audience out there.

There are even systems out there that offer that free and so if you can do the capture and get a good internet connection you can start to stream things out of an event and connect with that virtual audience. So you can have that level which is really something that anybody can do right up to a full blown multi program full conference hybrid experience that is running on one of the many platforms out there that are built specifically for that.

There is a broad mix of hybrid type of solutions out there and I think the benefit to first of all to the event producer is that expanded reach. So being able to reach an audience that might be new to your program and finds you may be in one of these streams or something and they can experience your event for the first time and start to understand what the program is and kind of get the benefit of the content and the program that you are putting together so that they can really evaluate whether next time you run the event again whether its appropriate for them to actually travel and attend physically.

We have seen that in a lot of cases where people have first attended the event virtually and then converted to a actual physical attendee so from an event producer’s stand point I think there is lot of marketing value, a lot of ability to get a broader audience exposed to your program so that’s the event producer’s stand point. From the attendee’s stand point in some cases you just can’t for various reasons travel to an event and either it’s a financial situation where you can’t get approval for travel and we see that happening quite a bit with the economy the way it is. Or its just a time issue when you can’t afford to take that time out of your schedule to travel for a day to go to a conference and spend a few more days at the conference and then another day traveling back and so that’s the other big thing right there is that being able to as an attendee still participate the event though you can’t attend physically.

I think those are some of the obvious benefits to it, some other benefits are having that content available later on demand and that’s a plus for both the physical attendee as well as virtual attendees to be able to go back to in most conferences sessions that you couldn’t go to because you can only be in one room at one time and there is multiple programs going on so I think being able to go back on demand is a big plus as well.

[0:05:00]
Mike McAllen Well that’s fantastic Also I know that a lot of, in the past event planners and so have talked about that, they don’t want to do that, do a hybrid event because they are afraid that it would kind of reduce the attendees because people won’t come because of that. I think it has the opposite effect. I know for me it has, I watched hybrid event that’s online and then oh I have to go to that next time. I feel like I am missing out because everybody, you can hear them all after the session, they start chatting and walking and you know you are like ooh there we will need to be able to [laughing]

Michael Doyle Yeah, I would like to talk to that person right there and chat with them. It’s funny because at the virtual edge summit we do a hybrid event course and we actually had people that started in the virtual audience and actually show up at the event in the afternoon because they thought it was so good and they didn’t want to miss that experience.

So we have actually had first hand cases of attending virtually and showing up the same day in person. But there have been I think, I have never run into any event producer that produces a fair amount of physical events and is also virtual that’s ever said yeah we saw some cannibalization of our physical attendees

Mike McAllen That’s the word I was looking for I couldn’t think of it – cannibalization [laughing] it’s a great word exactly

Michael Doyle yeah, yes

Mike McAllen I know I know, I have heard the same thing from everybody. And so do you have some examples of successful hybrid

Michael Doyle yeah yeah. Give you a few different examples of what people are doing with various kinds of virtual hybrid programs just so you have some different data points because there are so many different types of events out there. We have one of the people who is, actually couple, folks speaking at the event are gonna be talking about product launches and both of them, one actually does a physical road show but they are doing a virtual program with those product launch events as well.

The other one had a physical product launch events and tried doing it virtually and so they will be talking about their experiences but I will tell you that one of the companies is Plan View and she is gonna be talking about the product launches that they have done and they were actually so successful, in fact the VP in sales went in right after the event and said we have to do more of these because they actually had their biggest sales that they have ever had in a company around any kind of activity generated from this virtual product launch.

That’s one kind of thing IBM has some folks that are gonna be there, they are talking about a virtual product launch that they are doing, that’s one area. Of course you have the typical kinds of trade shows and user conferences, CISCO live is one of the ones out there that we have a few speakers who are gonna talking about their experiences and they are always fun because they do so many different things

Mike McAllen they have money [laughing]

Michael Doyle yeah [laughing] exactly

Mike McAllen that’s all I have to say, they can do lots of cool stuff

Michael Doyle exactly exactly and for some of us who don’t have those budgets we would like to be voyeurs and then figure out ok what can I take out of there, yeah that one worked I think I can do that, that no – not gonna be able to do that but

Mike McAllen So they are fantastic because they do trial, these new cool things. I saw, what’s her name speaking Angie

Michael Doyle Angie Smith?

Mike McAllen Oh great, yeah, she‘s really cool. She’s a good speaker but the whole thing they did I saw that their online gaming thing, virtual, oh my God that’s very cool

[0:10:00]
Michael Doyle yeah She does the global, here’s a different type of meaning she works on the global sales meetings so few years ago they had gone from a physical event that was huge it was a 3 week long sales meeting that tied up all the executives and people traveled from around the world, some location and it cost towards a hundred millions dollars

Mike McAllen I actually worked on that a couple of times

Michael Doyle Oh did you really, ok so you know the scope and

Mike McAllen yeah crazy crazy huge

Michael Doyle yeah so they brought that into a virtual event and Angie did that and was quite amazing. Probably I would say it’s probably the biggest from a financial standpoint virtual event in history. They lowered their cost overall the event by about a tenth, so its down to 10 percent of what it used to cost but it still is a major production and she did some great things there. So she will be talking there as well and sharing what they did and what worked and lessons learned and then we have folks from SAP who will be speaking there and they did a very interesting kind of satellite virtual event.

They had their core sapphire event and they did sapphire now and sapphire now was an event that done in 3 different locations it was streamed into various location sin Europe from the US event, it was just a continuous event that tied everybody together around the world. They will be talking about that program and how that worked. I think you are gonna see more and more of that kind of activity because people still want to meet face to face for example in Germany they had 100s of people that attended the virtual version of sapphire now in person. They were still able to get together face to face there and participate in the program virtually.

Mike McAllen very very cool Alright Michael thank you so much for talking with me again and if anyone wants to go to the Virtual edge summit they can go to virtualedgesummit.com. They can also go to the meeting podcast site where you can actually get 120 dollars the in person rate and 90 dollars off the virtual rate. So thank you Michael for offering that up to the listeners

Michael Doyle My pleasure, looking forward to seeing you there

Mike McAllen yeah really appreciate it. Where can they find you if they wanted to talk to you on the twitters or somewhere?

Michael Doyle Virtual edge is our twitter id and that’s a great place or just mdoyle@virtualedge.org, it’s my email address

Mike McAllen And what’s the hash tag is it virtual edge for the

Michael Doyle It will be VES2011

Mike McAllen Great, ok that’s nice too because people can start connecting right now Alright well thank you so much Michael, I look forward to talking to you again, may be we can get you back on the show and talk little bit more about this cool stuff

Michael Doyle Sounds great, yeah looking forward to it

Mike McAllen ok talk to you later