{"id":545,"date":"2010-09-21T13:26:44","date_gmt":"2010-09-21T17:26:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tuvel.com\/blog\/2010\/09\/21\/do-virtual-and-hybrid-events-cannibalize-f2f-events\/"},"modified":"2011-06-16T15:42:15","modified_gmt":"2011-06-16T19:42:15","slug":"do-virtual-and-hybrid-events-cannibalize-f2f-events","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tuvel.com\/blog\/do-virtual-and-hybrid-events-cannibalize-f2f-events\/","title":{"rendered":"Do Virtual and Hybrid Events Cannibalize F2F Events?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently had the pleasure of attending EventCamp Twin Cities<\/a> – without leaving my office. How? I attended the virtual event, held in tandem with the live, face-to-face (F2F) event in the Twin Cities. I was extremely impressed by the entire event and particularly the virtual side. Thanks to technology partners like Intefy<\/a> and Sonic Foundry<\/a>, as well as awesome organizers like Samuel J. Smith of Interactive Meeting Technology<\/a>, Ray Hansen<\/a> of Appevision and EventCamp Twin Cities virtual host Emilie Barta<\/a>, my experience as a virtual attendee was as if I were right there in the room, participating with everyone else. I came away from EventCamp Twin Cities filled with excitement to attend (in person) the upcoming EventCamp East Coast<\/a> in Philadelphia.
\nI even tweeted during the event about my excitement…<\/p>\n


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\n…which got this response from @suzannecarawan:
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\n<\/a>
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\nIt definitely made me think. Since we work with many event organizers on social media, outreach and community building for their events, this experience made me wonder about how well virtual and hybrid (mix of virtual and F2F) events could work for larger conferences. I think that the possibilities would be endless and present enormous opportunity to engage not only past attendees who could not make it to the event, but new audiences interested in the content on offer. I recall a song from my Girl Scout days we used to sing at the end of troop meetings: “Make new friends, but keep the old\/One is silver and the other gold.” Build new relationships, build upon existing ones.
\nUnfortunately, there seems to be this assumption that virtual and hybrid events will cannibalize attendance to the live event. In reality, virtual and hybrid events (when done right) can actually help increase attendance to subsequent live events by broadening the event\u2019s reach and generating interest from new audience bases. Read about the case of Cisco<\/a> and the phenomenal results they achieved from their hybrid events \u2013 where 55% of virtual attendees were “net-new” and 35% said they\u2019d attend a live event<\/strong>. Another example of hybrid events that work is the IN Zone at TS2<\/a> 2010, where the “Continuing the Conversation” virtual audience grew by 106%<\/strong> as they watched interviews conducted by Emilie Barta and participated in discussions via social media channels.
\nWhat we have to get past is the notion that virtual and hybrid events will become a reason for attendees not to pay. Instead, they\u2019re a reason for those who cannot attend the live event to still participate. Why would you want to alienate those who cannot attend in person just because they\u2019re not paying the big bucks to do so? Hybrid events present a huge opportunity to engage a portion of your audience during a live event that you wouldn\u2019t have engaged otherwise. They may already be following your event via Twitter, Facebook, blogs or other online news sources \u2013 why not acknowledge those folks and invite them to participate where they are?
\nPlus, if your content is strong and valuable enough, you might even consider charging a fee to attend virtually, or even offering a tiered model with free and premium virtual attendance. In fact, according to a recent survey of 112 associations conducted by Tagoras<\/a>, only 2-3% of groups that are planning virtual conferences for the first time say they will offer it for free \u2013 in fact, most are looking to charge as close to the price of the F2F conferences as they can. Michael McCurry of Experient wrote an excellent article exploring revenue models for hybrid events<\/a>, which I highly recommend reading if you\u2019re considering \u201chybridizing\u201d your event.
\nSo – are you convinced yet, or do you still have reservations? What have your experiences been with virtual and hybrid events as related to your live event attendance? <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently had the pleasure of attending EventCamp Twin Cities – without leaving my office. How? I attended the virtual event, held in tandem with the live, face-to-face (F2F) event in the Twin Cities. I was extremely impressed by the entire event and particularly the virtual side. Thanks to technology partners like Intefy and Sonic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,5,43,11,40,69,49],"tags":[151,70,153,152,150],"class_list":{"0":"post-545","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-community","7":"category-community-building-management","8":"category-events-2","9":"category-events-conferences","10":"category-opportunities","11":"category-social-media","12":"category-technology","13":"tag-hybrid-events","14":"tag-social-media-2","15":"tag-ts2","16":"tag-virtual-conferences","17":"tag-virtual-events","18":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuvel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuvel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuvel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuvel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuvel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=545"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuvel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1044,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuvel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545\/revisions\/1044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuvel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuvel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuvel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}