Whether COVID-19 restrictions have eased in your area or you’re planning for the future, hybrid events are a great way to blend in-person and virtual events.
What is a hybrid event?
A hybrid event is a conference, tradeshow, webinar, meeting, etc., that brings together on-site and virtual elements into one event.
How to choose a virtual event platform:
For a hybrid event to be successful, identifying a user-friendly platform that parallels the in-person event for the online audience is just as important. Here are some features to consider when looking into a platform:
Engagement Tools: Engagement and networking tools for your virtual audience are critical, be sure to find a platform that meets your interaction goals.
Event Management: Determine if you need assistance from an event production team. A hybrid event has many moving parts, and it’s sometimes helpful to have a team apart from your own who knows the ins and outs to manage this kind of event.
Customization Options: To present a clean and professional look, you’ll want to make sure your platform can be customized to your organization’s branding.
Broadcast Capabilities: Decide how you plan to broadcast your event. Are you streaming live? On-demand? Streaming to social media? Will it be a single session or a multi-room conference? Be sure your platform and multimedia team can handle it.
Registration and Analytics: Find a platform that can process registration and track key analytics all in one place.
How to create impact with a hybrid event:
Once you’ve chosen your platform, it’s time to plan an impactful hybrid event. Hybrid events are unique because you can reach larger audiences, increase engagement and ROI, and allow flexibility and creativity. As the event host, you can create an engaging event for your attendees with these tips:
Blend your audiences: Find ways to combine your in-person and virtual audiences. If your in-person audience engages directly with the presenters, be sure your virtual audience can respond virtually through chat, social media, or any other tools your platform offers. You may need special moderators to ensure your online audience is seen and heard. Consider a live and/or virtual emcee to create personal connections with both audiences
Present Creatively: Use a myriad of presentation options from live presenters to videos, demos, PowerPoints, and screen sharing. Switching up your presentation style will keep your audiences engaged in your content, whether on-site or enjoying the event from their own home.
Sponsors, Sponsors, Everywhere: Your hybrid event opens the doors for lots of sponsorship opportunities. Offer both in-person and virtual expo halls, ad spaces before livestream and pre-recorded content, and create visibility packages that put your sponsor’s logo throughout the place-based event as well as your virtual site.
Turn your event into on-demand content: Turn your event evergreen by recording sessions and repurposing them later. If you have an LMS or Learning Management System, you can store event content within the LMS as a non-dues revenue source.
Don’t forget to market your event: Understanding your audience and marketing your event is an essential step to creating an impactful hybrid event. Don’t stop at email and social media campaigns before the event. Livestream the most exciting parts of the event to your social channels to encourage engagement. Try providing your virtual attendees a newsletter directly to their inbox so they know what to expect each day of the event. There is a lot of opportunities to market your event, so get creative!
Ensure your in-person audience is safe: Every state has different guidelines for in-person gatherings. If you decide to have an in-person audience, be sure you follow all the health and safety guidelines for your area to keep your audience safe. If your organization isn’t ready for a hybrid event just yet, there are entirely virtual options.
To plan, execute, and deliver an impactful hybrid event, it’s important to find the right solution that meets your organization and event’s goals. Learn more about CommPartners’ hybrid solutions and contact mgowen@commpartners.com for more information.
As we continue to dive into CommPartners, CEO Rich Finstein’s The Evolution of the Association LMS: 10 Considerations for 2020, we learn that personalization means identifying, tracking, and educating your learners in a personal and individualized way. A great way to do that is to design personalized learning paths. These journeys or paths can set your LMS apart from the myriad of eLearning options presented to learners today. Your learners benefit from all the advantages of being a part of an association plus have access to a robust LMS with curated content.
The best way to begin designing personal paths based on competencies is to lay the essential foundations. Throughout this series, we’ve proposed three considerations for enhancing your LMS to enrich your learners’ experience. While it takes time to plan and apply these ideas, we want to show you what can happen when you combine Community + Organization + Credentialing to create personalized learning journeys.
Follow these steps to create personalized learning paths:
Your content can then be separated into categories or learning tracks. Those tracks can be organized based on member role, publish date, expertise level, job title – whatever makes sense for your organization.
The learner can either begin their journey right there and take classes within the track that most closely applies to them or follow the next steps for an even more curated learning journey.
Step 2
Next, using a competency assessment, like CommPartners’ Self-Assessment Quiz, assess your learners’ strengths and weaknesses. Because you’ve applied a robust taxonomy strategy to your content, your learners can take the quiz and have custom content recommended to them based on identified skill gaps.
Step 3
Now your learners can dig into their learning journey.
As they move along through courses, reward your learners with digital badges when they complete courses or obtain a skill. A digital badge is a portable digital icon embedded with data that verifies a learner’s skills, credentials, and continuing education experiences. Badges are a tangible token they can share with their community to confirm the skills they’ve obtained.
You should also include engagement points throughout your learner’s journey. You can add personalized discussion posts on webinars to facilitate community and informal learning between peers. Look into whether your LMS allows your learners to create profiles, like Elevate’s Connect Module. Creating a unique profile with direct and group messaging allows for personal engagement between users.
Step 4
Once a track is complete, use your LMS testing capabilities to ensure they have met the standard for completion and award a certificate. The certificate symbolizes mastery in the subject.
At this point, the learner can take another self-assessment quiz for a new learning track and begin a new learning journey if they desire.
If you’re still unsure how to create a personal learning journey for your learners, check our on-demand webinar: Creating Personalized Learning Journeys. It comes with a toolkit that breaks this idea down even further.
If you’re interested in exploring your Elevate LMS capabilities or any of the tools presented in this blog, reach out to your Elevate representative or contact Meghan Gowen at mgowen@commpartners.com.
This is a guest post written by Mallory Gott MA, CAE, founder + creative director of G+A | An Experiential Design Firm. Mallory has traveled the globe designing amazing experiences for people from all walks of life and across a breadth of industries and specialties. From product and brand repositioning to customer acquisition to organizational cultural restructuring, she helps for-and non-profit clients apply G+A’s proprietary design thinking framework to discover solutions to their seemingly unsolvable problems.
What would you do if you won the lottery?
The Lottery Effect
Really, think about it. What would you do if you learned that you had just won the jackpot, that you were a newly minted multimillionaire? Most of us could rattle off a series of replies as if we’d been rehearsing them in the mirror each morning for decades. “Quit my job, travel the world, hire a private chef.” The list could go on ad infinitum.
Now, consider how doing those things would make you feel. Quitting your job? Most likely, that would evoke feelings of freedom and/or cheerfulness. Traveling the world? Adventurousness, excitement, or giddiness. Hiring a private chef? Calm and relaxation.
Yes, each of the things we’d dream of doing were we to win the lottery, we dream of doing because we believe they produce for us highly desirable feelings: freedom, excitement, relaxation, etc. This idea, that solving an unsolvable problem, i.e., winning the lottery, produces specific outcomes, i.e., hiring a private chef, which enables us to experience desired feelings (relaxation) is what we call The Lottery Effect. Interestingly, The Lottery Effect is not just restricted to fantasizing about the mega millions.
As event creators, we often fall prey to The Lottery Effect. We set ourselves up for disappointment believing the false paradigm that only in solving an unsolvable problem can produce specific outcomes, which in turn evoke the “right” feelings both for attendees and ourselves.
Without realizing it and even with the best intentions at heart, we design one directionally: solve first, feel next, operating at a disadvantage from the jump.
Case in point, we ask ourselves questions like, “How can I create a virtual event that meets attendees’ needs and successfully replaces a place-based conference?” Upon closer inspection, however, this seemingly innocuous question falls squarely into Lottery Effect territory, sounding, to our unconscious minds, something like this:
“Once we can convince attendees that we’ve created a virtual event that will meet their needs and they believe will adequately replace our annual conference, we will achieve our registration goals, better satisfaction scores, and an improved bottom line, which will make us feel more secure, confident, and satisfied.”
Notice any similarities?
Winning the Lottery
Virtual Event
Unsolvable Problem
Once I win the lottery
Once I convince attendees that we’ve created a virtual event that will meet their needs and that they believe adequately replaces our annual conference
Outcomes
Quit my job Travel the World Hire a Private Chef
Ample registration High attendee satisfaction Increased revenue
Resultant Feelings
Freedom Adventure Relaxation
Confidence Security Satisfaction
The Lottery Effect: A W(ere)wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
Although the unsolvable problem questions that comprise the first portion of our Lottery Effect statements almost always seem important and worthwhile, they are actually wolves in sheep’s clothing, or, more accurately, werewolves in sheep’s clothing. In reality, these seemingly crucial questions create an even more demanding series of implied requirements for success setting us on an extremely narrow path to victory.
When we begin with questions that so narrowly define success, we are forced to identify elusive answers to those questions, silver bullets if you will, as the only means by which we can generate outcomes that will enable us to experience desired feelings. Suddenly, the search for silver bullets, rather than the design of experiences that evoke universally recognizable feelings, drives everything we do.
In the case of winning the lottery, the question “How do I win the lottery,” and the even more demanding requirements it implies (in order to win the lottery, I must identify the correct sequence of numbers from an enormous array of choices, pick the correct date on which to buy a ticket, and so on) may seem laughable, but when viewed through the lens of virtual event design, they are much more sobering for teams who hadn’t realized the sizeable, self-imposed roadblocks they are navigating.
From the well-meaning question, “How do we convince attendees that we’ve created a virtual event that will meet their needs and they believe adequately replaces our annual conference,” springs forth a slew of nearly insurmountable, implied obstacles. The question transforms into this unspoken statement:
“In order to convince attendees that we’ve created a virtual event that will meet their needs and they believe adequately replaces our annual conference, we must:
Accurately identify and prioritize the needs of a wide variety of individuals;
Convince that same diverse group that we hold the monopoly on the definition of their needs and can simultaneously fulfill them via a single event;
Define “adequate replacement” for a divergent body of stakeholders and garner their universal acceptance of that definition; and
Achieve attendance, revenue, and satisfaction goals.”
Many groups never recognize how heavily implied, absolute truths such as these influence their evaluation and prioritization of the design of the million tiny touchpoints that create a virtual event experience. They unknowingly dilute the potency of a feelings-led design approach, crippling their ability to create experiences which resonate with people on a much deeper level of emotions.
“We’ve just got to get through this,” becomes a common refrain and rallying cry once the Lottery Effect has created its false binary, which tauntingly jeers, “discover the solution to your unsolvable problem by navigating a difficult obstacle course of implied demands in the hopes that people will connect with what you create…or fail.”
The Lottery Effect: You’re Already a Winner
Fortunately, the Lottery Effect problem is far from unsolvable. In fact, it only requires a paradigm inversion. In place of a “solve first, feel next” approach, G+A’s 4D experiential design thinking framework employs our unique “feel first, solve next” approach. What do feelings have to do with virtual event design? The same thing they have to do with good design of any kind: universality.
When we begin with feelings first, the difficulty, struggle, confusion, and other commonly accepted ‘realities’ inherent to virtual event design fall away. Why? Because feelings are universally understood on a level that needs no definition for attendees or producers, effectively creating immediate success and rendering decision-making and evaluation effortless.
Returning one last time to the quandary, “How do we convince attendees that we’ve created a virtual event that will meet their needs and they believe adequately replaces our annual conference,” we can see how a feelings-led approach truly shines.
In place of trying to convince attendees, we can ask ourselves:
Are we confident in the program we’ve produced?
Are we confident in our messaging about the program, both tone and content?
Are we confident in the level of innovation our program includes?
Instead of grappling with how best to meet attendees’ needs, we can ask ourselves:
Are we secure in our approach to assessing those needs?
Are we secure in our efforts to address them?
Are we secure in our communication about what we’ve done and why?
In lieu of hoping to create an adequate replacement for an annual conference, we can ask ourselves:
Are we satisfied that we have designed a high-quality virtual event experience that can stand on its own two feet?
Are we satisfied with the experience we created for ourselves as a team while we planned and produced the event?
Are we satisfied that we’ve done the best we could, no matter the monetary outcome?
If and when we respond to a feelings-led question in the negative, we need only ask simple follow-ups to regain our footing and move forward confidently: How can we evoke desired feelings as we design this touchpoint? How can we once again feel first and solve next?
This is a guest post written by Tracy King, CAE. As CEO of InspirEd, Tracy King leverages her more than 20 years in workforce development consulting with organizations on education strategy and learning design. Tracy is the author of Competitive Advantage: Create Continuing Education that is Profitable, Sustainable and Impactful, and she advises on how to grow reliably profitable and sustainable continuing education programs that transform learners. Tracy specializes in the intersection of learning science and technology. She’s a thought leader, invited speaker, master learning designer and DELP Scholar. Her work has been featured on NBC, ABC, FOX, USA Today, The Star Tribune and hundreds of nationally-syndicated television, newspaper, and magazine outlets. Tracy is a contributor to Microlearning in the Digital Age: The Design and Delivery of Learning in Snippets forthcoming by Routledge, Taylor & Francis group.
Learning inherently solves problems. It is designed to help us be or do something new, better, or differently. Learning programs that resolve top of mind challenges are a member prospect magnet. If you’ve been considering getting into the microcredentialing game, target the member segment you want to grow and build quick-win problem-solution learning that offers digital badge credibility (of course branded to your association).
Ideally, this should be the next step call to action you offer after member onboarding. While any of your meaty digital programs could serve as that next step, microlearning is easy to commit to and can be accessed via mobile for those professionals who just can’t take another minute in front of their laptop screen. If you’re going to design microlearning curriculum that solves problems and inspires behavior change, your organization and your new member both benefit from taking the additional step to qualify it as a digital badge. Your new member gets to solve a problem and share their accomplishment. Your organization’s visibility as the problem solver naturally grows.
One more tip: Free microlearning should dovetail into paid programs conveniently located in your LMS to learn more and tackle deeper skill development. By winning trust with a quality initial learning engagement, an additional investment becomes an easier decision to make.
Wins
Quick-win learning is an easy commitment and has higher completion rates
Giving new members a micro byte generates an appetite for higher-investment learning programs
Getting new members started immediately increases the likelihood they will realize membership value – and sharing their digital badge tells your story in their network giving you greater market visibility
These ideas work in tandem so it’s important that you familiarize yourself with both parts of this series. Once you feel comfortable with both Part 1 and 2 of Learning Strategies for New Members, it’s time to implement these strategies:
Start with what you have and map out the digital pieces you need to complete your programs so you can divide and conquer. Consider:
What assets do we have, what do we need, and what can be modified to create our new member onboarding journey?
What critical pain points could we begin addressing through microcredentialing that would not only attract new prospects but become the perfect segue to our paid programs?
With these strategies, you will be prepared to meet new members with curated content that will guide them effortlessly through your learning catalog.
If you’re interested in transforming your learning design, contact Tracy at info@inspired-ed.com. If you’re interested in Elevate LMS or in onboarding strategies for Elevate LMS, contact Meghan Gowen at mgowen@commpartners.com.
This is a guest post written by Tracy King, CAE. As CEO of InspirEd, Tracy King leverages her more than 20 years in workforce development consulting with organizations on education strategy and learning design. Tracy is the author of Competitive Advantage: Create Continuing Education that is Profitable, Sustainable and Impactful, and she advises on how to grow reliably profitable and sustainable continuing education programs that transform learners. Tracy specializes in the intersection of learning science and technology. She’s a thought leader, invited speaker, master learning designer and DELP Scholar. Her work has been featured on NBC, ABC, FOX, USA Today, The Star Tribune and hundreds of nationally-syndicated television, newspaper, and magazine outlets. Tracy is a contributor to Microlearning in the Digital Age: The Design and Delivery of Learning in Snippets forthcoming by Routledge, Taylor & Francis group.
Meeting this moment has inspired so many organizations to embrace virtual and digital learning to connect with members and constituents in new ways. While the appetite for innovation is whet, consider these ideas for attracting and engaging new members.
While the membership packet of old has seen several upgrades, now is the perfect time to leverage your LMS for exciting opportunities to connect new members to all you offer. Online member onboarding is timely not only for our current virtually mediated moment but popular with younger professionals who want to explore – and revisit – resources at their point of need. Live webinars are not typically the best format when Zoomed-out professionals are looking for excuses to decline screen meetings.
Consider creating a choose-your-own-adventure style onboarding in your LMS aligning your organization’s services with new members’ greatest needs. Steer clear of bullet-list descriptions and lengthy presentations and instead opt for mobile-friendly storytelling. Collect brief member videos, each representing a constituency in your membership, as well as highlighting one key value proposition that tells the story of your association’s character and relevance. We really want our new members to see themselves in these stories, so they are inspired to engage. Next, present your benefits as answers to challenges, creating clear and clickable access to get started. Finally, showcase how new members can find a home within the network of professionals you represent. Consider how you can ensure a new member receives a personal, colleague-member outreach call or an invitation to a networking event, even if that’s a live chat in your LMS or texting with a Board Member within the first month of membership to welcome them to the community.
One more tip: Always recommend a next step. Each learning opportunity should end with a call to action to join you in another program.
Wins
Introduce your organization immediately upon member sign up – no waiting for the next webinar orientation presentation
Easily accessible point of need member resources giving new members a comfortable launch pad for exploring all you offer
A natural introduction to all the member-only goodies in your LMS
It doesn’t stop here. Tracy will be back next month with the next step in her learning strategies for new membership. Be sure to catch part two of this post next month, Learning Strategies for New Members: Microcredentialing.
If you’re interested in transforming your learning design, contact Tracy at info@inspired-ed.com. If you’re interested in Elevate LMS or in onboarding strategies for Elevate LMS, contact Meghan Gowen at mgowen@commpartners.com.
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Your content can then be separated into categories or learning tracks. Those tracks can be organized based on member role, publish date, expertise level, job title – whatever makes sense for your organization.
between peers. Look into whether your LMS allows your learners to create profiles, like Elevate’s Connect Module. Creating a unique profile with direct and group messaging allows for personal engagement between users.
