What kind of Hybrid conference is best?
The honest answer: None
Alternating between virtual and in-person is probably the best approach
Let’s dig into different hybrid conference scenarios to understand why.
Single location hybrid
In this scenario, an association hosts an onsite conference in one location, but also allows attendees to join virtually. Virtual attendees mostly are able to watch onsite presentations, but sometimes can also engage with each other in virtual networking events. Sometimes virtual attendees can also give a presentation that is either live streamed into the event or pre-recorded for playback during sessions.
Benefits
Greater accessibility without additional carbon
This approach has several benefits. First, it can increase access for (a) early-career professionals who can’t afford to fly and stay in a hotel, (b) parents of young children who can’t get away, and (c) people with disabilities who have mobility challenges, among others. Second, a single-location hybrid event expands the size of the participating community without increasing the carbon footprint. For the onsite participants, they have the typical conference experience, with hallway conversations and other networking opportunities. For the virtual participants, they can hear and sometimes share important ideas. Finally, exhibitors are happiest when showing their wares onsite; although they rarely reach virtual attendees in a hybrid format, they’re typically willing to attend for the in-person sales opportunities.
Downsides
Expensive
But there are also many downsides to a single location hybrid conference. Perhaps most important to conference organizers: They’re extremely expensive to produce. In addition to all the typical costs of putting on a conference, hybrids require a large A/V budget to pay for streaming and live recording of sessions. Then there’s a the cost of a virtual platform, which can range from $2,000-$30,000, depending on the features organizers wish to offer to the virtual attendees.
People intensive
Similar to cost, but a bit different: Hybrid conferences require a lot more personnel than either onsite or virtual conferences alone. In addition to needing the usual onsite staff to handle registrations, set up A/V tech in each rooms, run exhibit halls, oversee catering, and all the rest, hybrid conferences require onsite virtual hosts to ensure that virtual participants are seeing and engaging with onsite offerings. Virtual hosts are also needed for any virtual-only events such as online networking activities.
Inequitable
From an equity and inclusion standpoint, single location hybrid conferences are problematic. They create first and second class attendees, by offering vastly better experiences to the onsite participants than those joining virtually. The people who travel to the conference are treated to food, tourism perks and greater “attention commitment” from the staff, presenters and other attendees. Worse, this inequity probably reifies existing inequalities, because the people who attend virtually are more likely to hail from marginalized parts of the profession: Early career professionals who lack travel funds, parents with childcare responsibilities, which often falls more heavily on women, and people with disabilities and mobility challenges. While an association may intend to offer more access through a hybrid conference format, it may inadvertently contribute to greater long-term exclusion in its field.
How are marginalized folks meant to move up the ranks within a community? Many senior professionals tell their younger colleagues that traveling to conferences will advance their career. (Meanwhile, research on academia has found that there’s actually no correlation between conference travel and academic career success.) This perception of the need to travel to conferences forces younger people to choose between their values of environmental sustainability (opting for virtual attendance) and career advancement (flying to the conference).
Future improvements
In our view, the downsides of the single-location hybrid format outweigh the benefits. However, if new technologies made it easier for onsite participants to interact with virtual attendees, that equation could shift in favor of hybrids. At the Future of Scientific Conferencing workshop hosted by the National Institutes of Health, Andy Burnett imagined outfitting rooms with furniture that would connect to others joining virtually. For example, he envisioned desks that would instantly project anything written on them into the virtual space so everyone could see what was written. He dreamed of receiving a device at an onsite conference that allowed him to easily peer into the virtual realm, seeing augmented layers of reality built on top of the physical convention center. Armed with technology that brings down the barriers between virtual and onsite participants, the higher costs of a single-location hybrid conference may be worth it.
Multiple location hybrid
Image from Tao, Y., Steckel, D., Klemeš, J. J., & You, F. (2021). Trend towards virtual and hybrid conferences may be an effective climate change mitigation strategy. Nature Communications, 12(1), Article 1.
In this scenario, multiple, simultaneous, in-person hubs host a conference for the same association or community. The in-person hubs include virtual connections among the hubs as well as provide access for fully virtual attendees. In other words, virtual and in-person attendees can view presentations at any hub. People within a hub can mix and mingle, and presumably travel less distance to attend. Virtual attendees can interact with one another in the digital space.
Benefits
More inclusive and equitable for less carbon
The hybrid conference that integrates multiple locations has two big benefits over the single-location hybrid format: Lower carbon emissions and greater inclusion. With multiple, regional locations, onsite attendees can travel fewer miles, thereby polluting less. Presumably, fewer people would have to choose the virtual option, reducing the number of “second class” attendees. Indeed, this is important for professionals in the Global South, who have reported that in some instances, they must travel to a conference in order to “qualify” to attend; virtual attendance is not always permitted, nor it is necessarily supported with high speed internet. In addition to the environmental benefits, regional attendees can interact with one another, experiencing desirable networking opportunities and perks of being away from home.
Downsides
Super expensive
Unfortunately, along with the greater benefits come even greater costs. The multiple location hybrid is typically more expensive than the single-location hybrid, the regular onsite conference, and the virtual conference combined. Each location hub incurs all the costs of an onsite conference, such as staffing, lodging, food, meeting space, and A/V support. And the A/V needs to provide onsite as well as virtual access, if the hubs are interconnected. And they would still necessitate a virtual platform, whose cost would depend on the features desired for virtual attendees and networking across hubs. Some of these costs could be mitigated, for example by using free meeting spaces (at academic institutions, libraries or museums). Limiting networking across hubs would also reduce the costs of the A/V and virtual platform, but that would undermine the whole point of the approach.
Technically complex
Although the inequities of single location hybrid conferencing would impact fewer people, onsite attendees at one hub might have a difficult time asking questions and making comments in sessions held at other hubs, unless individuals joined via their own computers. In other words, without the right technology, “watch parties” could be unwieldy. Similarly, exhibitors would either have to spend more time and money setting up booths at different hubs, or choose one hub and settle for a fraction of the sales opportunities.
Lots more work
Finally, and perhaps most importantly for organizers, the multiple location approach requires much more work to plan, coordinate, and execute. Rather than putting on one conference, leaders would have to hold several simultaneously, undoubtedly across time zones. Still, there are highly motivated organizers who implemented this model during the COVID-19 pandemic, and reported positive results. We don’t have much confidence that after the pandemic, conference leaders will want to put in the effort and funds needed to implement a successful multi-hub hybrid conference. This leads us to the approach we advocate for those who still want to meet in person: Do it half as often by meeting virtually every other year.
One solution: Alternate
Because hybrid models are so expensive in terms of time, people and effort, we advocate for alternating between each year between meeting virtually and meeting in person. We believe this yields the greatest benefits from each format, while minimizing the downsides. This model relies on improving virtual conferencing, which is why that’s the primary goal of the Clean Conferencing Institute.
Benefits
Cut carbon emissions in half
By alternating, associations would cut their carbon emissions nearly in half. (Powering virtual conference platform servers still emits a small amount of carbon dioxide, though this would be no different in a hybrid meeting.) Until we see hybrid meetings that have more than half the participants joining virtually, this represents a greater savings than the hybrid approach.
Fair and equitable
Alternating is also more equitable: No one has to choose between environmentalism, low cost, and easy logistics on one hand and perceived career advancement and perks of travel on the other. Both conferences, and their attendees, receive the full attention of the organizers, exhibitors, and presenters. Indeed, exhibitors would have access to all attendees in both formats, and in another blog post, we shared ideas for boosting the value of those interactions.
Potential for greater profits
It’s worth noting that virtual conferences are typically more profitable than onsite ones, when exhibitors and sponsors are willing to support and attend. In fact, the low cost of production—no food, no hotel blocks, no convention center rental—means that associations can reduce the registration and exhibitor fees and make a greater profit over the long term than always meeting in person.
Downsides, but not so bad
Need exhibitors’ buy-in, but the technology, activities, and norms are here
Unfortunately, exhibitors and sponsors are not yet willing to participate at the same rates at virtual versus in-person conferences. Until we increase their return on investment, the virtual conferencing model will be challenging to adopt for associations that offer an exhibit hall at their conference. Happily, technology and activity structures are improving in this area.
Similarly, interpersonal interactions onsite are currently superior to those in the digital domain, but again, they are improving thanks to better technology, activities and articulated social norms (as we described at a conference in 2024).
Overcome virtual’s bad reputation
Perhaps one of the greatest problems with alternating is the poor reputation of virtual conferencing. The COVID-19 pandemic provided an opportunity for millions (billions?) of people around the world to experience virtual conferences. Unfortunately, those conference were mostly dissatisfying, perhaps because they were put together quickly with substandard virtual tools. Today, the platforms are much stronger, and we’re working with researchers and providers to add even more features to support networking and human-human interaction. We believe that for some association leaders and their members, seeing these new approaches in action could open their minds to the possibility of holding their meetings virtually every other year. And then there’s the option of the “unconference” every other year, which either holds only onsite regional meetings, or blows up the entire model and offers short, virtual gatherings to promote idea exchange and networking.
Need to charge reasonable registration fees
Along with a poor reputation, virtual conferences have suffered from free or too-low registration fees. When registration is too low, prospective attendees do not commit the time and attention to the conference needed to make an engaging experience. (We’ve seen free conferences whose ultimate attendance was less than half of the number of people registered.) Further, too-low registration threatens the financial viability of the conference, discouraging board members and other association decision-makers from pursuing virtual conferencing.
Improve virtual conferencing
The upshot here is that we need to improve the virtual conferencing experience of attendees and exhibitors for any of these models to work. This is the mission of the Clean Conferencing Institute. But while we’re accomplishing that, we believe that the alternating model is the best bang for the buck.
Sue Allen and Josh Gutwill are Co-Directors of the Clean Conferencing Institute. At the Institute, we’re working to radically improve virtual conferencing. If you’d like to support us, please consider clicking on the Donate button at the top of the page.