Your choice of venue plays a huge role in the success of your hybrid event. When you add in an online hybrid element to your event, there’s a whole world of technical obstacles that you need to be aware of before you settle on your final venue.

None of these technical aspects are too complicated by themselves, but as Churchill is famed for saying, “If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail”. Your average venue isn’t built with a hybrid event in mind, so you need to make sure that you forsee any potential complications and needs, before they arise on the day.

In this blog, we’re going to quickly look over the main shortcomings that your venue might have, so you can make sure it’s hybrid ready!

Your venue needs reliable and fast internet speeds

We can only put this so bluntly, but the success of your hybrid event lives and dies on the speed of your internet.

Your internet speeds are a huge concern that come before production values or even your content. If you can’t adequately stream your content to your online attendees, then you’re going to lose a huge chunk of your audience, and therefore all of the benefits that come with hosting a hybrid event.

We’ve already done a full checklist of what kind of questions you need to ask your venue about your internet, but the shorthand is that it needs to be fast and reliable. The good news is that this information is easy to find out simply by using an online broadband speed checker when you’re visiting the venue to determine if it’s right for your hybrid event needs.

Your venue needs to provide you time to rehearse

In our experience as event hosts, there seems to be very little consistency is how much a venue is happy with rehearsals and run throughs of your event.

Some venues are perfectly happy for you to return as often as you want with advanced notice, while others are very explicit on the days which you have access to the venue space. The reality of hosting a hybrid event is that there is an extra technological aspect which requires more planning and setup than your usual in-person only event.

You’ll need to be sure that your venue is flexible to some extra rehearsal time and days to scope out the space so that you can adequately map out your hybrid event beforehand. As we’ve said earlier, there are a lot of venues who are very open to this, so you won’t have trouble finding a venue that allows this – but always confirm with a venue beforehand that they are happy with this so you avoid any nasty surprises.

Your venue needs enough space for you and your attendees

The increased amount of equipment you’ll need to host a hybrid event is going to require some more space when it comes to not just storage, but the actual streaming setup in each of your rooms.

The good news is, most of these space concerns can be met by simply good preparation and planning.

If you are the kind of event host whose idea of set up for a presentation room is just to make a stage and then fill the rest of the space with chairs, then you’re going to need to review that prep strategy.

Working with your technical staff to safely store your streaming equipment throughout the event, as well as planning each room to get the most from your sound and visuals is going to be a new priority. More importantly, you need to be sure that you have a setup that works around your in-person attendees, so they can safely get to their seat without tripping over any valuable equipment or blocking the camera shot.

In short, make sure your venue is spacious enough to account for these new additions.

Your venue needs to have a good power supply

All of this technology needs to be powered somehow, so it won’t surprise you that you’re going to need a lot of power supply points to do it.

Thankfully, most venues are perfectly stocked when it comes to the number of power supply points and sockets there are available. But it’s one of those small details which if you assume that your venue has it, if it turns out it doesn’t on the day, it will be almost impossible to solve on short notice.

So when you’re scouting out your venues, keep an eye on those plug sockets and make sure they’re practical for your final hybrid event setup.

Your venue needs to be responsive to your needs

Any good venue needs to have great support when it comes to helping you host the best event you can. There’s no denying that this is fundamental to any great venue as standard.

However, as we’ve hopefully illustrated throughout this article, hosting a hybrid event involves a lot of moving parts. That increased complexity requires an increased responsiveness to your needs on your venue’s behalf.

There are incredible gains to be made when it comes to hosting your own hybrid event, but with those benefits comes the extra pressure to host your event to a wider audience. All this boils down to is that your hybrid needs to run like clockwork, or at least as close to that as possible (some mistakes are always inevitable and acceptable). Because of this, make sure that you can trust your venue to help you with any potential obstacles, long term or on the day, to help you host the best hybrid event that you can.

Your venue needs to be secure

While security at a venue is always a concern, for most events it’s common to leave the main public spaces and presentation rooms open at all times. Beyond valuables that need locking away, the most valuable items in a presentation room are usually built into the venue itself. Someone is unlikely to try and steal a PA system built into your venue itself for instance.

However, when it comes to hosting a hybrid event, you’re going to need lots of camera and sound equipment, all of which is a little bit easier to steal if anyone was so inclined.

While your security doesn’t need to be Fort Knox levels, you need to be mindful of the increase in value that you’ll be bringing to your event. As a basic protection, it would be best to be able to lock any rooms which have cameras set up, or have a secure office space where you can securely store any expensive equipment.

ReAttendance Is The Home For Hybrid Events

Once you’ve found the perfect venue, then ReAttendance is here to help you handle the rest.

The technical aspect of a hybrid event can intimidate many event organisers, but the ReAttendance team are here to make sure your whole hybrid event runs like clockwork.

ReAttendance is a complete online events platform that can handle every aspect of your event, and even better, we also work with audio engineers, editors and directors so we can help manage every aspect of your event’s production.

If you want to get in touch and have a chat about your event and what your need for it to go hybrid, then simply contact us here.