What Does "Hybrid" Mean, Anyway?

NOTE: This "draft" was not supposed to escape incomplete as it did. Chalk it up to amateur hour and the wedding my wife and I are producing this weekend. Anyway, I've filled in a few blanks, and, I hope, stimulated some discussion.)

A few days ago, Dennis Shiao (@dshiao) tweeted about tracking 2011 hybrid events on a wiki. Which triggered my Socratic instinct to ask a probing, serious question--what the heck does hybrid mean, anyway? Is it becoming another meaningless buzzword? Or is it just a vague, squishy term that will eventually evolve into another meaningless buzzword? I believe the concept needs serious attention from the community of event practitioners before the black hole of obfuscation consumes it.

As one who bears a few scars of my past assumptions, overly-optimistic beliefs and a few bad calls (among several good ones, I hasten to add...), I have to admit that I'm not convinced that we're all singing the same"hybrid" hymn. In fact, I would assert that there are no lyrics, few rhymes, in fact only a few random concepts that we collectively, kind-of agree on as characteristics of hybrid events. So what,exactly have we been singing about?

We can all probably agree that there is an emerging class of events that intertwingles 2 user experiences: one targeted at a real, live, analog(?) audience and another targeted at a vaguely conceptual, remote, digital audience. The analog audience feels the buzz and excitement of the keynotes, presses flesh with or buys a beer for star presenters and emphatically questions exhibitors on their wares. They also commit significant time and money to travel and event admission. The digital audience mostly misses the buzz, drinks their sadly solitary brew in silence and may or may not engage through chats, Q&A sessions or social media like Twitter. Of course, virtual attendees are typically not inconvenienced by admission fees, long journeys, outrageous hotel bar bills or missing their kids' soccer games.

But, I have to confess that my virtual beer is not nearly cold enough and it's a tad flat. Doesn't make me want to whistle, sing or airdrum...at least with much enthusiasm...yet. As a conference sponsor, why should you care? You now get your message to 1,000 analog attendees plus another 5,000 virtual attendees. You've extended your reach for incremental cost. You had film crews covering the big presentations anyway, so adding signal out is almost a no-brainer, right? And the exhibitors are picking up a chunk of the tab because they value those 5,000 extra pairs of eyeballs and the residual presence. What event sponsors may miss is that providing a partially engaging experience could limit ultimate impact or even be counter-productive. As a virtual attendee, I'm doing email and taking phone calls if the experience is not immersive and truly engaging. Sure, I can always go back later and replay the presentation, but will I if it didn't grab me first time around?

Clearly the 2 audiences converge at content. Content is managed (or should be) for thematic coherence at a minimum.But the design is currently mostly tilted in favor of sponsors and their overall content delivery wishes, I would suggest that hybrid needs to be about audience integration as much as it is about audience extension. Analog and virtual attendees are enabled to participate in vastly different ways, but the experiences are not even close to fully-integrated or equal. A few observations of opportunities to move hybrid in this direction:

• Improve Analog presenter tools. Yes, the media are fundamentally different, but really now, why is it that analog presenters rarely see or address virtual attendees inquiries in hybrid events (Unless a live Twitter feed is upstaging them or an alert technician signals?) Couldn't we get improved presenter control panels where speakers can view Twiiter, Q&A out of room view and swap onscreen content at will? Most of the AV squad in the back of the room is too busy watching their meters or aiming cameras. Plus, I don't meet telepathic crews all that often and speakers are more likely to understand contexts which require responses or screen swaps.
• Improve Virtual presenter experience. I was recently a virtual presenter at VES11 and I have to tell you the experience for me was one of isolation. I had no visibility of room dynamics nor any audio except a shared feed from my co-presenters. I was isolated from the analog AND virtual audiences. Hardly ideal.
• Integrate polling methods so room and virtual attendees can respond within the same channel. Why can't a roomful of people and an online audience respond electronically to a poll through some Twitter-like or SMS polling method?
• Add virtual windows into analog booths. Virtual booths should not just be magazine racks with chat. Why can't analog booths be provisioned in such a way as to make it possible for a live demos of software-based content at least, to be shared with a virtual booth attendees? "Man on the street" interviews at interview stations do this nicely, but the technique needs to be ubiquitous, include content sharing and (dare I say it out loud?) easy to implement.
• Department of Redundancy Department. Screen/application sharing needs to ubiquitous, low bandwidth and embedded in platforms. Which brings me to one of my favorite and tedious refrains... Why can't I virtually share demos and do basic screen/application sharing without consuming the bandwidth of my entire (and robust) corporate network? Why must I jump out to another product to do this? If you vendors can't build it, surely the vendors of several excellent products that do this well today for smaller events would collaborate on open (ok, maybe a stretch...) APIs to enable use of their technology in show-compatible skins?

The challenge and opportunity remains integrating the two parallel universes through more and richer touch points. Hybrid can not, should not be all about sponsor benefit without paying significant attention to attendee and presenter needs. The buzz must extend beyond the convention center. The touch needs to be personal and moving for all.