Mike Fletcher shares his experience of attending Cvent CONNECT Europe and talks to Cvent’s Felicia Asiedu about staging the hybrid customer conference.
The last time I was back in the Arora ballroom at the Intercontinental London – The O2, it was October 2019 and Cvent’s Founder and CEO, Reggie Aggarwal was on-stage telling the Cvent CONNECT Europe audience the importance of a company culture driven by values rather than rules, along with the ability to hire well, listen well and build well.
We all know what happened to the world just a few short months later so it was impressive to see that when Cvent CONNECT Europe Virtual came around in 2020, the company had already lived-up to Reggie’s words by listening to what the industry needed, hiring the engineers to build it and by launching the Cvent Virtual Attendee Hub, which could integrate into the company’s existing suite of event marketing and management solutions.
The first time most people saw the Cvent Virtual Attendee Hub was when it powered the US version of Cvent CONNECT in August 2020, showcasing the technology to more than 28,000 global event professionals, marketers and hospitality planners.
For Cvent CONNECT Europe Virtual, which took place in October that year, another 8,000 online registrants got to experience the single largest investment in Cvent’s 21-year history and the resulting work of hundreds of product development experts, working remotely from home across multiple teams, timezones and disciplines.
Fast-forward to October 2021 and I’m back in the ballroom watching Reggie on-stage outline how the pandemic has been a catalyst for innovation, likely to change the face of the events industry forever.
Cvent CONNECT Europe 2021 was a hybrid blend of the Cvent Virtual Attendee Hub and in-person activity around the Intercontinental’s dedicated conference suite. To attend day one in-person, you needed to provide a negative lateral flow test or evidence of double vaccination, while day two was virtual with on-demand catch-ups.
“With so many virtual attendees accessing content in 2020, we needed to ensure that we didn’t lose the online audience. But we also understood the desire to get back to in-person live events. As a result, we decided upon a hybrid first day and a second day that was purely virtual,” Felicia Asiedu senior marketing manager, Europe at Cvent says. “The virtual elements were free to attend so it was the right thing to do for the right time, both from a commercial and ethical standpoint.”
The hotel’s Covid compliance checks, together with the touch-less registration meant that those delegates who did attend the first day in-person, reported how smooth the whole process was – helping them to feel safe and confident to be back in a conference environment.
In October 2019, the Arora ballroom had served as the main plenary hall, with break-out sessions and Innovation Pavilion exhibitors spread over two floors and 19 meeting rooms. For this year’s hybrid outing, Cvent redesigned the in-person space so that the ballroom was divided into three parts featuring all the different elements and allowing for a more contained delegate flow.
Asiedu explains: “The Innovation Pavilion was in the middle with break-out rooms on one side and the plenary hall on the other so that delegates had to pass through the exhibitors when moving from one content stream to the next. Again, it added to attendee comfort levels and created a good energy in the room.
“The second floor was just for the Cvent team and virtual production office. It was a place where we could manage everything and ensure that the technology was performing. At Cvent, we’re the biggest users of our own technology so being able to take advantage of the Attendee Hub for networking, discussion rooms and building up content agendas was a dream come true.”
In order to ensure that Cvent CONNECT Europe offered one experience for two different audiences, how the online audience saw and heard what was happening on stage was vital.
Cvent’s production partner, Encore designed the main plenary stage like a TV broadcast, with a camera tracking across the front and a floating screen hung from the ceiling – encouraging presenters to maintain eye-level contact with the virtual viewer and featuring autocue prompts.
“Virtual viewers could ask questions via the hub while in-room attendees asked questions via the app so none of us knew where the questions were coming from. That’s important so that you don’t segment your audience into at-home or in-the-room and it connects the overall experience,” Asiedu says. “Some of the virtual content was live and some of it was recorded on the first day and offered on-demand during day two. By producing additional virtual content using Cvent Studio, we were able to reduce the amount of production effort, which in turn meant we could offer more. It’s content I can also re-use for the rest of the year and into 2022.”
Overall, Asiedu admits that designing a hybrid event feels like planning two separate events with a focus on one exceptional experience. It’s hard work, things go wrong but seeing increased engagement, broader reach, audience interaction and delegates enjoying safe event environments again means that the rewards are worth it.
