Hybrid events need a defensible reason to be in person.

principle — attributed to Natalie Jones Hallahan

Hallahan's diagnostic for hybrid event design is direct. People are going to face harder decisions about whether to travel. They will feel greater permission to say no to in-person events. So if you are having an in-person component, there must be a reason it is in-person beyond delivering content the participant could have consumed remotely. The reason is usually the connections, not the program. The implication is that hybrid events whose in-person component duplicates what is available virtually will lose their in-person audience over time. The room has to offer something the screen cannot.

For corporate event teams and convening organizations designing hybrid programs in the post-pandemic period. The principle is most useful at the design stage; retrofitting it after invitations have gone out is harder.

hybrid-events, in-person-value, post-pandemic, design-discipline