When the events scheduled for March-April 2020 began to be canceled one after another, event organizers in Azerbaijan were shocked. How should events be held? What should be the technical infrastructure? Soon what happened had happened, and everything started falling in place. Now that the fear of a pandemic has blown over and we have entered 2022, obviously, the roadmap for the business event industry has already been drawn up.
With the opening of cinema theaters and other cultural venues in the coming year, physical conferences and business meetings will increasingly replace virtual events. Of course, virtual events cannot replace physical participation, but during the pandemic, marketers have discovered some benefits of such events, not previously seen or felt acutely by them.
Although we in Azerbaijan have been using online conference platforms and bringing attendees from multiple physical spaces together into a single event since 2017, we have not expected this trend to be adopted to that extent. Many of our Hybrid Conference clients we contacted in the past year noted that virtual and hybrid events helped them save on travel, accommodation, catering, and promo product segments, allowing them to arrange more events. Live streaming of conferences through social media using Hybrid Event Platforms greatly expanded the scope of marketing, broadened the audience, and attracted new customers from different circles. This shows once again that the event industry has built a new roadmap.
A Window to the World at Events
Restrictions introduced in 2020 gave impetus to rapidly developing the technical infrastructure of events. For only several months, the online conference platform app has implemented innovations that would have taken years. Taking advantage of these platforms, event organizers have managed to turn them into a good opportunity and started arranging online events with a much larger number of attendees than physical ones. Bringing world-renowned speakers with opening speeches to events without travel or hospitality expenses has proven to be more budgetary.
Physical events are already making a comeback, but for organizations not wishing to miss out on the benefits of online events, Hybrid Conferences seem to be the best solution. The Hybrid Conference technology allows both the attendees sitting in the hall and those who have connected to the event online from home, office, or another country by phone, tablet, or computer, to experience the same atmosphere.
Interpretation at Hybrid Conferences
Conference organizers using Hybrid Event technology strive to make the event more meaningful by attracting attendees, speakers, and experts from all over the world. The hybrid platform’s interpretation function plays a key role in ensuring multilingual communication. Choosing the platform from among the world’s available Hybrid and Online Event technologies, most appropriate for the specific event format, the interpretation portal, and a simultaneous interpreter capable of interpreting on these platforms are important factors ensuring the event’s success.
Nuances of Arranging Hybrid Events
When arranging an international event with speakers and participants speaking several foreign languages, you should pay attention to the following interpretation aspects:
How many foreign languages will be used at the event?
What is the best hybrid event technology for your event?
Does the hybrid event platform have simultaneous interpretation functionality?
How to choose a simultaneous interpreter? Does the interpreter have experience in hybrid events?
Does the Internet speed at the venue meet your requirements?
Of course, to answer all of these questions, you will need a partner specializing in hosting events. Your partner should be informed of not only hybrid event platforms but also conference rooms and interpreters. Since the hybrid platform user interface is in English, technicians should also be proficient in English to use these platforms.
A short training should be performed before a hybrid event to familiarize speakers, translators, and sometimes attendees with the hybrid platform functionality, and your event hosting partner should have project managers capable of delivering such training.
If you need help solving these problems, our team, experienced in holding Hybrid and Online Events since 2017, is always at your service. Contact us, and we will share helpful tips with you to hold your next event.
