This post is part of the HopSkip Planner Spotlight Series where HopSkip spotlight's planners across the industry to bring awareness of how they adapted to COVID-19, communicating and lessons learned and sharing how they are viewing the meetings and events industry in a post-pandemic world.
Name: Lily Ryzbarczyk
Company Name: International Living Future Institute
Job Title: Manager, events
Years of Experience: 7
How do you think you are positioned, after months of persevering with the pandemic, to take advantage of our new and disrupted meetings/events landscape?
Our small-but-mighty team became a lot more agile during the pandemic. In March of 2020, we pivoted our flagship conference online in just 30 days. It was a steep learning curve, but our team scaled up our digital and technological capabilities, and we’ve continued to do so over the past two years. The pandemic also caused us to take a step back from our events and really reconsider how we achieve what our objectives (both for our attendees and our organization). We’ve gotten to experiment a bit more and rethink everything from networking and collaboration to session timing and delivery. This is a mindset I’ll carry with me as we resume live events.
As our community moves forward with planning in person meetings, what new technologies or processes are you implementing that you may have not looked at before?
During the pandemic, we’ve hosted all of our events online. Online delivery and availability will likely continue to be a feature of all of our events, even as we transition back to in-person. Outside of a couple of webinars, we had never hosted an event fully online before.
As we see virtual meetings transition back to face to face, hybrid meetings are beginning to be the vehicle to return to normalcy. What are your thoughts on hybrid meetings versus traditional fully in person meetings?
There are benefits to both online and traditional full in-person meetings, and hybrid events will allow us to walk that line to best meet the needs of our audience! As an environmentally-focused nonprofit, the carbon footprint of our events is a big concern. For our in-person events, we already work with our venues, vendors, and suppliers to ensure our events met our internal standards. Online and hybrid events not only allow us to connect with our community who don't have the time or finances to attend in person, but they also allow for further reduction of our carbon footprint. “International” is in our name and hybrid meetings will allow us to convene our community, near and far, through whatever method works best for the individual!
In your opinion, what do you think the biggest value for your attendees is in regards to returning to live events?
The biggest value in returning to live events will, of course, be the ease of networking. Hallway conversations, birds of a feather meals, and informal coffee chats are difficult to replicate online. Although we’ve created collaborative opportunities through different platforms, the energy, magic, and minimal distractions of in-person events are unmatched. We’re looking forward to being able to come together with our community in person again!
This post is part of the HopSkip Planner Spotlight Series where HopSkip spotlight's planners across the industry to bring awareness of how they adapted to COVID-19, communicating and lessons learned and sharing how they are viewing the meetings and events industry in a post-pandemic world.
