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we were no exception to this .
“ We identified that we would need to change some of the layout on the New York stage and that we also needed to re-configure the mixing of the speakers from their various locations for the online viewers . We added a Show Caller to provide direction to both Production crews . Her role was to call which cameras should be projected and mixed to which screens , and when . She and the production crews were all linked together on Unity Intercomm for full and smooth communication .”
“ We met with our Show Caller for the first time the day before the event ,” Lovatt continues . “ In hindsight , it would have been better to have met with her the week before the event and to have mapped out each session with her in detail . Prepping this with her the day before the event , with so many other moving parts , and with the timezone challenges to contend with , meant that rehearsal time was even more stretched .”
The intention had been to do a dummy super-speed run through of the entire show twice , with Glisser staff pretending to be speakers , and
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with emcee Allen able to testrun her scripts .
In reality , Glisser barely made it through one full run through . “ Fortunately this proved to be just enough to deliver the event that we had envisaged , but more time would have significantly reduced those last minute moments of pre-show stress ,” Lovatt says .
On the day
Some 951 delegates registered in total and of those , 89 were registered to attend in London and 36 in New York . In total , 670 delegates logged into the online platform and approximately 60 attended in-person in London and 20 attended in New York .
Before starting the live stream for the online attendees , emcee Allen led a short and high energy warm-up for the in-person audience and helped to get them feeling motivated and pleased to have made the journey to be there in person .
“ During this warm-up we had a ‘ Breakfast at Tiffany ’ s ’ prize draw giveaway , which involved the New York attendees opening personal gift boxes and one person finding a Tiffany
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necklace inside – the London attendees watched all of this happen live on the screens in the London venue and burst into rounds of applause when the winning attendee held-up the necklace ,” Lovatt says .
“ We also wanted the London attendees to have something similar to look forward to so they were all told at this point of the event that upon leaving they would have a bottle of champagne to take home with them - to celebrate the return of in-person event attendance too . Then we went live online too and the show truly began .”
The Glisser platform enabled each audience to interact with the event content , wherever they were , in the same way and at the same time . The platform instantly combined all of their interactions into one collective audience response which enabled the content to remain relevant to all attendees , at all times .
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Results
The virtual audience were more engaged at the beginning of the event compared to the end ,
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which was also replicated with the on-site audience in London . This was partly due to the event running up to 19:00 in the UK .
“ We saw online attendance reduce during the main event break , which included some topic networking sessions , a physical stretching interlude , a brain break and even a ‘ get up and dance break ’. While this was somewhat expected , it was encouraging to see that the audience did return for more “ live ” sessions ,” Lovatt says .
Tulloch says : “ One piece of feedback from speaking to a few of the virtual attendees post event was that they would have liked to have seen more in the chat feed on the Glisser site . Comments included that if you are attending virtually , the chat feed offers the feeling of “ seeing ” you are part of the audience .”
“ The final audience poll question was “ do you feel more prepared for your future events ?” Some 95 % answered ‘ Hell yes ’ or ‘ a little more ’ so we hope that this Glisser event has helped educate a few others on this hybrid journey ,” Lovatt concludes .
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