The Comprehensive Hybrid Events Guide: What to Know

A Hybrid Event is a conference, webinar, seminar, or trade show that offers an online and in-person environment for delegates and speakers to attend, explore, and engage with. In other words, it is a way of participating in the same event at the same time, from different locations.

If a hybrid event is one with a physical and remote audience, then televised sporting events and concerts are the classic examples of where it all started.

Over the last 10 years, this has extended to corporate conferences, trade shows, and events as online platforms grew.

Events are adapting and evolving

All virtual event types have seen a huge uptake in delivery and attendance numbers since March 2020.

COVID-19 stopped the events industry in its tracks. In-person conferences, trade shows, gigs, festivals, and almost any other type of gathering you can think of were put on hold for the indefinite future.

So everyone (attendees and businesses) tried to make the most of a very bad situation by taking their events online. 75% of organizers shifted their events to virtual in response to COVID-19.

Throughout 2020, WorkCast’s webinar delivery went up by 250%. Registrants for events run on the WorkCast platform rose by over 300%. A trend that happened worldwide.

Unfortunately, this rise in virtual event uptake didn’t happen because the technology was getting better, attendees wanted more online events, or because companies wanted improved data reporting.

Virtual events became popular (and got better) because they were the only workaround.

The increased focus on online events has meant technology and event concepts have grown bigger and better very quickly, but they’re still not flawless.

Hybrid events are increasingly popular because they’re designed to combine the best of the new virtual event technology created during 2020 and in-person conferences.

Introduction

Building and running hybrid events offer a significant benefit for many businesses and potential attendees. The difficulty is how to make sure those benefits are realized.

The success of your hybrid event hinges on creating an engaging and informative experience for your audience. And the needs of your audience are almost infinite.

Answering these questions, and meeting the demands of stakeholders, can be overwhelming. Creating a successful hybrid event in 2024 can seem like a daunting task.

It’s easy to get caught up by the vast amount of information and seemingly endless event setup tasks but this hybrid event guide provides a proven framework for creating successful events, whatever technology stack you use, whatever your key goals are.

Hybrid Event Project Management

There are many ways to run a successful hybrid event, but the overall objective will always be: 

“To provide value to your audience” 

The best project management strategies keep this sentiment at their heart and are designed so the whole team keeps this at the forefront of everything they do.

Traditional project management methods list out all known tasks and assign each task a timescale.

A project roadmap can be built from these timescales to figure out how long the overall project will take. But what if there are hidden tasks? What if your list of tasks contains enough work for the next year?

It’s easy to lose sight of your goals when you consider that all hybrid events contain both an in-person venue and a virtual broadcast. It’s a lot of work. Even with a comprehensive task list and years of experience. So, what’s the solution?

Agile Project Management and hybrid events

Agile project management provides the perfect framework for ideating, building, and running hybrid events.

Agile project management was initially used by software developers as a better way to release code-based products.

Continuous improvement and new approaches at each turn mean that Agile projects are statistically 2X more likely to succeed than a traditional project. If that’s not reason enough to learn about Agile, then what is? 

Obviously, we’re not writing software here, so the actual structure we use at WorkCast is a little different from typical agile project management. Here’s how it works for us (with some hybrid event-relevant examples):

There will be a lot of steps involved but the benefit of Agile means you choose the most important steps to cover in your first sprint.

If you find out that there’s actually more crucial work you need to do first, great, relay this to the team and add it into the next sprint. This is called the “Scrum” framework.

“Often thought of as an agile project management framework, scrum describes a set of meetings, tools, and roles that work in concert to help teams structure and manage their work.”

Learn more about the Scrum framework.

Scrum breaks your project down into “sprints”, or small incremental steps, that combine to achieve your overall goal.

Simply put though, Scrum helps the team follow these steps each sprint (when planning a hybrid event):

1. The project lead and team decide the most important tasks to achieve and add them to the sprint backlog.
2. The team breaks this work into individual tasks (tickets) and gives them a value of effort based on the time taken to complete.
3. The team tries to complete all the work needed to consider each ticket "done". 
4. At the end of each sprint, the team and stakeholders inspect the results and adjust for the next Sprint.*
5. Repeat

*Bonus: every team member has the opportunity to present their work and give feedback without fear. The cornerstone of effective teamwork.

Obviously, there’s a lot more to Agile and Scrum project management than what we’re covering here, but trust us, it’s worth taking the time to learn. 

Once you’ve decided how you’re going to manage your hybrid event project, it’s time to get to work. Here are some great resources to get you started:

Benchmark hybrid event goals, audience, and budget

The key purpose of all events is to provide value to your audience. A successful hybrid event will provide multiple ways for attendees to discover this value. 

1️⃣ Set your hybrid event goals

This is, without a doubt, the most crucial step to creating a successful hybrid event. Without goals, you can’t measure success.

These targets should link to your key business objectives, but we’ll guide you through how to set clear, well-defined goals.

First, ask yourself:

• What do you want to accomplish with this event?
• Why host this event?
• What value can you provide your audience?
• What value can you provide for your sponsors?

Make sure to use a tool like Google Jamboard or just a massive bit of paper to keep track of your work. 

Then, determine your qualitative targets:

These are benchmarks of quality and will help you answer whether or not you’re creating a quality hybrid event.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to put a number on these goals. Making x-profit doesn’t necessarily mean attendees enjoyed your event.

Some common qualitative targets include:

• We’d like to grow brand awareness for our sponsors.
• We’d like to generate 10% more leads than our last physical event.
• We want to increase engagement at these 3 specific talks.

Lastly, identify your quantitative goals:

These are the measurable figures that could suggest you're meeting the qualitative targets you’ve set. 

Some common quantitative goals include:

• The number of meetings attendees make at certain sponsor booths.
• The number of attendees that attend certain key talks.
• The percentage of audience members that answer a poll.

2️⃣ Define your hybrid event audience

Developing a clear understanding of your target audience can help to refine the information you provide, influence your speakers' content, and help sponsors create key messaging.

Create audience personas:

Develop target audience profiles based on your existing customer data or by conducting research. This can be as data-backed or as anecdotal as you like.

Consider these common persona traits:

• Industry sector
• Job role
• Demographic
• Geographic location
• Accessibility needs
• Pain points (what annoys them?)
• Technology they use
• Media use (social media, news sites, forums)

We’ve put together a detailed webinar, Knowing Your Audience, which covers persona creation in much more detail and includes some great free resources. It uses webinars to discuss good persona creation, but the theory is the same!

3️⃣ Determine your budget

With your goals defined, it’ll be a lot easier to figure out how much you’ll need to spend. You’ll find more information about what you’ll be spending in the section “How much does a hybrid event cost?”

Having a budget set and signed off by key stakeholders means you’ll be able to make well-informed decisions about the scope of your event.

Hopefully, you won’t need to question whether you can afford a hotdog stand and a famous guest keynote speaker with your budget already set.

4️⃣ Get stakeholders agreement

This one’s simple. Always present your goals and budget plan to the people that pay the bills before you make any more plans.

Running a hybrid event is an easy way to spend a lot of money. Demonstrating that you’re working to set benchmarks will help to keep everyone on the same page.

Once you’ve set your goals, KPIs, and budget the project management and set up decisions that come next will be much easier.

Choose the right hybrid event platform

Finding the right hybrid event platform will depend on the goals, KPIs, and budget you’ve set. But luckily, you’ve already done the hard work of defining your scope.

As you go through the decision-making, sales, and onboarding processes you’ll know exactly what you need, and be able to ask the right questions.

That said, the vast number of new hybrid event platforms and different hybrid event platform features that are currently available can be a little overwhelming.

Our event expert, Peter, has been delivering hybrid events for years. His top takeaway is to work with a platform or company that knows what it’s doing.

“Being correctly prepared and expert in our field is what clients need and expect from WorkCast. Large and small deserve a similar level of professionalism”.

Quite right, Peter.

Hybrid Event Platform Features

6 tips for finding the perfect hybrid event venue

Just like your hybrid event platform, finding the right hybrid event venue will depend on your goals, KPIs, and budget.

Here are (what we think) are the most important 6 things to consider when choosing your venue:

1️⃣ Hybrid event health and safety

COVID-19 restrictions and safety measures are still a big part of everyday life in most countries. It’s important to consider who is responsible for managing this at your venue, and who will incur the additional costs.

2️⃣ Hybrid event venue fees

Venue hire costs money, sometimes quite a lot of money. It’s an obvious one but make sure you factor in this cost. 

Hybrid events have a significant benefit in reducing venue costs. Cloud server space is normally significantly cheaper than renting a music hall for 4 days.

If you’re struggling to afford a big enough venue to host your in-person event it’s probably cheaper to reduce capacity, find a smaller venue, and work with your hybrid event platform to increase the number of online attendees. 

3️⃣ Hybrid event A/V equipment

Keep an eye out for hidden costs when choosing the right AV setup. Here are some key things to consider:

• It can take a lot of complex equipment and personnel resources to move, set up, and operate a good audio-visual array.
• Some event venues might have specific AV companies they work with that could cost more than others.
• Does the AV equipment integrate with the hybrid event platform you’re using?

4️⃣ Hybrid event location

The location of your in-person venue can add significantly to your overall hybrid event costs. Big venues in big cities will cost premium prices but they’ll be accessible by many.

Smaller venues, or venues in remote areas, might be cheaper but attendees could find accessing these venues a lot more difficult. It will also cost more in travel and accommodation expenses to get your speakers to your event venue.

5️⃣ Hybrid event concierge and support services

Remember, your in-person attendees will need help navigating your venue and talks. Some venues, like hotels, might have concierge services and support available for your audience but most other venues will expect you to provide and set up your own information points.

Always consider how your audience will be able to get helpful information about your event venue, the local area, and travel and accommodation options.

6️⃣ Hybrid event venue size, space, and services

Your hybrid event venue will need to accommodate more than your attendees. Consider the following: 

• Back-of-house facilities like kitchen and food preparation areas and AV storage spaces
• Attendees and your hybrid event team will need good (if not great) internet connection options
• Attendees will need spaces to meet sponsors, and each other, in-between event sessions
• Dining and bar spaces for food and beverage

How much does a hybrid event cost?

A lot goes into making a successful hybrid event, and every event is different. This means it’s hard to give an accurate cost without knowing everything your hybrid event will include. 

Luckily, if you’ve followed this guide, you’ll have a clear understanding of what you need to deliver, and a budget with which to deliver it.

Hybrid event costs can easily be split into two categories. Those associated with your in-person event and venue, and the cost of your virtual event component. Don’t sacrifice the experience of online attendees by overspending on your in-person event experience. 

*Might be included in your hybrid event software package.

So, what's next? Get inspired! Check out some examples of internationally renowned hybrid events that have already happened.

Introduction

It feels like the wider world is only noticing how beneficial a hybrid event model can be for their business and sponsors. But the Workcast team have been building and running hybrid events for years.

In that time we’ve worked on some we’ve learned a lot about how hybrid events can work for a range of different businesses.

Ethos Broking

Ethos Broking is a “collection of like-minded brokers that share similar values” but operate wholly separate from each other. The Ethos Broking group is designed to help smaller, individual companies get access to the best products and facilities for their customers.

Ethos Broking has multiple smaller satellite companies and partners around the UK that operate independently but share content, resources, and contacts. The perfect opportunity for a hybrid event.

Ethos Broking ran a panel discussion from a conference suite in the Shard in Central London, UK. Their live panel was attended by 40-50 key partners and associates from around London. 

The hybrid event itself was just a 2-hour session, but the challenge was to increase the reach of this content to all Ethos Broking’s satellite companies around the UK.

WorkCast utilized a live feed of the panel discussion to stream directly into our hybrid event platform. This was then broadcast live to Ethos Broking’s UK audience. A three-camera setup gave the hybrid event broadcast a professional quality feel that would not have been achievable without a team on the ground. 

The result was a supremely high-quality hybrid event that reached a wide audience, despite the capacity limits of the venue.

Texere Publishing Limited

Texere was founded in 2012 by experienced entrepreneurs in the publishing field. They aim to “redefine the concepts of content and community within scientific, technical and medical markets.”

Events feature heavily as part of Texere’s mission to “produce the most compelling content, develop engaged global communities, and provide outstanding opportunities for...business partners”.

Texere Publishing Limited wanted to reach its international audience with high-quality event content based on its six publications. Their in-person event in New York featured a live panel discussion and expert interviews.

The key goal of Texere’s hybrid event was to deliver the same quality of content to both in-person and virtual audiences, while retaining the ability for all attendees to engage and ask relevant questions.

WorkCast minimized operating costs for Texere by sourcing a local AV team who was led by one producer from WorkCast. WorkCast installed cameras and audio equipment, integrated presentation graphics, integrated virtual polling, and streamed the live event through our hybrid event platform to a large global audience. 

Introduction

It feels like the wider world is only noticing how beneficial a hybrid event model can be for their business and sponsors. But the Workcast team has been building and running hybrid events for years.

In that time we’ve worked on some we’ve learned a lot about how hybrid events can work for a range of different businesses.

The opinions of media outlets and technology enthusiasts on Apple’s products are greatly divided. But whatever the basis of the discussion, the fact remains that Apple’s products are always talked about.

Regardless of opinion, though, Apple Events are designed to deliver clear information about their products. Easy-to-understand speaker-delivered sessions, clear graphics, and Apple’s trademark design consistency are the cornerstones of their events.

Pre-COVID, Apple utilized a hybrid event format to broadcast sessions to a global audience. However, since 2020 Apple has relied on a purely virtual event strategy. Their more recent events utilize quality video-led presentations, graphic illustrations, and a central speaker to deliver their message.

Of course, the on-demand recordings of all their events since 2007 are always available for anyone to view free of charge on their website.

Apple’s high-quality video production gives its events a polished documentary-style appearance that reinforces a sense of clarity and authority. Apple Events are obviously aimed at driving product sales but they always avoid pushy marketing messages and hard-sell tactics. 

Instead, they use high-quality video production and well-designed product demonstrations to imply the value of their products and provide loads of information about them. The rest is left up to the audience. 

Introduction

There's always room for improvement. Here are some ideas we've picked up over the years that could make your own hybrid events even better.

👩‍🦰 Dedicate MCs for the virtual audience

Since virtual audiences are the most complex audience to target, organizers should design content with speakers first. Online attendees can listen to MCs or moderators streaming live from a studio or on-site taking regular check-ins, updates, venue tours, and announcements. 

Consider having a dedicated virtual MC who helps members joining from home not feel forgotten. They could help moderate the virtual audience’s questions during the live broadcast sessions.

🎉 Make networking fun for both attendee groups

Connecting your virtual and in-person attendees in meaningful ways isn’t going to be easy. Try using gamified networking sessions to break the ice.

On-site attendants could participate in speed networking sessions in which they receive 5 minutes to talk with a different online attendee each time they change chairs. They would also play the musical chairs game while viewing the video of the online attendee.

In addition to being a fun icebreaker, this is also a great way to get both audiences involved and enjoy spontaneous interaction. 

📺 Use video throughout

In 61% of cases, marketers employ videos as an element of interaction to keep consumers engaged. Making your hybrid event visually appealing will lead to better attendee engagement.

Use video content to connect to your virtual audience in a way that your live event can’t. Break the physical barriers of a traditional event experience by offering your virtual attendees access to VIP spaces like backstage greenrooms and exclusive interviews.

🔗 Connect to both your hybrid event audiences

You can increase engagement by asking your audience what they think. This is easy for in-person attendees who can simply raise a hand, but how painless it is for your online audience to ask questions? 

Using a virtual audience MC to field questions and launch polls can help you to gain a better understanding of your audience’s sentiment and help to foster an inclusive atmosphere at your hybrid event.

🏕️ Build a hybrid event community

Person-to-person communication is the cornerstone of any great event, and it’s what many of us have missed since the COVID pandemic started.

It’s easy for hybrid event organizers to create great opportunities for interaction at their in-person events. It’s also easy-ish to create great interaction between their virtual audience and speakers during talks and sessions. But it’s not easy for virtual and in-person attendees to interact.

As we’ve already mentioned, one of the biggest challenges for hybrid events is audience unity. Nurturing a unified audience with opportunities and channels for all attendees to connect is a straightforward way to create a great hybrid event.

• Organized discussions around your hybrid event topics.
• Private spaces for your premium or pro members to interact.
• Shared interest groups to help audience members make meaningful connections.
• In-event, instant 1:1 meetings between audience members and sponsors.

But “how am I going to find a hybrid event platform that has all that functionality”, you say?! As it happens, we’ve already highlighted some great hybrid event integrations that work with pretty much any platform. 

Hybrid events are capable of offering much-enhanced event experiences and engagement rates among remote and in-person audiences. But that doesn’t mean they will.

For an attendee, a great hybrid event could be defined by an interaction that’s specific only to them. Nurturing a hybrid event community enables your audience to do just that.

Introduction

Humans are social animals. As Rutger Bregman notes in his seminal work, Humankind, Homo Sapiens survived and thrived because we collaborated. We are “ultrasocial learning machines”.

However, humans are also averse to unknown situations. Which is another, more fundamental, reason for our species surviving and thriving.

Unfortunately, these two facets of human nature don’t really go hand in hand. So how do we resolve unknown situations and collaborate effectively? Communication. Humans communicate really well. 

In fact, there are some 6,500 spoken languages in existence today, not including 138-300 sign languages. And don’t forget emojis, too.

But communicating effectively takes more than just words. Haven’t we all gotten frustrated when we can’t use language to properly communicate our thoughts, feelings, or ideas?

Communicating effectively needs close interaction.

The importance of interaction at events

One overriding benefit of conferences, trade shows, summits, and expos is the quality of face-to-face interaction that they make possible. Pre-COVID it was easy to take this for granted. 

Businesses and attendees favored large-scale in-person events for peer-to-peer networking: making deals, smoothing out issues, and cementing new relationships. But has that changed now?

Virtual events have solved many issues for businesses and attendees. Reducing travel costs and carbon emissions, increasing brand reach, and minimizing infrastructure overheads are all positive changes.

But virtual events don’t solve the problem that interacting with another person is still much easier when you’re face-to-face.

That’s part of the reason why hybrid events have gathered so much popularity as travel and event restrictions are easing across the globe.

Hybrid event platforms, like WorkCast, allow brands and businesses to create one brilliant event with a range of ways to access the event experience and its content. 

However, there is still a choice to make for attendees. If you attend the event in-person to make connections and network then the event content should be available on-demand for years to come, but it might not.

However, if you choose to join remotely then your experience of the content should be the same, but current technology standards mean that peer-to-peer interactions and networking just can’t compare.

So, what can we do to solve the problem of human interaction at hybrid events? What will the future of hybrid events hold?

Technology can be a barrier

In 2020 the “Zoom era” became a reality. But people continued to “view the outside world through their screens and [look] for connections to things that matter to them”. Because that’s just what we’ve evolved to do.

The problem, however, is that today’s technology is a barrier no matter how quick video streaming bit rates get or how impressive the audio fidelity becomes.

Current mass-accessible technology means you’ve still got to watch a physical screen, talk directly into a microphone, or type out messages with buttons that haven't changed much in almost 150 years.

Technologies today come close but don’t bring us eye-to-eye with another person. Looking into a webcam just isn’t the same. As Rutger Bregman states, if we can’t “look each other in the eye...how would we feel able to trust one another?”

Trust is the basis of any enduring relationship and that’s no different at business events and networking sessions. Our natural ability to foster trusting relationships is blocked by the hardware we have access to.

These barriers resign our current iterations of virtual and hybrid events to an almost-imitation of real-life networking at in-person events. But that’s a good thing because now we can see how hybrid events can get better.

A new way for people to interact

In his 2016 bestseller, The Inevitable, Kevin Kelly documents twelve inevitable technological changes that we’re highly likely to see in the next 30 years. This includes how we interact with technology and each other.

The future of successful hybrid events clearly resides in improving interpersonal interactions, and the barriers to that interaction are our current hardware technologies.

It then stands to reason that any inevitable advance in technology will have a predictable effect on the future of hybrid events.

Kevin Kelly’s predictions can be divided into two areas: how humans perceive and interact with their surrounding environment, and how computing impacts that interaction.

As we’ve already covered things like keyboards, speaking into microphones, and watching people talk on square screens are some of the biggest barriers to high-quality interactions.

Technology currently limits our senses, the intimacy of real environments, and prevents complete immersion in an experience.

This is unique to in-person events because our immersion in the experience is only limited by ourselves. Whereas the remote component of hybrid events is inherently limited by technology.

So, how does technology solve the problem created by technology?! It gets better. The virtual becomes more real. Or at least it feels more real. And that’s all that matters.

Virtual reality and augmented reality

Virtual reality is not new. In fact, the term virtual reality was coined in the 1980s by Jaron Lanier, one of the early pioneers in the field. 

Virtual reality entered the public sphere in the late 80s and people have been wearing headsets and walking around pretend rooms since then. However, it's had little noticeable effect on the events industry. 

Unfortunately, virtual and augmented reality technologies were just too cost-prohibitive. That’s until smartphones came along. Nowadays, almost 50% of all people worldwide have a smartphone. That’s 3.8 billion.

The mass uptake in smartphones essentially means that the technology they use gets developed quicker. There’s more competition, and more money to be made, with an already proven concept. Manufacturers have just got to make it better. 

Luckily, smartphone technology is incredibly well suited to augmented and virtual reality applications. And as this technology is already in our homes and everyday lives it makes sense that it should have an impact on our access to virtual and augmented reality technologies.

As “the resolution increases, the frame rate jumps, the contrast deepens, the color space widens, and the high-fidelity sound sharpens” we get closer to an experience where “you almost swear it is really there”.

Sounds perfect for your next virtual event, right?

Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) for hybrid events

Of course, the applications of these technologies will be incredibly broad and, like all technological advancements, they’ll enter the public realm slowly and surely. In iterations.

Over the course of the next thirty years, these commonplace technologies will change our daily lives. But just how could technology affect how we run and experience events as both attendees and businesses?

Interactivity with AR and VR technology

It’s particularly interesting that Kevin Kelly notes the “enduring benefits [of VR] spring from its interactivity”. And he should know, Jaron Lanier invited him to try out his first VR prototype in 1989.

As he notes, “other people in VR were far more interesting than other things”. The “best demos of synthetic worlds are the ones that trigger a deep presence...with the most engagement of other people”.

In one VR program, High Fidelity, “cameras look back at your real eyes and transfer your exact gaze” onto your virtual avatar. The result “is immensely magnetic...it stirs intimacy and radiates felt presence”. A technology already present in modern smartphones.

Being able to communicate the nuances of human interaction within virtual reality has an obvious application in the virtual event setting. Interactions, the most valuable component of events, would be vastly more beneficial.

From the comfort of your own home or office, you’ll be able to have seemingly in-person conversations with another person from around the globe.

Immense virtual event experiences 

Virtual, physical, and hybrid events are all constrained by the limitations of space. Virtual events are constrained by the space of your laptop screen or web browser window. Physical events are constrained by the size of town halls, hotels, conference rooms, and arenas.

What if, however, your virtual or hybrid event space was only constrained by the boundaries of the designer’s imagination? 

Kevin Kelly draws a critical connection between the development of video game worlds and how “massive video games are pioneering new ways of interacting”. 

Imagine a virtual event where the attendees could run, walk, swim, or fly from a talk to a class, then meet up in a virtual coffee shop with a potential investor. A virtual world would feel infinite, the possibilities endless.

In fact, like modern video games, “total interactive freedom suggested by unlimited horizons is illusory...the audience...are assigned tasks to accomplish and given motivations to stay until the end”.

In unlimited and perceivably infinite virtual event environments like this attendees could interact on their own terms, and in their own time. They could leave and rejoin virtual event sessions without the fear of missing important information. Could engagement at your hybrid event of the future reach 100%?

Tracking attendees and improving hybrid events through artificial intelligence

The almost infinite possibilities of these immersive virtual reality event experiences would need some loose structure for them to work effectively. Artificial intelligence (AI) could control and guide participants through interactive event experiences.

Video games already do this. As Kevin Kelly notes, “an AI can read your route through the synthetic environment and calculate interferences needed to herd you in a certain direction, as a minor god might do”.

Furthermore, there’s huge potential for marketers to gather data about what interactions are helpful, and what experiences hinder their business goals.

The interactions themselves could also be improved with augmented reality applications. For example, ID overlay technology could recognize “people’s faces and then [display] their name, association, and connection to [you]”.

The benefits of knowing how two people can help each other without having to conduct several hours of small talk mean that interactions could be quicker and more effective.

This makes it easier to meet new connections and leaves more time for attendees and businesses to forge meaningful relationships and shape their future together.

What’s stopping this reality from happening now? 

There are a few barriers to everyday virtual reality and augmented reality immersion. Not least because the capabilities of creating an immersive VR experience are not yet fully integrated into our everyday technology.

Similarly, interacting with that technology in a productive and efficient manner will demand “skills, coordination, experience, and education”. And that takes time.

However, once interactivity is “embedded into our technology and cultivated in ourselves” then realistic engagement on a personal level at your large-scale events in the future is almost guaranteed. The only barrier will be ourselves.