Have you ever wanted to organize a hybrid event in order to increase accessibility for in-person and virtual attendees? Below is my step by step guide for running a hybrid event for a lecture or workshop with a Q and A period.
Please note, this guide is based on my practices of running more than 80 events for Disrupting Disruptions: the Feminist and Accessible Publishing, Communications, and Tech Speaker and Workshop Series. You might make different decisions based on the needs of your community, your budget, and your technology preferences.
Please note that while this guide consists of 35 steps, I go into more details about accessibility in my zine How to Organize Inclusive Events (Microcosm 2020) and my book Engage in Public Scholarship!: A Guidebook on Feminist and Accessible Communication (Concordia University Press 2022, an open access version is available).
The below guide is for organizing a hybrid event that is free for attendees and includes professional human captioning.
1) Step 1: the invitation of the speaker
- This step involves offering an honorarium (NB: to fund the speaker's honorarium, you may need to either apply for grants or acquire funds in another way, including asking for funding from an organization, or selling tickets). For the Disrupting Disruptions speaker series, I offer $800 CAD honorariums for a 45 minute talk with a Q and A (question and answer) period. If the speaker is traveling, I cover travel fees, hotel, a "per diem" of 85 dollars a day, taxi to and from the airport (or train or bus station)). It is important that you are transparent about honorariums in the first email contact so that someone can make their decision about whether or not they want to participate with all of the necessary information.
- checking the date and time (note that you will have to consider the availability of the physical space (also check accessibility of the room and its nearby washrooms/bathrooms) and the time it is available (again, this brings up different accessibility needs)- this also might require room rental (see costs above)
- once the speaker confirms, I make sure they receive the necessary paperwork to process their honorarium so that my institution already has their banking information, address, and other required information.
- if the speaker has to travel, this is also when I work with them to book their flight or train, book their hotel, and get their per diem and taxi costs covered. Sometimes speakers prefer to book these things themselves or sometimes they prefer my institution to make the reservations.
2) I book/reserve the space where the event will happen (as mentioned above, think about the accessibility of the space and the washrooms, as well as how accessible it is to public transit options).
3) creating an eventbrite page (now there is a cost to doing so) and a facebook event page (I make the eventbrite first so I can link the eventbrite within the facebook event page since I distribute the zoom links via facebook)
4) creating the zoom webinar (you have to pay for this service- this way only speakers are set as panelists. I do this so I can lock down the security measures to mitigate a risk of zoom bombings.)
5) booking the human captioner (I use CHS (Canadian Hearing Services) and this service costs $335 CAD per 2 hour event and 2 hours is the minimum amount of time you can book the service)
6) sending the panelists/speakers their zoom panelist invitations
7) writing and scheduling the emails to attendees through the zoom system (I also make the note that people will receive the zoom link 3 days before, 1 day before, and 15 minutes before the event start. I paste the zoom link into the email that will auto send to every attendee).
8) I put the link to the event on my speaker series website in the schedule of events.
9) I book one of my research assistants (RAs) to also assist with the day of the event. I pay them, at time of writing, $25 CAD an hour plus 22.33% benefits. I budget 3 to 3.5 hours of their labour for a 90 minute event and uploading of the video.
10) I start promotion of the event on different social media platforms and listservs. This also involves making visuals. I usually use the free version of Canva for the graphic design work. I also make a poster for all of the events for the semester.
11) I write out opening remarks, including the description of the speaker series, the procedure for the Q and A of the event, the speaker bio, and the land acknowledgement (this is especially important because I want the captioner to spell name information correctly).
12) The Friday before the event, CHS sends me the name of the captioner for the event. I add the captioner's email address to the webinar and copy and paste their unique zoom panelist code into an email, with the link for my opening remarks, and my phone number in case of tech issues. I also CC my research assistant on this email since they will need the captioner's email to later send the API token for captioning.
13) I continue to do promotion throughout, check in with the speaker about their needs, and follow up on emails from people asking questions about the event.
14) On the day of the event, I arrive 15 minutes early. I always have construction tape, paper, and pens with me. It can be useful to put a sign on the door where the physical event is located. I also have connector adaptor cables to connect the event's projector system (if the room has one) to the speaker's computer.
15) Either my research assistant or I launch the zoom webinar 30 minutes before the event begins. The panelists and captioner are able to then to join the webinar.
16) We give the captioner, captioning abilities, including sharing the API token. The captioner then does a test. The captioner will usually use the document I have provided with opening remarks to help with the beginning of the captioning.
17) I help the speaker hook their computer to the AV system so that they can screen share so attendees in person can see the slides and attendees in the virtual space can see the slides. It is also possible to show the captions for in-person attendees if the speaker has the captions enabled on their computer. Also be aware that you might have to go into the person's computer's system preferences and change the screen mirroring configuration.
18) We test that the slides are working if the speaker is using a slideshow. This is also a good time to check that any embedded videos, sounds, or links are working properly. There can be issues with zoom playing the audio of videos.
19) I check in with the speaker that I am properly pronouncing their name and the name of their institutions and projects.
20) As people log into the zoom webinar, I give them updates about when we will start.
21) Before we start the event, I check in with the speaker, the captioner, and my RA that each person is ready to begin.
22) I make sure that only the speaker's computer is unmuted so there isn't sound reverberation.
23) I also make sure that attendees know they can ask questions through the Q and A box. To prevent zoom bombings, I turn off the ability for audience members to write in the chat, turn on mics, and turn on video. You should make decisions that make sense for your own community.
24) My RA starts the recording. We have chosen to record to the cloud because one time a RA's recording on their personal computer somehow got deleted. Note that a zoom webinar account has a limited amount of storage but can easily hold a 2 hour event recording.
25) I usually introduce the speaker or if it is a cohosted event, I work with the cohosts top divide the opening remarks in advance.
26) The speaker does their presentation or workshop. They have full control over their computer and slides, but we are there to assist. 45 minutes has been the sweet spot for the series I run, but you know your community and what kind of event you want.
27) During the event I take screenshots of the zoom event (and crop out the number of participants and their names). I also take photos of the event, but try to do so in a way that attendees are not identifiable in the pictures for privacy concerns.
28) During the Q and A section, in-person and online participants are encouraged to ask questions. We ask that the speaker repeats the in-person questions so that zoom attendees can know what is being asked. My research assistant and I take turns asking the questions from the Q and A box. We also often let people know in advance that we might combine some questions or might not be able to get to everyone's questions but we appreciate everyone's interest and participation (this came after someone started to send me harassing messages because we did not get to their third question).
29) Nota Bene: we only read the first names of the zoom question asker's aloud OR they are also able to ask questions anonymously. Some speakers also prefer to not have the Q and A part recorded.
30) I might have to clean the room or reorganize the chairs in the room after the event. In-person folks often like to linger and chat after the event, so make sure to book the space so there can be 15 minutes of folks connecting and saying their goodbyes.
31) After the event, we upload the video to our YouTube channel with the captions created by the professional human captioner. The human captioner's captions are much better quality than YouTube's auto-generated captions. I also share photos of the event to social media.
32) I, then, embed the video recording into the speaker series website.
33) I send the video link to everyone who registered and I also publicize the recording on social media.
34) After the event, I follow up with the speaker and thank them. I also follow up to make sure that they have received their honorarium.
35) I also make sure to record the attendance data from the event to save for my report to our largest funding body, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I also collect data on the number of YouTube views.
I have described an event with one speaker. Panel events also can work in this format, but I recommend that all slides for every speaker are running off of one person's computer and ideally everyone can put their slides into a single slideshow (google slides makes this simple) in order to simplify tech requirements.
Please note that there are other accessibility factors to consider that I haven't fully addressed in this list. Food and ticketing raise other questions. This list also does not speak to all of the paperwork, signatures, and post-event finance forms I have to fill out. Thank you to Andrew Folco and previously Kim Reany for your assistance with some of the paperwork and following up on honorariums with our institution's finance system. Again, please see the above mentioned resources (my zine How to Organize Inclusive Events (Microcosm 2020) and my book Engage in Public Scholarship!: A Guidebook on Feminist and Accessible Communication (Concordia University Press 2022, an open access version is available)) for more information.