In-Person – Hybrid – Online – Offline? Tale of a conference in 2022
by Sebastian
The Global Solutions Initiative organized this week their annual #GlobalSolutionsSummit which was conducted on-site/in-person, hybrid and fully online. Excited for a first conference in years I showed up in #Berlin for 4Sing on-site, but unfortunately was greeted only by a rather small group of participants – amid the high-level attendance by members of the German and Indonesian government. The three-fold approach, provided for participants as well as speakers to attend as they liked. Interestingly with employing talque the organizers went great ways to ensure a connection between all participants. This conferencing software does not only provide for a good overview, creating personal agendas and (video)chat functions. It also includes a ‘Participant-Match-Making’ function through which you easily can find and chat with like-minded attendees. However, bridging online and offline participants only goes that far. Hence I very much enjoyed the hallway chatter in Berlin, but felt now very much disconnected from the online parts of the conference. To attend the fully online panels, I had to tune and plug in via my own laptop – sorrounded by fellow on-site attendees, in a bizarely quiet audimax. This was certainly an odd exercise – as following the panels at home appeared now definetly more comfortable.
This shows we still have some ways to go to foster exchange and bring people together when utilizing a multitiude of means of attendance/conncetion at the same time. I am positive the experience from now on can only become better, as we are getting used to simultaneous channels of contact