Even though the pandemic is moving on, our meeting and event habits have changed. Some have been clamoring for face-to-face meetings to return; some like virtual events' flexibility, speed, and safety.

This leads many organizations to offer hybrid meetings – a blend of both worlds. The chart below reflects survey results from the Event Manager Blog.

How Do You Include Everyone?

A Meeting Owl Rental is the perfect solution! This lightweight device offers a 360-degree camera, eight omnidirectional microphones with an audio pickup radius of eighteen feet, 1080 HD video quality, and three built-in speakers. There is also noise-canceling and autofocusing feature in this little 2.6-pound unit.

The weight and connectivity of the unit make it ideal if you can only offer hybrid sessions for specific programs on your conference or trade show schedule, allowing you the ability to move it quickly from room to room. Set up can take seconds!

The unit also has two mute and volume buttons and an on/off switch.

It connects effortlessly to your Wi-Fi system and works with the following video conferencing platforms:

• Zoom
• BlueJeans by Verizon
• GoToMeeting
• Webex by Cisco
• Skype
• Microsoft Teams
• Google Meet and
• Slack

What makes Meeting Owl unique is it automatically focuses on the person who is speaking and can even zoom in on that person up to 20 feet away from the device.

If you have a vast room, such as a conference or convention hall, you can wirelessly pair two Meeting Owls with Owl Connect to create a single view of the entire room.

Here is a brief video of how Owl Connect works:

You can place the Meeting Owl on a table or tripod or mount it from the ceiling.

Smart Software

Presenter Enhance keeps the focus on the active or stage presenter, so remote participants keep the attention on the speaker. It will not move the camera around the room even if others speak.

Hybrid Meetings Are Here to Stay

Hybrid events present the future of event marketing. They offer the following six benefits:

1. Increased Reach and Attendance

There's practically no upper limit to the number of virtual attendees you can have, and can reach people in different countries and time zones.

2. Greater Audience Engagement

Virtual attendees can engage by sharing and commenting on content and submitting live questions to presenters.

3. Unique Sponsorship Opportunities

Hybrid events can allow for sponsorship flexibility. You can have onsite, virtual, or hybrid sponsors.

4. Enhanced Event Flexibility

Since we are not completely clear of COVID-19, some organizers are on the fence about making the return to in-person events. The costs could be enormous if the event must be canceled due to another pandemic wave.

Having a virtual event platform to fall back on helps ensure you're ready should such uncertainties arise.

5. Reduce Your Environmental Impact

If there is one good thing to come out of the pandemic, it's the significantly reduced impact of travel on the environment.

6. Provide Safety and Peace of Mind

With the pandemic still far from over in other parts of the world, many event organizers must pay close attention to social distancing rules and other biosecurity measures. Even though this situation will not last forever, some attendees may be hesitant to join large-scale in-person events for years to come, especially if they are medically vulnerable.

Conclusion

Hybrid events are not going away any time soon, if at all. Therefore, it's essential to have an alternative, inclusive offering, especially for important events such as onboarding, new product announcements, or annual training.

Try the Meeting Owl rental out today from the fine people at Rentacomputer.com before you invest in this option. They have the technical staff to help you set up or troubleshoot any problems.