Plan Your Innovative Event
Choose Your Ideal Meeting Format
Planning an event in Prague has never been easier! Here you can find everything you need for choosing the right format of the event – on-site, hybrid, mutli-hub, or purely virtual. Before you decide which format is right for your meeting, it’s important to have a clear understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of each.
On-Site Events
Do you miss the on-site meetings as much as we do? :) We all know how important the on-site meetings are, especially for networking opportunities and that they cannot be fully replaced by virtual meetings. However, they do have their pros & cons.
On-site meetings:
- Create a perfect environment for networking, brainstorming and joint problem solving while increasing engagement among all types of attendees.
- Provide time for everyone to get a grasp of a topic, immerse in a creative, forward-thinking environment and be a part of the event.
- Finally, on-site meetings enhance F2F conversations, help to create connection and build a long-term relationship between you and your business partners!
Some of the challenges may lie in a demanding budget inclusive of the travel, rentals, AV, catering, staff costs, etc. & ROI evaluation. On-site events are easily affected by weather, strikes, and other types of social discord. On top of that, environmental impacts may be higher due to mass travel.
Despite these facts we cannot wait to meet you in person in Prague as soon as situation allows.
Hybrid Meetings
Hybrid format provides a wider reach of your conference. In a hybrid meeting, some participants are attending in-person and other participants are connecting virtually at the same time. Depending on the set-up and cost, virtual participants can view presenter’s slides and listen to the presenter, and even see the presenter in real-time via live streaming or broadcasting. Usually, the content is available after the event on-demand or via recording.
With the right technology, you can:
- Synchronize the content.
- Engage features so both groups have a similar or completely different experience.
- Overcome meeting space limitations if needed.
- Enlarge audience reach and Involve the audience members who were previously not able to attend due to travel time costs or other reasons.
This format, however, requires a double effort since you have to plan both on-site and online version of an event. Since hybrid meetings and events contain elements of both physical events and virtual events, this might increase the costs, but it always depends on the set-up of hybrid meeting and number of on-site participants. This format is more sustainable than on-site meeting thanks to less delegates traveling to the destination.
Photocredit: O2 universum
Prague as a Perfect Hub
Are you thinking of holding a multi-hub hybrid event? No problem at all! Prague is a founding member of the Hybrid City Alliance, that serves as a contact spot for connecting multi-hub events within and beyond the alliance member cities. Choose Prague as a hub for your next hybrid event! Our venues and service providers are ready to offer a smooth organization and run of hybrid meeting with a live content streaming around the globe.
Benefits of multi-hub events are:
- Increased accessibility and inclusivity.
- Combination of the advantages of F2F and virtual meetings similar to the hybrid format.
- Access to a wider pool of relevant speakers from each region & new types of content.
- Lower carbon footprint.
- Possibility to tackle both global and region-specific issues.
Due to multi-location organization the overall cost-per-head might increase, however, it allows the event planners to target the regional audience and focus on both global and region-specific issues. Thus, it is mainly beneficial for global international conferences.
Moreover, it reduces carbon footprint and thus aims toward improved sustainability. Contact us to get more information and proposals from other destinations easily and effectively.
Virtual Meetings
Virtual meetings allow people to share information and data in real-time via online tools without being physically present at the same place. Although virtual meetings and events come with their own unique set of planning challenges, in general, they require less advance planning than in-person events.
Apart from offering the benefits hybrid meetings have, the virtual may help you to:
- Gain wider audience reach.
- Support accessibility & inclusivity.
- Create more cost-effective event for delegates since virtual meetings do not require any travels, accommodation, catering and meeting space.
- Save time when planning and give more flexibility for selected last minute changes, detailed time scenario of the virtual meeting is necessary.
- Provide more accurate data analytics and reports, so you, as an organiser, are able to track every movement, click, and action taken by attendees and thus measure the impact and ROI of the meetings that will help to adapt future meetings according to the attendees need.
Given the fact that new interactive meeting technologies and platforms are able to secure the interaction of all attendees online. However, they do not replace the productivity and collaboration of small, in-person meetings as the face to face interaction is still a key factor in many conferences.
Thus, virtual meetings will never replace in-person events, even though they are more sustainable than F2F meeting.
Photocredit: Prague Congress Centre
Let´s get Inspired by Prague Innovative Solutions
The industry is changing and there is a strong need to adapt to the “new normal”, let´s then get inspired by Prague innovative thinking while planning a conference.
References
Prague regurarly ranks among the TOP 10 most popular meeting destinations in the world. In 2019, more than half a million people visited Prague to attend nearly 5,600 MICE events.
26 General Conference of the International Council of Museums -ICOM- 2022
Venue: Prague Congress Centre
Number of participants: 3,000
European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology Congress -EAACI- 2022
Venue: O2 universum
Number of participants: 7,500
ESGE Days 2022
Venue: Prague Congress Centre
Number of participants: 3,000
International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2021
Venue: ONLINE
Number of participants: 2,200
17th World Congress of Anaesthesiologists 2021
Venue: ONLINE
Number of participants: 7,000
Congress of the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr) 2021
Venue: Prague Congress Centre + online
Number of participants: 1,700