What’s included in the costs to run a hybrid conference?

The hybrid approach requires a new playbook and adds considerable costs to the Annual Meeting program. AOM 2020 and 2021 introduced us to costs for event platforms, digital content collection and production, live technical session labor, and digital delivery and access.  Hybrid sessions will incur a new cost structure to support live-streaming of meeting rooms which will require dedicated audio-visual setup, video cameras, and digital production staff to produce each session in new “hybrid-ready rooms” pre-set at each hotel/facility.  On-site events remain susceptible to location-based costs including catering, audio-visual and room setup, internet use, temporary help, security, transportation, kiosks, laptops, and space rental.  Additional variable costs include union labor, innovations to attendees, and new COVID management (vaccination/proof of negative testing) and PPE for attendees.  What we have learned is that to run a quality hybrid conference costs twice as much as running a purely physical or purely online event. In effect, it is the equivalent of holding two conferences simultaneously. While increasing the conference registration fee was an extremely difficult decision to make, had we not made such a decision, other difficult decisions would have had to have been made.