In Person or Cloud? Hybrid Meetings Offer New Solutions

Hybrid meetings promote safer workplaces and make sure productivity is not just maintained, but improved. We’ll take a look at how that’s achieved.

Where before 2020 global travel made sure the calendars of team members included many face to face meetings with coworkers, customers, and vendors, the new reality makes that nearly impossible. Even local meetings with the entire team in a big room are now rare or effectively canceled. That means hybrid meetings step up to fill these gaps in our schedules, to make sure we can continue working efficiently.

That’s a sign of changing times, and we’ll explore how to make the best of it by creating hybrid meetings that are effective. To do that, we’ll help guide you in the general direction of what you need in terms of technology and tools.

Conferences and gatherings now aren’t limited to the people with us in the room. Participants can be anywhere in the world. While this was already a growing trend for before 2020, the global health crisis has accelerated the process of making business meetings a combination of in person and virtual, and the situation is here to stay for a while.

As the name suggests, it’s a combination of in person and virtual, online, or cloud participation. If several team members are in a meeting room while others join from home or other locations via the internet, then it’s a hybrid meeting.

Hybrid meetings revolve around active participation, interactivity, and collaboration, and prove very helpful in even the largest, most prepared organizations. Recent data released by the Pentagon shows that video conferencing now connects multiple rooms with a handful of people, whereas before the entire group would gather in one room.

Hybrid meetings allow you to overcome impediments imposed by travel bans, lockdowns, quarantines, and the various restrictions implemented by governments around the world.

That’s a major phycological plus for team morale. When some team members may be disheartened that face to face meetings are now rarer, hybrid meetings provide a much-needed substitute. As employees realize the new model offers improved efficiency without sacrificing the human aspect, expect team cohesion and effectiveness to bounce back and even grow.

One of the biggest things about hybrid meetings is the emphasis on video conferencing and visual content. They’re more efficient because visuals get to the point quicker and lend every session a livelier, more direct feel. With visuals replacing lengthy charts and documents, meetings can be shorter and thus more efficient in terms of team member time. This is why hybrid meetings are often associated with so-called scrum meetings, or gatherings where participants remain standing and get to the point quickly.

Without good internet connectivity, you can’t have a hybrid meeting. Video buffering, lag, sound that cuts in and out – all cause frustration and ruin the session for everyone. Selecting a good smart projector that has internet access and can thus serve as a hub for everyone’s personal devices, from laptops to smartphones, is important. And a centralized content management system plus cloud storage like OneDrive, Google Drive, or Dropbox means everyone taking part can easily share files, update content, and work on projects together. All much faster than email, which has numerous restrictions on file types and sizes.

At the core of a good hybrid meeting is the right presentation system. This pillar of bringing people together delivers great video and audio, so those participating virtually feel like they’re effectively in the room. No grainy image quality or tinny sound to break the mood.

For best performance we do recommend investing in a smart wireless projector for work, which offers SMBs a high degree of future proofing and superb return on investment.

We hope your business adapts quickly and successfully to the altered landscape of 2020, and that your team remains safe, happy, and productive. Stay tuned for more info on hybrid meetings and how they can help you.