The Art of *Hybrid* Gathering
The New Art of Hybrid Gathering
The hybrid meeting – where some guests attend online* while others are together in person – is on the rise. If current trends are any prediction, the form is here to stay. Yet it's incredibly clunky. And it doesn't have to be. Like any gathering practice, it's a learnable skill.
One of the best hybrid gatherings I've attended was a wedding early in the pandemic. The bride and groom — Elaine and Jonathan — learned (out of necessity) to be artful hybrid gatherers. They had planned to get married in their California hometown on Mother's Day, 2020 (as they’d met through their mothers). When it became clear that wasn't going to happen, they decided to host a hybrid wedding. They invited 12 neighbors within walking distance to join an outdoor stoop ceremony in Brooklyn, where the sidewalk became the aisle. All of their other guests would bear witness via Zoom.
But here's the thing: the couple didn't just have the folks on Zoom quietly watching. They thought deeply about 1) what the online experience was and could be, 2) what the in-person experience was and could be, and 3) when to stitch the two together. (Hint: Not the whole time.)
They invited all of their guests (in person and online) to wear white, which provided a sense of connection across both spaces. Online guests were asked to write one word on a card as a blessing to the couple in big letters. The Zoom waiting room featured a slideshow of their relationship. A cousin cracked jokes in the chat box and got everyone bantering. And before the ceremony began, Jonathan came over to the laptop to say hello. He took a moment — usually the moment where the groom would be alone preparing for the ceremony — and peered into a screen, where he saw dozens of his loved ones grinning back. He burst into tears. (And then many of us did, too.)
Jonathan started to shout out the people he recognized on the Zoom — "Hi Nancy! There’s my cousin!" — and what started as a logistical welcome ended up becoming a calling in. Throughout the wedding, the chat box lit up and became a backend, open-source peanut gallery. A week after the event ended, Elaine said, "We have this running transcript of our guests’ stream of consciousness throughout the entire ceremony."
When Elaine walked down the "aisle," she wanted to make sure her parents could be part of the moment, so she asked her in-person neighbors to be "virtual ushers." As she walked down the aisle, she saw her grandmother on a friend’s phone screen waving back, and then her father on another. Their pastor Zoomed in, too, and someone figured out how to hook up the mic so both the in-person and online guests could hear him. When they finally tied the knot and exchanged rings, the street burst into dance. The folks on Zoom then shut their laptops and went about their quarantine home cooking, while the folks in-person danced into the wee hours of the night. We had all been gathered.
What started as a necessity in a pandemic is now here to stay.
Hybrid gathering is the next-generation gathering skill to master, particularly in the world of remote and flexible work. And, we can apply what we've been doing out of necessity over the past two years to this new era.
Practically, "flexible work" means when a group wants to coordinate a meeting, offsite event, training session, or any other kind of gathering, they have to accommodate a mix of some folks participating online — think Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or Google Hangout — and others attending in person.
A hybrid gathering is not one gathering. It's three.
If some people are in the same room or office and others are "dialing in," there are three sites of group coordination and social dynamics to navigate: 1) the people in the room; 2) the online space (presumably some combination of boxes and a chat and a mute button); and 3) the interaction, if you so choose, between the people in the room and the people on "the Zoom."
The good news: you've been practicing your in-person and online gathering skills for some time. In hybrid gatherings, you'll make use of both. And then there's a third skill: understanding when and how to weave them together.
Even in a professional setting, we can look to Elaine and Jonathan's wedding for tips on stitching together the in-person and online parts of a hybrid event. Their guests — in-person and online — were unified by the dress code of "wear white," and both groups were given specific roles. The in-person guests were sub-hosts — they were assigned the role of carrying their FaceTime buddy around the physical space. And the online guests — in part because the chat was run so well — were interacting with each other the entire time. (As I've previously written, the chat box is the best — and simplest — tool for creating psychological togetherness in online settings as quickly as possible.)
Elaine and Jonathan didn't try to do the same thing in both spaces. They weren't trying to pretend the in-person and online experiences were the same. But each group knew why they were there, and were grateful to be able to meaningfully participate.
You can do this too.
If you find yourself organizing a hybrid gathering, consider these questions:
What do you want the experience and interaction to be for the in-person guests? What are their roles at this gathering?
What do you want the experience and interaction to be for the online attendees? What are their roles?
Do the two groups need to be connected to each other or can they have simultaneous experiences?
Based on the ratios, where should the center of gravity be for this gathering?
Does this gathering actually need to be hybrid?
Hybrid gatherings are more complex than either fully online or in-person events. And, the sooner we can name that complexity (and thoughtfully design for it), the better they’re likely to be.
P.S. You may have noticed things look a little different this month on my Instagram and website. An enormous thank you to Ashley and Tanner at @design_by_hyphen for the Art of Gathering's new look — you close newsletter readers may also recognize them from their wedding do-over example :)
*In the original post of this newsletter, I used the terms "virtual" and "online" interchangeably to describe the gathering experience for those "dialing in" to join. I received some thoughtful letters about those terms, and want to share one note from a paster that resonated: Reading this article, I kept getting stuck on something - the use of “IRL” and “virtual.” I certainly understand where these terms come from and they are helpful shorthand. But those gathered online are still “in real life,” - online gathering is real too. In my context this really matters because there is a tendency to prioritize those who have gathered in person and consider those online to be an incidental audience. I tend to use the terms “in person” and “online” - not as hip, but an effort to subtly remind us all that regardless of how someone has accessed the gathering, it is real and meaningful.
This shift in usage resonated with me, and so I've updated the blog post version of the newsletter to use the term "online" instead of virtual in most places, except for the term "virtual ushers," as that was what the hosts called that role in that moment.
In Case You Missed It
A free guide for your hybrid gatherings.
I've put together a free, downloadable guide you can come back to again and again when planning hybrid gatherings. Get it here and feel free to share the link with friends.
Inspirations
Museum Field Trips
This activity booklet produced by Monument Lab invites guests to interrogate museums’ accessibility, inclusivity, and framing. With questions about everything from how objects are used in exhibits to the ways workers are recognized throughout the museum, it’s a crash course in both museum studies and public spaces.
Virtual Invitations
Many, many people sent me this New York Times story about a new invitation platform. I have not been invited to a party through Partiful. Have you???
Gathering Playlist
As we ready ourselves for cozy season, I’ve been listening to the song “Crowded Table” by the Highwomen on repeat. My friend Wendy recently introduced it to me, and the lyrics are everything. What are some of your favorite gathering songs?
