In Person or Cloud? Everything You Need to Know About Hybrid Meetings

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.

Collaboration between individuals and teams located in disparate parts of the world becomes doable and effective, ensuring work carries on.

Hybrid meetings prove a good way to save on the costs of traditional meetings. You don’t need to keep a suite of meeting rooms lit up and air conditioned. You don’t need complex presentation systems, and there’s no need for the IT department to spend hours setting things up.

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.

A good hybrid meeting is far more dynamic and engaging than a traditional meeting, and may even prove enjoyable. But it all revolves on having the right tools, especially high speed internet, a smart projector (preferably wireless), centralized account management, and cloud access.

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 interactive flat panel or smart projector that has internet access is important. It can serve as a hub for everyone’s personal devices, from laptops to smartphones. 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.