Hybrid events - participants attending virtually and in-person

How to set your audience as attending in-person or virtually?

When delivering a hybrid live session, it is important that you know before the start of the event or session who of your audience will be attending in-person, and who will be attending virtually.

In your workspace, the "Attending" field in the user's profile is used by the platform to identify how participants will be attending your event.

If you go to the Users module in the workspace main menu and open a user's page with all their information, you can scroll down to the field:

As you build your event audience, you can update the field for all users directly in Backstage or via a XLS import of your audience list. Alternatively, the "Attendance" field can be added to the event's registration page for attendees to complete as they register. By default, this field is not visible in the attendee's profile in the app (only in Backstage).

Depending on what is selected in the "Attending" for users in Backstager, the experience that is delivered to attendees will be different:

• Attending virtually means that they will not be physically present. They will view the live session using the app (mobile or web app), via a live stream, with built-in interactivity functionalities (claps, Q&A, polls). The system therefore delivers a live stream as part of the attendee's event experience.
  
  
• Attending in-person means that they will be physically present to attend the live session, or to attend the live session as part of a remote hub. No live stream experience will be delivered to the attendees via the app, and attendees will only use the app's interactivity functionalities (claps, Q&A, polls) to interact with the live session.

Note: If nothing is selected for the Attending option, the system will consider that the attendee is attending virtually and will provide a live stream experience.

How is the live session interactivity delivered to in-person or remote attendees at hybrid events, using mobile or web app?

Below is a breakdown of how a live session is delivered to attendees during hybrid events, based on the following criteria:

• Is the participant attending in-person, virtually, or from a remote hub, and will they be using the web app or the mobile app? (Considering that attendees joining from a remote hub will be using the mobile app for interactivity and watch the stream video on a live display).
• Will the participant see a video of the live stream on the app?
• How will the participant experience the live interactivity (will poll questions and Q&A "answering now" questions appear in real-time with the session itself or in-sync with the live stream of the session)?

* To note, for hybrid sessions, if there is a stream and the participant is in-person, then they cannot see the stream, and will therefore receive the notification immediately, only when the stream is live.

What differences are there based on the streaming provider used?

In the below table you will find a breakdown of how events are handled in relation to the selection made for participant in the "Attending" field in the profile pages in Backstage, and also based on the streaming provider used for the live session (Studio, RTMPS, or Embed):

If you are delivering a hybrid event, and the stream type you are using is Embed (third party), then any participants that are attending virtually using the mobile app will not be able to use the interactivity features in the actual live stream player, as it is played from their device's default browser.

Instead, attendees can access the interactivity features by displaying the session page in the app.